An American, in Japan, on gun control

[c_yeager]

Japan really is a completely alien culture to us with different roots and values and codes of morality etc. The Japanese citizen seems to be largely content with how their country operates which means that their government is representing the people fairly well. They also have VERY little crime, especially considering how dense much of their population is. Japan has its own kind of freedom and it really does seem to work for them. The country is so different though that whatever works for Japan isnt likely to work here.

 

[Smythe77]

The Koren people look at Japan so differently to most of us in the world due to prior take-overs of Korea in yrs gone by, WWII & Korean War. I sponsoured a Korean chap & his wife plus their newly born daughter.

What an education for he was really well off in South Korea with something like 4 acres of orchard land & ONLY sold to China along with only learning their language, to help in sales, along with the addition of English & quite good with latter bar our slang.

He had NEVER driven a truck, car or tractor so I taught him. Also he just about jumped out of his skin when I bought out my Winchester 1897 pump shotgun to down some Starling birds. His orchard was just north of Sigon so taken over during the Koren War.

I took him up to our h/gun range, just the two of us there, & he was simply terrified of my h/guns, but you should have seen the smile on his face when he fired his first .22 rnd from a revolver. No he never went into f/arms & like myself his is now retired, but he gained understand in f/arms & my reloading. In fact there is a Korean chap that has a much better understanding of how Bill C-68 in Cdn has NOT done what it claimed in safety to others & only the civilian law-abiding tax paying citizens suffer along with many small Mom & Pop sport shops were forced to fold up since anythng f/arm related was to costly in bills/red-tape & such to cover their costs, when in fact it was almost 25% of their business.

 

[Daemon688]

I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.
- Thomas Jefferson

 

[Stand_Watie]

They also have VERY little crime, especially considering how dense much of their population is

I'd like to point out that the phenomena of crime (especially homicide) rates being exponentially higher in large urban areas is almost uniquely an American one, and (depending on your worldview) has more to do with demographics, poverty and other cultural and social issues than with high population density. As a couple of examples, Toronto has a lower murder rate than Ontario, and Moscow than Russia as a whole. Highly urbanized parts of Australia have lower murder rates than the sparsely populated north. Western European large cities sometimes have higher rates, but nothing like the rates that can easily be 10x as high as occurs in large cities here.

The only large cities in the US that I can think of that buck our trend (I'm sure there are others) are Indianapolis, Minneapolis and Honolulu.

 

[Daemon688]

It was only a few years ago Minneapolis was reffered to as Murderapolis. IIRC we had more murders in one year that NYC.

 

[c_yeager]

As a couple of examples, Toronto has a lower murder rate than Ontario, and Moscow than Russia as a whole.

Could you provide a source for this? The last international set of crime stats i saw listed Moscow as the only city that was in a position to compete with New York in violent crime. And based on having been to Toronto I find it hard to believe that they don't lead all of Canada in crime.

 

[Stand_Watie]

Could you provide a source for this? The last international set of crime stats i saw listed Moscow as the only city that was in a position to compete with New York in violent crime. And based on having been to Toronto I find it hard to believe that they don't lead all of Canada in crime.

I picked that up from disparate web sources. Granted that murder rates reported by the Russian government are likely unreliable, murder rates reported by the old Soviet Union were probably even less so. The figures cited usually show Moscow as having less murder per capita than Russia as a whole. Moscow actually has an abominable murder rate (18), worse than NYC (9), it's just that Russia's murder rate overall (20) is even worse, compared to NY state's which isn't bad at all (5). NY and NYC data was from 1998, both probably slightly lower currently.

Toronto currently has a murder rate of 1.9, slightly higher than Ontario's overall murder rate of 1.7. I see that has changed in the couple of years since I've looked at the stats on Canada, but the number of murders overall is so few that I'm not surprised it would shift a lot. The last time I looked at it, Ontario's rate was 2.0 and Toronto's was 1.95.

The point remains, if you subtract Toronto and London Ontario's murders and population from the provinces totals it doesn't effect the overall rate much. If however, you subtract Detroit and Genessee county statistics from the state of Michigan as a whole, it changes the total dramatically - from a rate of 6.45 per capita to 2.5 per capita.

Note that I am discussing murder rates here, not overall crime - two very different issues. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Torontos auto theft or burglary rates were higher.


http://www.discoverychannel.co.uk/eurocops/feature5_2.shtml

http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg00412.html

http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us/crimnet/ojsa/cja_98/sec1/murder.htm

http://www.evalu8.org/staticpage?page=review&siteid=8271

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_02/html/web/offreported/02-table05.html

Edited to add Michigan stats

 

[Smythe77]

BIG typo error in my post above. I said this Korean chap would only sell to Japan & that is totally wrong. He would only sell to China & his dislike to the Japanese people. Even though overtaken by North Koreans & Chinese during Korean War.

I think during WWII he would be something like 4 to 7 yrs old & at that age somethings are never forgotten.

I made the correction in the above post, but just in case someone came away & wondering.