This one in Japan. A guy at 7pm (our time) walked into a sports club and opened fire with a rifle, in the lobby and pool area (where swimming lessons were going on).

The swimming instructor was killed (26 year old woman..) and another man died in the hospital.

The shooter walked, not ran, away. He was 190cm tall in full military gear and a white, full faced, helmet.

No.. start the count down at.. 10 hours.. til backlash time. The size of the shooter, his equipment, his rifle, and the location (not far from a major US military base) all point in one direction.. In a country with a phobia of guns anyway, and an image of the US as a bit of a "gun-happy" country.. this is just going to play to stereotypes.

sigh.

Senseless... the kids in that pool are going to need some serious therapy..

Jesus mate this is just getting ridiculous now.....

heh. the best therapy for situations like that would have to be learning to take cover.

was the shooter not apprehended?

these guys that 'go postal' and don't actually kill themselves in the process should be sentenced to a firing squad... and executed in public.

The shooter later killed himself in a church. They still havent revealed officially that he is a foreigner/American.. but man its so obvious. 190cm, military rifle near a US base in a country that doesnt allow military style rifles, all US army gear, and killed himself in a Christian country where less than 1% of the population is Christian..

It is sort of like in this country where they are hesitant in mentioning that the perpetrators of certain acts are members of a particular religion.

WELL.. so .. this ends up being a case of people seeing what they feared most.. and of preconceptions.

On the day of the crime the shooter was being described as "190cm".. the weapon as a "rifle", and he was "probably a foreigner" and "maybe black".

TODAY.. the descriptions read "170cm to 190cm" (for those not familiar with the metric system thats an EIGHT INCH range!). TODAY it was a shotgun.

The shooter was Japanese. They have his name, background, etc. He actually was targetting one guy he knew..and also seemed to have gone after other people. All the adults he shot at he must have known at least casually as he had been to the sports club 80 times since August. (which made me feel guilty about not going more..weird..).

NO ONE is mentioning how the initial reports were trying to imply it was a foreigner. Its just been forgotten.

maybe a us army cover up?

No.. the Japanese media doesnt cover things up for the US army..they delight in exposing things that would normally be considered trivial.. if a soldier stiffs a taxi driver, it hits the news.

Plus, the guy who did it had 3 registered shotguns, went to school with the guy killed and emailed the guy to meet him at the sportsclub.. Just another depressing incident in a year filled with them..

This is another reminder that so many of the "facts" reported in the immediate aftermath of any item that becomes a news story are often far from the truth. However, did he really kill himself in a church as you said was earlier reported?

Yes, he killed himself in a churchyard.. about 10 hours after the event. He was a member of the church apparently.

He had a license for three shotguns..neighbors had talked to the police about this because they had thought he was unstable.

The woman he killed in the attack may have been the main target, not the guy. Its confusing at this point. He went to high school with the guy and had mailed the guy to tell him to meet at the sportsclub. However, apparently he had been pursuing the woman and she had spurned him...

Its on the news constantly..interviews with family, neighbors..footage of the funerals today.. high school photos, cell phone emails.. all being shown on tv..

Too busy with work to keep up with this story, but I was wondering what the latest was:

In the early reports that night and the following morning, people were speculating that the guy had an automatic weapon, and people were saying that the shooting was:

ba-ba-ba-ba-ba (really fast).

Those early reports sounded a lot like it was soldier.

And now we find it's a Japanese guy with a shotgun? Somebody owes the foreigners an apology.

Edit: however: thank God it WASN'T one of us ... this time ...

talkin bout 9/11 mate?

Well.. people inexperienced with guns can make that mistake earlier.. especially if his shotgun was double barreled. But I love how the guy, as I pointed out earlier, went from "190cm" to "between 170cm to 190cm" overnight.

Well..its ok. The racism goes both ways..sometimes it sucks to be a foreigner here, sometimes its an advantage. (if American).

Not especially, but some initial reports following that event were wrong as well.

no offense but who are you or me or anyone else on this site to claim they know what happened on that event?