Thin Black Line
Member
Some very good information regarding gun control, population (and immigration)
that is still relevant today.
Emphasis by TBL
that is still relevant today.
Japan: Gun Control and People Control
By David B. Kopel
{This article appeared in the December 1988 issue of The American Rifleman.}
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According to government statistics, Japan has 1.5 homicides per 100,000 citizens each year, and America has 7.9. Actually, the gap between U.S. and Japanese homicide rates is not quite as large as the official statistics indicate. The real Japanese murder rate is about twice the reported rate; unlike the U.S., Japan does not count an attempt to injure, but which accidentally causes death, as a homicide. The F.B.I. also over-counts American murders, by listing the 1,500 - 2,500 legal, self- defense fatal shootings of criminals as illegal homicide. Still, Japan's actual homicide rate is two to three times lower than the U.S. rate. As for handgun murders, the U.S. rate is 200 times higher than Japan's.
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Additionally, Japan's tight, conformist social culture does an excellent job of keeping citizens out of crime in the first place. As the head of Tokyo's Police Department explains, "A man who commits a crime will bring dishonor to his family and his village, so he will think twice about disgracing them."
Having lived together for several thousand years without significant immigration, the Japanese have developed the world's most homogenous and unified society. America's ethnic diversity causes tensions and crime, as the first or second generations of immigrants sometimes have difficulty adjusting to American ways.
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Partly because the Japanese are so unified and homogenous, they accept and internalize social controls. It is this attitude of obedience and impulse control that matters most in the low Japanese crime rate. Guns or not, the Japanese are simply the world's most law-abiding people.
Japanese-Americans, who of course have access to firearms, have an even lower violent crime rate than do Japanese in Japan. Likewise, prisoners in jails in Japan and in America prisoners have no guns, but American prisoners commit about a hundred murders annually, and Japanese prisoners none.
Dr. Paul Blackman of NRA/ILA points out that if gun control were really the major cause of the low Japanese crime rate, it would be impossible to explain why Japan's non-gun crime rate is so much lower than America's non-gun crime rate. America's non-gun robbery rate, for example, is 60 times Japan's.
If gun control were really such an important factor in Japan's low crime, it would also be hard to explain why Japan's murder rate is higher than Britain's (a shooter's paradise compared to Japan). Both Switzerland and Israel have many more guns per capita than even America, and require citizens to own or train with pistols and fully automatic rifles. Yet these countries have less murder and violent crime than Japan, and almost no gun crime.
In short, it is not the presence or absence of physical objects that matters, but how they are treated. In America, scaffolding collapses kill about 2,500 workers over the course of a decade. Japan, though, has not had a single scaffolding fatality in the past decade. Japan has not outlawed scaffolding; rather, the Japanese business culture simply takes workplace safety more seriously than does American culture.
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An island nation, Japan can more or less seal its borders against illegal gun imports. Yet even if gun manufacture in America vanished, and all present guns were confiscated, illegal imports would quickly rebuild the American gun supply. If the United States imported illegal handguns in the same physical volume it imports marijuana, 20 million handguns would cross our borders every year. (The legal market for handgun purchases is about 2.5 million annually.)
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A military dictator named Hideyoshi was particularly expert firearms tactics, and Hideoyoshi finally conquered Japan and ended the civil wars. In 1588 Hideyoshi decreed the "Sword Hunt," and banned possession of swords by the lower classes. The pretext was that all the swords would be melted down to supply nails for a hall containing a huge statue of the Buddha. Instead, Hideoyoshi had the swords melted into a statue of himself.
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But in Japan, the citizens voluntarily comply with the gun law; accordingly, there is no mandatory minimum penalty for unlicensed firearm possession. If gun ban is readily obeyed in Japan, but is massively resisted wherever it appears in America, isn't that an indication a gun ban might be acceptable in Japan, but wrong in America?
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Should America Import Gun Laws Made in Japan?
In the 1910 debate preceding the New York's Sullivan Law (the first major American gun control law affecting citizens entitled to full civil rights) one writer recommended that New York copy Japan, "where intending purchasers of revolvers must first obtain police permits, and sales must be reported to the police." In 1987, a letter to the editor of The New Republic announced that Japan has so little crime because "citizens forsake their right to own guns in return for safety," and that America must do the same.
Yet these gun controllers who want America to imitate Japan fail to understand that one culture cannot simply adopt another's laws. Post-war Japan was told to follow American criminal procedure and anti-trust rules, but soon stopped. The rules did not work in a culture used to unlimited police power, and enamored of giant conglomerates.
Emphasis by TBL
