Mass shooting and stabbing leaves four people dead in Japan.

 

Police standing near the scene of the shooting. BBC/Getty.

A mass shooting and stabbing in Nagano Japan has left four people dead. BBC. The attacker stabbed and killed a woman with a 12 inch blade. He then shot and killed two police officers with a hunting rifle. Another elderly woman was also killed though it is unclear about the circumstances about that killing. The suspect was the son of the city assembly speaker and was holed up at his father's house before surrendering to police. It is unclear how the attacker was able to get a hunting rifle. Gun violence is relatively rare but mass attacks like this do happen in Japan, along with the notable assassination of former Prime Mister Shinzo Abe. 

My Comment:

Japan has one of the most restrictive gun control regimes in the entire world yet this guy was able to kill four people. One was killed with a knife while two cops were killed with a hunting rifle. We aren't sure how the other person died but regardless, it shows that these kinds of attacks can happen anywhere in the world. Gun control is obviously not the answer as Japan has among the strictest gun control in the world and this still happened. 

Most attacks in Japan are mass stabbings, some of which, due to unprepared police, end with double digit kill counts. But even though guns are rare they do have shootings as well. It's unclear how the attacker in this case got a firearm but he did. And there is little to stop people from building their own firearms like the assassin of Shinzo Abe. 

It's unclear why these attacks happen. Japan has a very different, high trust society but they still have a mass killing problem, just like the United States. Indeed, it seems like every country has these kinds of attacks. If you don't pay close attention to international news you would completely miss this. Which is what the media wants of course. 

It seems like this attacker stopped his attack because he wanted to. He was still armed when he surrendered and could have tried to kill more people but he did not. It's unclear why he would stop killing after he began but perhaps he ended up feeling guilty. 

Motive is just as much as a mystery. Police say he killed the first women because he "wanted to". What do you even do with that? I guess some people are just evil and want to see other people die. In the end though the motive hardly matters, it's the fact that four people are dead.