Violence in Japan is so low, something like that is just outside their normal reality. It's more likely to see some malfunctioning tech, than experience a real gun fired. And with all the smoke, that's what people probably thought at first, that some tech went haywire.
Until I was 42, I had never seen a real gun except on the belt of a police officer. I lived near an Army barracks for a decade and never saw a soldier carrying a gun.
In my twenties one of the crazy types at work brought a very realistic replica gun to work. He's the type that in some countries would bring a real gun to work, but here... it was just a toy to freak people out with.
His strange proclivities weren't what really freaked me out. The toy gun did. I could name the manufacturer instantly when I saw it. I knew how every part worked, and what every part was called. I could operate it without difficulty or confusion. I knew that it had a grip safety, a manual safety, and a trigger safety. I knew what all of those meant. I knew how to reload it, and what to do to release the slide from its locked-back position.
It was like... a dragon.
We've all seen dragons on TV and read about them in books. We can describe a dragon in detail. We can talk about their behaviour, their capabilities, and their nature. Most of us can name specific dragons.
But they're a thing of myth, not something real.
Until some guy brings a dragon to work and you realise that they aren't just figments of our imagination.
Somewhere out there, there's a country where every second person has a dragon like we have dogs here.
There must be a lot of fires there instead of just... barking.
> My friends and I decided to stop going to large events. How sad is that?
Up to your risk tolerance. I would recommend that if the gun risk from large events is too much for you that you might also want to refrain from driving.
In the same vein, I was discussing police responses to mass shootings on Twitter, and was quite surprised to find Wikipedia took me to a disambiguation page when looking up “[random small town] shooting”: https://twitter.com/samziz/status/1544460684829904896
I was a couple of time in japan, and I felt always super save everywhere, even middle in the night somewhere in the city. I even felt much saver in Japan than at home in Switzerland.
> It's more likely to see some malfunctioning tech, than experience a real gun fired. And with all the smoke, that's what people probably thought at first, that some tech went haywire.
What the hell did he shoot him with it, a relic musket from a Sengoku Jidai display? I don't think I've ever seen or heard anything like that outside of military battle reenactments, with all that smoke it sounds like a cannon more than a gun.
Abenomics would always end up this way, Japan has been facing an ACTUAL existential crisis since the end of the bubble era. You know you messed up when you made these people go from Karoshi to assassination.
You're forgetting that he also had to make his own ammo. A black powder shotgun is the easiest firearm to make from scratch if you have that constraint.
Technically true, but looking it up, it seems the last PM was killed in 1936. Additionally, in the 192x and 193x many high ranking politicians died, of which were many PM or former PM.
I think this comment is irrelevant. I would not explain this unresponsiveness in this way. The video is truly one of the weirdest videos I've ever seen.
I had that same thought watching the recent Chicago shooting footage. I have never heard a rifle in real life, they certainly don't sound like movies and if I had been sitting nearby it would have taken me a while to tell this is a flee situation.
For context, out in the open country in a relatively flat area one can *easily* hear most centerfire rifles from 1-2 miles away and often much further. Shotguns are lower pressure and generally aren't as loud, and handguns even quieter still just due to the substantially reduced energy levels.
Firearms, particularly rifles, are so loud that there's just a qualitative difference in the sound that's impossible to capture with standard audio gear.
Perhaps someone can make a comparison to lightning or firework shells, which are relatively common detonations of similar loudness. Difficult to characterize in words an explosion, though. In all cases, higher frequencies attenuate faster, so one nearby tends to 'crack' and one distant, 'boom'.
I've spent a lot of time in life around all sorts of explosions, gun fire (everything from modern to old, including machine guns, cannons, etc.).
(My dad was Kent Lomont - google him for stories - he was one of the world's largest machine gun and destructive device dealers, and he/we shot everything from all of history all the time).
There is a distinct difference between gun shots and fireworks. There is a distinct difference between all sorts of guns (I can tell the difference between many, and certain guns, even full auto, have distinct patterns and noises).
For example, a Thompson machine gun (old Tommy guns from gangster movies) have a lower rate, "bup-bup-bup" sound of a certain frequency (.45 ACP caliber, Cutts compensator on the barrel, somewhat short). A Ma Deuce (.50 BMG large machine gun, very common) is a more rapid, lower, really impressive bang. A 22 pistol is a smaller pop. An A4 machine gun has a different rate, different (.308 or similar). Someone shooting a non-machine gun of the same caliber, trying to go at the same rate, never has the same mechanical precision at the rate. A mini-gun is just a constant buzz, like a saw, and terrifying once you see what it can do and associate that noise with that level of destruction. A .44 magnum is different than .357 magnum. Each is very distinct once you've heard/shot them enough.
But no good way to describe :)
I'm not sure how to explain it. But there is a place you can get some glimpse - video games and accurate war movies used to come to my dad's place to record all day, requesting this or that gun, which he would have and know how to work, with whatever rare or weird ammo was needed. Their sound guys would know how to record the noises well.
So many video games, especially ones that are trying to be historically accurate, will give you a taste, but none really capture the loudness.
It used to be you could go to the Knob Creek machine gun shoot twice a year and hear them, but even then you'd not learn different ones well since they all fire at once.
Or, if you're really interested, there are many places you can rent different guns, including machine guns, and hear the differences.
My first time firing a shotgun I was surprised it didn't sound anything like the video games I grew up playing (Doom, Duke Nukem, etc). In games they have a bassy boom with a lot of reverb while in reality it's a loud crack. At least that was the experience with my shotgun. I'm not sure how much it varies from model to model.
I’m always surprised by how different auto accidents sound in person. Movie and TV audio just don’t pick up the low frequencies you hear and feel in person.
Different ammos/guns produce different sound levels. A subsonic 22LR can be incredibly quiet. Black powder guns (as it seems to be the case here) are loud and produce a lot of smoke.
Uh, no. Guns are really, really loud. Much louder than you get from TV and movies, which after all can't play sounds loud enough to damage your hearing.
As someone with tinnitus that started a decade ago after listening to some loud music over headphones, I strongly recommend everyone to not watch anything "at a painful volume".
Excellent comment. The audio in that scene is stunningly effective. I can’t think of any other gun fight scene in cinema that gets anywhere near close to that level of realism
Exactly. Shooting a simple tiny slow 9mm (classic pistol cartridge, used ie by cops/military everywhere) has in indoor range such a blast you feel the3 shockwave in your guts. Even with hearing protection its a very intense experience that you need to get used to. You simply don't get anything similar elsewhere, unless some big fireworks blast very very close to you.
Not using ear protection constantly around guns will degrade your hearing significantly and permanently.
Key words were “indoor range” and firing the gun yourself (so right next to you). A shot fired down the block in an open-air city with trees and fences and irregular sonic shapes will be so loud.
Guns are very loud close up, but even a moderate distance and especially in an urban setting where sounds bounce all over the place and get partly diverted, they rapidly seem a lot less noisy. I live in a place that just a few years ago had regular gun battles just blocks away from my home and while you learned to rapidly identify the specific sound from things like firecrackers, it wasn't especially loud unless you heard it from very close by.
This isn’t about firing guns. It is about hearing a gun fired some distance away from you in an open-air urban setting. Has that ever happened to you? I have unfortunately been in that situation multiple times due to the neighborhood I used to live in. It really does sound like a clap, not a bang, but much louder. But not deafening loud as Hollywood would have you believe (unless it goes off right next to you).
Echoing what the other commenter said, this is entirely inaccurate. I grew up hunting and even random deer rifles are just so much louder than even Hollywood is willing to show.
Living in a country where gunfire is very common, the opposite starts to happen: even when you hear what you rapidly realize isn't gunfire but only somewhat similar (firecrackers, cars backfiring, etc), your first reaction is to assume gunshots or automatic rifle fire before assessing what you heard more carefully.
That shouldn't actually matter too much. If the projectile went supersonic, there would still be a sonic boom. If it didn't go supersonic, I'd actually expect it to be louder than a subsonic round from a production firearm due to less efficient design. (kind of how revolvers are almost always louder than pistols, due to the fact that the chamber isn't completely sealed, so pressure can start escaping before the projectile leaves the barrel)
But judging by the clip, the projectile didn't go supersonic, just based on the sheer power of it (Abe collapsed instantly). You could get hit a dozen times with a small energy projectile and still stay standing (for a couple of seconds at least).
> You could get hit a dozen times with a small energy projectile and still stay standing
I don't think so - the main reason (apart form saving weight) why we have small fast projectiles in rifles (instead of huge heavy balls like before) is hydrostatic shock. Also faster bullets penetrate armor better but that's another topic.
Projectile crossing certain speed threshold (for mostly liquid bodies we all have) will produce massive temporary cavity in the body, and shockwave from this will ripple through surrounding tissue. Imagine 7.5mm wide bullet blasting 10-15cm hole within the body, although entry point is not much bigger than bullet.
Just watch any shooting video with ballistic gels, they do tend to slow it down to see how much damage bullet is doing.
Any organ will become mushy pieces and goo. Even currently standard military 5.56mm is capable of this from close distance, if its not slowed/fractured by some big bones. And they are phasing it out for bigger and similarly fast (if not faster) cartridge for all these reasons.
Aren't speakers the limitation here? I'm not sure in what way movies or TV aren't realistic, but I'm pretty sure your speaker has less of a punch than a gun.
Video shows the guy standing on the far side of the busy road behind Abe, and the perp was taken down about half way across it. The loud boom and smoke resembled a car backfiring much more than any gun, so not really surprised the lack of immediate alarm. Kids backfiring sports cars would be a commonplace rebellious act in Japan.
Apparently some of the people that were close to the shooting in Highland Park during the Fourth of July initially thought that the gunshots were fireworks.
It makes me think of, funnily enough, a scene in an anime.
In this scene, set in a utopian, crime-free society (at least on the surface), a woman is beaten brutally in a public square in front of a large crowd. The people in this crowd just... stand and watch. They get their phones out and record it.
It is reasoned by one of the main characters that they act this way because they simply cannot process what is going on. The concept of this happening is so divorced from the reality they live in, it provokes little to no fear/horror/disgust/whatever response in them.
Something to this effect really happened in New York City (if memory serves) which led to Good Samaritan laws which protect people trying to help someone in need from being prosecuted if the person needing help dies or things go south in general.
The Wikipedia page is a bit better in giving the actual details in which the story is incorrect, and without the extended editorialising (though the final sentence is quite nightmarish even in its blankly factual wording):
> Because of the layout of the complex and the fact that the attacks took place in different locations, no witness saw the entire sequence of events. Investigation by police and prosecutors showed that approximately a dozen individuals had heard or seen portions of the attack, though none saw or was aware of the entire incident.[67] Only one witness, Joseph Fink, was aware Genovese was stabbed in the first attack, and only Karl Ross was aware of it in the second attack. Many were entirely unaware that an assault or homicide had taken place; some thought what they saw or heard was a domestic quarrel, a drunken brawl or a group of friends leaving the bar when Moseley first approached Genovese.[8] After the initial attack punctured her lungs, leading to her eventual death from asphyxiation, it is unlikely that Genovese was able to scream at any volume.[68]
And some slightly overlapping details in an article from which it quotes:
> The article grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived. None saw the attack in its entirety. Only a few had glimpsed parts of it, or recognized the cries for help. Many thought they had heard lovers or drunks quarreling. There were two attacks, not three. And afterward, two people did call the police. A 70-year-old woman ventured out and cradled the dying victim in her arms until they arrived. Ms. Genovese died on the way to a hospital.
I think a lot of it comes not from worrying about being prosecuted, but in some situations you don't want to/can't help because you're worried about endangering yourself.
I know some people (usually men) are expected to be 100% selfless and run in to be defenders, but not all of us feel that way.
It could also be the culture is unaccustomed to random gun violence so the people realized it was a targeted hit that posed little to no danger to themselves.
I imagine ordinary people (even most police) aren't legally able to carry a gun in Japan. Simply watching and recording is about all they can do in that scenario.
> Psycho-Pass, is a really good anime in terms of society and crime
At it's core it's an exploration in Bentham, Mill's view of Society, warped into some dystopian technocratic utopian ideal of what it should be.
Sadly, to appeal to the masses and get it on screen it had to be tied into some cop-drama, the first seasons were good, with good philosophical examination, but the movie in Netflix and following seasons were utter garbage. I've tried re-watching them, and other than re-hashing the cop plot it was pretty lame.
I highly recommend to first 2 seasons to techno utopians who have a very shallow and superficial understanding o the Human psyche and think that 'AI solves that' type hand wringing doesn't always end up like this. We Humans are the apex predator for a reason, and people who don't examine the Human condition and try to engineer society from an ivy tower always forget that.
The CCP is the best example of a Psycho-pass analogue and the mere fact that this latest hack reveals they are a more advanced Stasi-like police state with poor OPSEC shows just how feckless these things are in practice. Sadly, the consequences are real: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hongkong various African countries.
With that said, read this [0] as a primer and stick to the first 2 seasons in Japanese sub if you do give it a watch and end it with the movie if you MUST in order to spare yourself the disappointment of the latter parts.
People nearby clearly do. The people near the camera probably have no idea what happened. In most countries, gun crime is uncommon and people would just be confused what had just happened.
Can second this. I'm from a country where gun crime is non-existent for the average person and was visiting a friend in their home country. We were in a bar when firecrackers started going off. I turned and looked and just sort of stood still while watching this man shoot at 2 people. By the time I realized what was happening my friend was already over the wall taking cover and shouting at me to get over the wall too. It's a very weird experience if you're not used to guns and gun crime.
The crime rate is not linked to gun crime rate in that country as the guns are completely illegal. Even 10 gun deaths per year is virtually impossible if guns are totally banned - where are these guns coming from?
At the same time there is violent crime, just not with guns.
To add to the rarity of gun violence, there is sismic risk and people try to ubderstand what's the current danger before reacting.
For instance if the smoke came from something bursting because of a starting earthquake, avoiding the surrounding building and regrouping in a clear zone would be the right course of action.
Japan has some super strict gun laws. The onlookers probably had no experience with firearm violence and didn't know to run away. More of a deer in headlights kind of shock when they saw the smoke.
I guess "ghost gun" violence like this will become more normal in countries with restrictive gun laws as societies break down when the effects of climate change are really felt.
I'm as cynical and prone to doomsaying as much as anyone but there's nothing new in assassination attempts the world over and I don't think it's helpful to imply we're all gonna be dealing with mass 'ghost gun' violence due to climate change. Like, maybe, or maybe not.
Perhaps I'm making a stupid assumption here but isn't almost all gun violence (outside the US) committed with unregistered and/or homemade weapons? Doesn't seem like anything unusual/new to me as a European.
I also don't see the relationship with climate change.
The deadliest terror attacked in Europe at Utøya, Norway was carried out with a gun that the terrorist was a registered owner of. He had imported a high capacity magazine from a he US, as those are illegal in most of Europe.
But gun violence in Norway related to gangs is mostly from stolen guns. A terrorist however may not have a criminal network to use in order to obtain a gun. This they may have to go through the much slower legal route.
A large percentage of gun violence even inside the US is committed with unregistered weapons. The only events that see international media play are the mass event shootings at malls and such; these guns tend to be registered.
More "typical" gun violence is committed regularly, and not with AR-style rifles (more typically 9mm carbines which are regulated as handguns in the US, as well as actual handguns).
Mostly unregistered/stolen, hardly homemade. AK-47s might be an exception since there are kits available online, official ones mostly from the US, but given how easily they're obtained in certain areas of the world I imagine there are loads of them smuggled by less official sellers from around the world.
I think we're more likely to see drones rigged with explosives as a go-to method for political assassinations. Guns aren't that hard to make, but getting close enough to use one is another matter.
Yeah, I'm really envious of US citizens with all their hands on experience with active shooters. /sarcasm
I'd much rather be in a low-gun apocalypse than a high-gun one. Because I can run away from a guy with a knive, but not from a gun.
Also, what I never understood: no matter how many guns I carry, I still die to a single bullet in the back. So why should I feel saver in a high-gun environment?
As an American I've never understood the "good guy with a gun" theory either. Murderers do not generally announce their intent and instances of violence being prevented, as opposed to eventually brought to an end, by other shooters are rare enough to be news events. Certainly they are much less common than mass shootings. Where I live I've never seen anyone strolling around with their guns on display, but when I see someone announce their enthusiasm for the 2nd Amendment I don't perceive a peace keeper. I perceive someone trying to antagonize and dominate liberals. I perceive it as a threat directed at the people without guns.
I should say rather that I have an understanding of the "good guy with a gun" theory, but it is that it is a public excuse which sounds better than other motivations. It sounds better than "I just like guns" or "I like to get my way by threat when I can't get it by persuasion" or "I am gratified by the fear and anxiety of my enemies", etc.
The bad guy with a gun has already shot someone. The good guy can put an end to the violence in some cases, but almost never before the bad guy has harmed someone. In societies where guns aren't ubiquitous it's the bad guy with a knife or a brick versus the good guy with a lawn chair. It's still the case that the bad guy can cause some damage before he's stopped, but it isn't as much damage, and it's less likely, because you can run away from a knife and dodge a brick.
Fine, in some cases the bad guy with a gun hasn't shot someone. In some cases the guy with a knife or brick has injured someone. What is the balance? It is easier to shoot someone than it is to stab them or brick them. If you succeed, the damage is much greater in the former case than the latter. This isn't just speculation. This is borne out by evidence. In the UK there is a lot of knife violence. It is much less lethal than our gun violence. This isn't because UK thugs are less competent. It is because it requires less competence to injure someone grievously with a gun.
> Fine, in some cases the bad guy with a gun hasn't shot someone. In some cases the guy with a knife or brick has injured someone. What is the balance? It is easier to shoot someone than it is to stab them or brick them
At point blank it’s easy. Once it’s at range and for pistols it’s a matter of practice.
It’s why rifles tend be used by soldiers; it’s easier to aim with, train, and be accurate with.
It’s a matter of geometry. It’s also highly conspicuous (unlike handguns).
Okay. Say you’re injured and not dead: If size isn’t a deterrent, then wouldn’t an armed good samaritan be able to do more to help than an unarmed?
What if the individual goes after more victims?
But whether a person is being stabbed and bleeding to death, knocked out, or shot incapacitated: They’re unable to run, nevermind help.
At that point they’re at the mercy of the attacker and the people around them.
What I’ll concede is that a gun also enables a lot of individuals to be an attacker: Equalizing goes both ways.
I’ll also concede that in the ideal world we’d have phasers to stun; but as far as I know even beanbag guns and similar are not meant for civilian use. I wish it weren’t this way, but even stun guns and tasers are illegal in places like NYC.
The "good guy with a gun" theory is that having everyone armed will prevent violence because the murderers will fear lethal punishment. Evidence shows this to be false. Many murderers either are not thinking that far ahead or are suicidal. So the net result is that more of the populace can exercise lethal violence if their inner moral governor fails -- they're drunk or irrational or having a bad day or whatever. So we have a lot more gun violence. Sometimes, rarely, a good guy with a gun cuts the violence short, so we have one more body, but societies with fewer guns have less gun violence. That is empirically true. It is the absence of opportunity, not the fear or punishment, that reduces gun deaths.
What I don't understand is why anyone would think this would be different, or why anyone would continue promoting this theory when evidence, logic, and common sense show it to be false.
There, I've laid all my cards on the table. I'm completely candid. Now explain to my why I'm wrong. Show how I'm willfully ignorant.
> The "good guy with a gun" theory is that having everyone armed will prevent violence because the murderers will fear lethal punishment. Evidence shows this to be false.
also, historically in the (wild) western us in the 1800s, lots of people had guns, didn't stop the violence, in fact it was just a way of life until things got cleaned up with actual policing etc
