Frankly you people are a bit naive about gun tactics. It is totally possible to shoot someone while minimizing the potential to hurt an innocent. Simply put, you lung to one knee and shoot up.

It is a fairly common tactic.

There is no comment regarding the immorality of preventing these innocent people from being able to defend themselves. Someone trying to stab me will possibly get shot, but then again we can carry handguns in the U.S. legally.

And guess what? In that (utopic i’m afraid) society, nobody would need guns. Nobody. Ever.

I’m sad though that the obsession with trying to find guilt in something or someone is what turns events like this more sad than it is.

Im all for no-guns but when it gets to this stage its a bit ridiculous to stand by..

I think its a bit of a catch 22 that because crime in Japan is generally so low, that when an incident like this does happen the cops don’t really have any experience to deal with it.

That said, the police response once a crime has begun is another matter. If an officer was close enough to hit Kato with a baton, he was close enough to shoot him non-fatally and end his rampage. Yes, there’s a risk of injuring bystanders, but the near-certainty of the killer continuing his stabbing rampage would be the rather obviously bigger danger.

While the police couldn’t have known that the sight of a gun would cause Kato to stop, they could have tried the old “stop or I’ll shoot.” What good reason is there for not trying? Panic, one could reasonably assume, had already set in.

How many people were stabbed after Kato was hit with a baton? After the police were there? For all of those, decisions by the police at least partially led to the outcome, whether that be better or worse than it could have been.

I for one feel safer with officers carrying only batons since Japan really has no need for firearms.

I might be misreading you here, but Japanese cops already carry guns, not only batons.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/victim-of-akihabara-stabbing-spree-found-to-be-infected-with-hepatitis-b

But this is just rhetoric that loosely says the real person to blame for all the deaths is the police officer. As if the officer should be demoted, discharged, or even jailed for failing to draw his firearm first.

In reality, the police may be as ill equipped as paramedics by way of experience to deal with such a situation, and they certainly deserve some amount of criticism. But when we as a community begin to search for answers in order to understand why this happened, we really should focus on what drove the killer to such extreme. It is impossible to say that a better police force would have prevented this from happening in the first place.

And because the police use their guns there, the crime rate is so low, right?

In retrospect, true. But why could you tell mere threat was enough at the moment? Everyone thought the guy was insane, and if he was indeed insane, threat would not work. As one can guess from the style of the crime and as it turned out, he wanted to die because he is tired of life. How can threat of death work for a man who wants to die?

Being British our officers do not routinely carry guns – only special units of officers are allowed to do this.

In the UK we tend to believe that this is a good thing since it reduces the need for an arms race between the law and criminals. Weapon use however is very regulated in britain – unlike america.

Despite the other crimes we have heard of in recent months in Japan, these things are still rare events.

I for one feel safer with officers carrying only batons since Japan really has no need for firearms.

I’m not sure if the gun brought the man to his senses? Who knows what he was thinking or how the events went. Perhaps if he could have easily got his hands on a gun he may have used that.

Besides the officer was in a crowded area in the mist of panic – perhaps not the best place to be firing off rounds.

But if the officer really felt the need to fire, he could have drawn his gun and chased the criminal until he was close enough to get a clear shot. If an officer is close enough to swing a baton at the guy, he should be close enough to fire a gun and hit his target.

Its not as easy as simply firing a gun and killing the guy. First they have to isolate him from the crowds and then fire. I don’t think anyone blaming the Japanese police has the first clue of how cops handle these things in their home countries in the first place.

For this case, the mere sight of a drawn gun was enough to make the guy stop, so maybe the police should be allowed to draw their guns, even if actually firing is out of the question.
Although, it would require higher discipline to keep the itchy trigger finger under control when the gun is already drawn…

The one exception seems to be the SAT or SIT units (anti-terror/SWAT teams). They are very, very good at what they do and don’t seem to be afraid to put their lives on the line to take down a criminal when they are called upon to do so. The problem is, they aren’t called very often, or when they are they are subservient to “normal” cops who are worried about CYA. SIT can only be called in by the prefectural police office, wheras IIRC SAT can only be called in by the National Police Agency. By the time either unit gets the call, it usually means things have already gone bad. But there again – if you create a system so these special units can be activated quicker, you get people screaming about “heavy-handed” police tactics.

Shooting a criminal in a crowd is practically impossible.

This partially stems back to a 1970 ship hijacking incident where, the police sniper who killed the suspect who was blasting away with his rifle ignoring calls for his surrender by his relatives, was indicted for murder by some activist groups (The case was dropped by the courts) This has a chilling effect on any decision to allow the use guns by the police even in dire situations.