2013.11.26 guns

In Japan where guns are an incredibly rare sight, toy guns and replicas can often look like the real thing. So when a teacher at a middle school in Fukuoka Prefecture confiscated what they thought was a fake gun from a student, the teacher handled the “toy” with very little care, and ended up accidentally discharging it in the staff room.

Luckily, no one was hurt when the gun went off, but local police were notified and now the student’s father is being investigated for violating the Japan’s strict gun laws.

The teacher at the school in the town of Shime in Fukuoka Prefecture noticed that one of the students was holding what looked like a fake gun and took it from him. The student had apparently thought the gun was a toy and most likely brought it to school to show it to his friends. Then the teacher accidentally fired the gun in the teacher’s room on November 23 after handling the seemingly “fake” firearm.

Although there were no injuries, police were told about the incident on November 25 and began to investigate. Japan has a very low gun ownership rate, there is less than 1 gun per 100 Japanese people, according to a 2013 gun ownership study in the American Journal of Medicine. (In comparison, there are 88 guns per 100 Americans.) Those Japanese gun owners are expected to have strict control over their firearms, meaning that the Fukuoka authorities will be looking into how this student got his hands on his father’s weapon.

In a country where any crime involving a gun makes national news, Japanese netizens were pretty surprised at how this series of mistakes ended up with a teacher firing a weapon at a school. Many wondered what sort of job this student’s father has and a lot could not believe that such an “American” event could take place in Japan.

Is this kid’s father a member of the Yakuza?

When did Fukuoka become an American state?

Is this really a Japanese story?? Are you sure we aren’t accidentally reading foreign news?

Source: Itai News 
Image: Flickr (kamain55)