From: ntetsuya@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Nishimura)
Subject: Re: Yoshi Hattori
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 22:00:43 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO  80523

In article <1gnu5qINN816@transfer.stratus.com> cdt@sw.stratus.com (C. D. Tavares) writes:
>In article <Dec16.043203.38387@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU>, ntetsuya@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Nishimura) writes:
>> 	Only the situation where "no guns exist among civilian except in the 
>> 	hands of certified people or of bad guys" allows us to carry the plastic
>>	and zinc weapon.
>
>I sincerely don't understand this.  When a police officer sees a person with a
>weapon on the street, how does he know whether the gun is a toy or the person
>is a criminal?  And what does s/he then do about it?
>
	The only types of weapon that ordinary civilians are allowed to own are
	shotguns and rifles.  Only people over 18 years of age and no criminal
	record are allowed to own shotguns for hunting and sporting i.e. trap 
	and skeet purposes.  People who have owned shotguns more than 10 years 
	without any criminal record are allowed to own rifles mainly for hunting
	purpose.  Therefore any other type of handguns or long guns are either
	toys in the hands of ordinary citizens (sometimes in the hands of Yakuza
	:-) or real firearms in the hands of government officials or of 
	criminals.

	When a police officer sees some one with a gun in his hands, the officer	will either ignore it assuming it is a toy, which is most likely, or go
	and question depending on the type of the gun and a *look* of the person	who is carrying it.  If it's a real weapon, the person who carries the
	gun will any way be busted since it is illegal to carry *real guns* o
	the street even if the person has a permit for owning a gun.  

	I have never been a cop in my life, though, I can tell that police are 
	assuming that ordinary citizens do not carry real things with them 
	unless they serve a warrant at Yakuza's office.  

	Even a criminal is a Yakuza member or very bad guy, they seem to think
	that a possibility of the suspect carrying a gun is very low or none.
	A few months ago in Japan, there was a guy who escaped from a police 
	station and finally re-arrested after several hours of car chase which
	ended when the guy crashed into a telephone pole.  The first thing the
	officers at the scene did was not drawing their weapon but opening the
	door of the driver's side and drag the guy out of the truck.  The guy
	was a Yakuza member and reported to posses a Soviet-made Tokarev pistol 	with him... (or he didn't?  I forgot it.  Anybody?)

	Any way the existence of firearms, especially handguns, in civilians'
	hands is almost impossible, police officeers seem to assume that guns
	they see in the hands of kids or ordinary-looking-and-not-looking-like-
	a-Yakuza people are toys and non-threatening.  



>> 	Even so, I doubt that any one learning a foreign language has a chance
>> 	to learn what cops say when they point the gun at you very often. 
>
>> 	I am not picking on you but have
>> 	your foreign language teachers taught you what cops in France or 
>> 	whatever say to you when they are stopping you?  Have you really 
>> 	realized that you really need to know those "special" terms when you 
>> 	travel another country where your native language is not used?
>
>When I speak in an agitated or threatening fashion, even my dog comprehends 
>the situation, and she understand no languages at all...

	Well, sorry to say, but you seem to have missed the point of my posting.	I just responded to the original poster's comment that travelers should
	be aware of what "freeze" means when the word comes out of the mouth of
	police officers.

	Responding to your posting, I don't know if the deceased in this 
	incident ever understood the seriousness of the situation he was in.
	As some other posters and I mentioned, he was on the way to a Halloween 
	party and it was possible for the deceased to mistake that Mr. Peairs
	was one of the party attendants and was joking.  I say it WAS possible
	for the deceased to take the situation in that way, and I DON'T say
	it was the fact.


						Tetsuya Nishimura

	P.S.	After the crash of the Soviet Union, some Soviet Tokarev pistols		seem to have been smuggled, which lower the price of black 
		market (yes, we do have one :-<) handguns to 400K yen a piece,
		which is thought be *VERY* cheap.
		(400K yen = US$ 3400  !!!!)