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“A knife-wielding man has gone on a rampage at a facility for handicapped people in the city of Sagamihara, west of Tokyo. Police say 15 people are confirmed dead and 45 injured. They say they received a call from an employee of Tsukui Yamayuri-en just after 2:30AM on Tuesday morning. The caller reportedly said that a man carrying a knife broke into the building.” It’s still early, but other accounts list 19 dead.

NHK reports that a 20-year-old male, a former employee of the facility, later turned himself into police and was arrested. Evil exists and always will. Whatever the motivation, guns or not, horrible acts such as this do, in fact, happen in other advanced countries. Whether the weapon of choice is a firearm, a knife or a truck means little to the victims involved. 

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99 COMMENTS

  3. Knives are scary as fuck. I’d much rather face a gun than a knife. And yes, I say that having faced both.

      • Agreed. The only person outside of CONUS who ever tried to kill me was a punk in San Francisco with a knife. Pretty freaky. There was one other guy with a tire iron in South Carolina, but I don’t think his heart was really in it.

      • Yikes. I’ve been in a knife fight. Not fun but I didn’t get stabbed. You need to start playing the lottery!

    • Me too. Knives are visceral. Pull a knife on me and I don’t want to stop the threat, I want to destroy it.

    • A knife is also a terrible defensive weapon. Even for someone who is skilled with it, which is rare. A determined attacker can continue the attack for some time, even with an unsurvivable wound. I’d rather have a Louisville Slugger.

    • In street encounters with the local dazzling urbanites in Los Angeles in the 80’s, I learned pretty quickly that even hardened gang-bangers fear knives. They might be packing a gun, but when they get up close and you can flick open a 4″ knife in their face, they back-peddle… quickly.

      To this day, whenever I’m not allowed to carry a gun, you can bet I have knives (NB plural) on me.

      • “To this day, whenever I’m not allowed to carry a gun, you can bet I have knives (NB plural) on me.”

        Same.

        Even with the broken knife laws in New York State, they’re still a lot more knife friendly here than they are gun friendly.

    • Agreed. Knives are vicious, highly concealable tools that can be easily used in a surprise attack. Since they have a common, less lethal purpose, there is a risk that a defender may misinterpret the initial assault as a beneviolent action. Also, the typical person does not realize how much distance an attacker can cover in an assult with a knife. But, it does not stop at the knife. There are hammers, bats, ice picks, screw drivers, and a other items that a bad guy an use to kill an innocent. In my military cop days, I responded to an assault where a gang member broke a wine bottle and slit a person’s neck nearly from ear-to-ear. The witnesses said that there was no provocation or any indication that the attack was about to occur. The victim and the bad guy never talked and didn’t know each other. Now, that is scary.

      • To me what’s really scary is how effective a knife can actually be.

        People say you can’t really use a knife for a mass killing. I submit this:

        Someone armed with a Fairbairn–Sykes knife and the knowledge of how to use it can walk into a crowded “rave”, concert or other similar situation. They can walk up to people and pull them on to the knife or give them a quick poke and twist and move on very likely undetected after having delivered a fatal wound. They can move from person to person throughout the crowd and with a modicum of skill and knowledge they can very quietly inflict fatal injuries on people who simply collapse.

        Done right someone can easily pass through a crowded rave or concert, kill 15 people and maybe even escape undetected. No AR-15 BOOM to run from just silent death passing through the crowd. Sure people might fall over and those tending to them might start screaming but in a loud-ass nightclub how quickly will that message spread? When it does the attacker simply drops or sheaths the knife, moves with the crowd and very possibly disappears.

        Just ask yourself how likely such an attack would be quickly detected in the following environment:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbQ-WHGRQb8

  4. Whaaaaaaa. This is Japan. They don’t have a Second Amendment or much private ownership of guns. Mass murder only happens here because we have guns. All the academics and media (aka “the smart people) say so. Why is the media reporting this outright false story?

    Does not fit narrative. Does not compute.

    • It’s okay, these types of things don’t happen in other countries. That man at the podium would never lie to us.

    • The antis won’t view this as means substation and evil doing its will against the defenseless, regardless. They’ll just say that if he’d had a gun, it would’ve been worse. So nobody should have guns.

    • this guy attacked retarded and disabled in a long term care mental health facility, so its not like he stormed a nightclub and killed a dozen able-bodied men.

  5. Knife attacks, truck attacks, Palestinians running over vans full of people with front end loaders . . . they all only go to show that it isn’t the weapons that create slaughter and mayhem, it’s people.

    Ban all the weapons you want, but that is only disarming the victims.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnBWa_xJz6A

  6. Ya’ can’t stop the signal. Just ask the Chinese about knives (of course I know about “knife control” in merry old England too…

  8. The scariest weapon I own isn’t a rifle, shotgun or a handgun. It’s a SOG tactical tomahawk.

    Bladed weapons are just freakin’ scary.

      • I won one at an IDPA match prize table a while back. I keep it next to my bed. So far, I’ve only used it to kill a spider, but it was pretty good at that.

    • The problem is finding a good way to carry it. The handle makes running more than a bit problematic.

      • We just need to go back to carrying a proper sword at the hip.

        A cutlass or saber would fit into modern self defense pretty tidily.

    • Ralph…we’re pretty much in the same page, I can say say that’s my best chuckle of the day. Fast forward to SOG’s video. Add heavy metal, slo mo over conceete and chucking tommie hawk and I’m instantly back in the French and Indian wars.

      http://youtu.be/1NSFLhPj5rA

      Too much work for an old guy. I’ll stick with me guns.

      • Mk, after watching that viddy, I’m glad that it isn’t ever going to come down to chucking tommys at bad guys.

        Well, come to think of it, in Massachusetts it might.

    • Yep, I have two, the thrower and the big boy. Great camp tool as well. I have one of the old style ones as well that slides on to a hickory handle. The head makes a good sheath knife. Skinning,scraping,camp work,food prep,cooking.

  9. Main stream media in the US will completely ignore this. No one here will even know it happened.

  12. There is a basic run of the mill murder rate which is determined by demographic factors and overlayed on this is a murder by crazy which is fairly constant across cultures. I think spree killers are a product of the internet culture with its instant fame and instant gratification. In the pre internet age many of these spree killers would have evolved into serial killers.

  14. Good thing Japan has such strict gun control. All those people would be way more dead if they had been shot rather than stabbed and slashed

    • Yeah you’re right, If they adapt our oh so superior laws godzilla would’nt have to worry about some hikkomori with a rpg or the school girl with the ak machine gun.

      Japan has the lowest rates of murders and suicides versus the america’s high death and suicide rate from guns.

      • False. Japan’s suicide rate alone is about 25% higher than our murder + suicide rate.

        However, the Japanese count family murder/suicide as all suicides so not to dishonor the family. Japan’s actual murder rate is much closer to the American murder rate than you suppose. The suicide rate is correspondingly lower. I will leave it to someone like Nick to go through the data to come up with the actual Japanese murder rate.

        • You can go into the WHO mortality database, select both the US and Japan, and then the years you wish to examine.

          The numbers bounce around a bit, but the US ranges from about 10 to 12.something per 100K, and Japan ranges from 16 to 18+ per 100K.

      • Japan’s suicide rate without guns is not only higher than the rate in the US, the rate among Japanese immigrants to the US who own guns is lower.

        This is one of those nuggets to come out of the 1980’s research on guns, and I think you can find it referenced in Kleck’s work.

      • Japan has a lower rate of sucide+homicide than the US.
        Japan and S. Korea both have much higher per capita suicide+homicide rates than the US.

      • You guys are missing it, here. He is using a typical liberal technique, here, lying by playing word games. You can read that sentence as considering the numbers of both nations pertaining to *gun deaths*, which, if he is caught and threatened with prison for lying, he can claim that is what he said, and which is likely true. But it LOOKS, at first blush, as if he said the overall numbers were what he was talking about, as opposed to the “with guns” numbers. Case dismissed, he got away with it. But he is still a liar, and he knows it.

    • The body count would have been in the thousands if he’d had a gun. See gun control works!

      /sarc

  15. Again another RARE incident versus the numerous mass shootings that happen everyday in the US.

    I guess you’re ignoring the mass shooting in texas I posted a day or two back.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/four-people-including-child-shot-dead-texas-home-053553702.html?nhp=1

    Has does a rare stabbing attack which rarely happens versus the frequency of incidents that the link I posted prove?

    It’s easier to run a from a wackjob with a knife than a gun.

    Again, Let me know when stabbing sprees become epidemics when statistically they’re not.

    I know what your silly fringe dwellers are trying to do, but making an irrational argument doesn’t make a completely different argument any less rational. Simple logic.

    Or, if you need an analogy: It’s like comparing oranges to orangutans with the argument that they are the same because they are both sound similar-ish.

    • So how do you know how to run away from the organophosphate insecticide that dad laced your sushi with? Insectiside is a common weapon used to commit family murder/suicide in Japan.

    • That shooting looks to be a family homicide, although not confirmed either way. If it is a family, it’s not a mass shooting when using the CDC, FBI, and Congressional definitions. As for “daily,” murders, rape and robbery occur every day in every potion of the world. Mass shootings make up an extremely small part of the overall violent crime in the US. In fact, more people die per year due to car accidents or drug overdoses than guns incidences of any sort. But what do I know, I’m a silly fringe dweller who supports the “gun Reich” and am easily confused by facts.

    • Let us know when “mass shootings” become epidemics. You are more likely to be hit by lightning in the US.

      For the record, THIS is why I hate leftists. They are incapable of even starting the conversation without bold faced lies.

    • Let me know when shootings of any type become an ‘epidemic’.

      Violence, regardless of the weapon used, isn’t an infection disease and isn’t transmitted by biological means.

      • The use of the word “epidemic” to describe any phenomenon outside the world of pathogenic bacteria and viruses, is one of those red flags that tells us we’re dealing with left wing hysteria.

    • Cracks are appearing in your logic here.

      You posted on another thread “These people were in a ‘disabled’ facility. I doubt they had the ability to defend themselves. So yes a knife in this situation was enough to mimic the levels of a typical gun attack”.

      Now you want them to run away. How pray tell do disabled people run away from a knife attack?

    • Rare in japan? mass mruder shootings are very rare in the US as well. If you are not a criminal you are more likely to be killed in a mass murder in Europe than the US.

      And you never responded to my fata in your last exchange where you claimed “US gun murder has been climbing for decades.” I gave the FBI data showing US gun murder has in fact been plunging for decades, down nearly 65% since the early 1990s.

      And you keep including suicide in your numbers but then dodge when the fact show S. Korea has nearly double the US Suicide+homicide rate by all means (unless you are going to claim jumping in front of a subway or murder with a knife is less violent than the same act with a gun)., Japan has a higer rate, and voer 20 developed demcracies including several with virtually no guns are within +/- 15% of the US rates.

    • Really? /s Exactly where on the list of non-natural deaths does death by firearms fall? Oh heck, I’m tired of you idiots. You are FAR more like likely to be killed in a hospital #3 than by a firearm #13. .64% of all firearm deaths are by long guns. You have a 70% chance of surviving a gun shot. Now, be a good lad and put your Gun Free Home sign up and be safe. I’ll keep my Xd 9mm and AR handy. Warning Premises Secured By High Speed Wireless Security System.

    • Hey <b""concernedamerican" it’s time to put down the triple-mocha-frappa-capaccino-with-a-twist-of-lemon and look at reality. If the toll from guns is 30,000 per year (from a population of over 300 MILLION(!) or about 0.01% of the population), with suicides making 20,000, and about 8,000 restricted to certain demographics within certain geographic locations.

      But this is rendered insignificant with the death toll from medical malpractice with is said to claim 400,000 PLUS lives per year. But this is never in the news because (a) it happens quietly, and (b) there is no drama. And then look at the toll from motor vehicle accidents, drowning, intentional self-harm, etc.

      The death toll from firearms does NOT even make the top ten causes of deaths.

  16. Some reports relate that after the killer finished his business he turned himself in at a nearby police station a half hour later.

    Good work, Sagamihara police! Orlando SWAT should be proud.

  18. Japan ( not nord korea !)

    Any fixed knife containing a blade length of 15 cm or more requires permission from the prefectural public safety commission in order to possess. Permission requirements also apply to any type of pocket knife over 6 cm (including Automatic Knives), spears over 15 cm in blade length, and Japanese halberds.[31] All knives with a blade length over 6 cm are prohibited from being carried, under a crime law,[32] with an exception for carrying for duty or other justifiable reasons. There is a penalty of up to 2 years prison or up to a ¥300000 yen fine.

    Aha an criminal not follow an only disarming the lawfulls hypocrite law ?? lol

    • you need a permit for a spear? oy vey…id almost feel sorry for the had they not attacked us and tortured our POW’s to death.

      • Yeah, that’s been a law since the 1600s. The Tokugawa shogunate was not keen on having the peasants running around with weapons. Well into the 19th century, a non-samurai caught in possession of a weapon could be executed on the spot.

    • Nope. Same old world and the same old problems. Bladed weapons wiped out whole civilizations before the advent of guns.

      Only real common sense about guns is to own at least 2. If you don’t, you’re just a victim waiting to happen.

    • No just way more media attention. In fact murder an overall violence rates worldwide at historic low levels in all metrics, wether you count in thousands or tens of years

  22. I am waiting patiently for the media to discuss the type of knife used (was it a scary assault knife?), how the perpetrator got access to such a dangerous weapon and what can be done to prevent anyone from getting ahold of a knife ever again.

  23. Reminds me of the mass murder by knife attack in China. Both back nutjobs who apparently felt free to do so, in target rich GunFreeZones.

    Imagine same happening here in the US, at a disabled group home, or a school,
    where hopefully at least one or two staff *might* be allowed to CCW.

    Or the machete attack on the soldier in the UK, or the woman in Germany- by members of the R.O.P.

    When seconds count, the police are just minutes away…

  24. Nope. Didn’t happen. BS flag. Where is the video? How do we know this is not just a movie scene? Anybody can doctor video. Mass killings do not happen in other advanced, civilized nations; Obama said it, I believe it, that settles it.

  25. So in the last couple of weeks we have had multiple people killed with a knife, (Japan) multiple people killed with a truck, (France) multiple people killed with bombs, (Kabul) and multiple people killed with a gun. (Germany) Why is it that the only one that matters is the guy from Germany? The stabbing attack which happened today are not even the top item on the major internet news sites, despite the fact that 20 people were killed. I guess some crimes are more important than others.

  26. A knife in my opponent’s hand scares me. I’ve gotten my fair share of bruises from plastic training knives in combatives classes.

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