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15 people died in Japan. This is rare, and gun control is a big reason.
Japan Mass Murders
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Gun Control: How Japan Has Almost Completely Eliminated Gun Deaths
Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent on national and international ideological and democratic issues. Before he joined in 2014, he edited TP Ideas. TP Ideas is a section of his Think Progress devoted to the ideas that shape our political world.
A man with a knife attacked a facility for the disabled in Sagamihara on Monday afternoon. His reasons are still unknown. The Guardian reports that at least 15 people were killed and 45 injured. If these reports are correct, it would surpass Aum Shinrikyo's sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 and become the largest mass murder in modern Japanese history.
Mass murders of this kind, in fact murders of any kind, are extremely rare in Japan, and tonight's events are particularly shocking.
Why is Japan's murder rate so low? Of course, there are many reasons, not all of which are fully understood. But by far one of the biggest is Japan's gun control laws. Today's terrorism was carried out with knives, but this kind of event would have been more common and deadlier in a world with more Japanese armed with more efficient killing machines.
Japan Has Almost No Gun Violence And, Ironically, It Owes Its Extremely Tight Firearms Laws To The U.s.
Buying a gun is pretty easy in most parts of the United States. You can walk into a gun store, pass a background check, and get a gun. Some states don't even need to do that much. You can purchase guns from private sellers.
As Max Fisher explained in a 2012 Atlantic article about Japan's surprisingly low gun violence, here's how to buy a gun in Japan.
To get a gun in Japan, he first has to attend a full day of classes and pass a written exam, which he takes only once a month. You must also take and pass a shooting range class. Then go to a hospital for a mental and drug test (which is unusual in Japan in that potential gun owners must prove their mental health) and turn themselves in to the police. Having a good criminal record, or passing a criminal or extremist background check will make you the proud new owner of your own shotgun or air rifle. Don't forget to give the police a document showing the exact location of your guns and ammunition in your home. Both should be locked and stored separately. Also remember that he has his gun inspected by the police once a year and retakes his classes and exams every three years.
This leads to a significant drop in firearm ownership. In the US he has 88.8 privately owned guns per 100 people, compared to just 0.6 in Japan. Not surprisingly, data from the University of Sydney show that gun homicide rates in Japan are far lower than those in the United States.
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"In 2008, he had over 12,000 murders in the United States. In Japan as a whole, he had just 11, fewer than Aurora [the cinema in Colorado]," Fisher wrote. . "And it was a big year: 2006 was great
In 2007, it became a national scandal when that number increased to 22."
Currently, Japan and the United States are very different countries, so transferring Japanese law to the United States may not be very successful. For one, Japan generally has one of the lowest murder rates in the world, while the United States has a relatively high one by developed country standards.
There are several reasons for this, including Japan's efficient police force (about 98% of murders are solved) and low poverty rates. However, according to a United Nations report, "some researchers" believe that "extremely low levels of gun ownership" contribute to Japan's low rate of gun ownership.
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This is generally consistent with research on gun ownership and homicide. Harvard researchers Daniel Hemenway and Matthew Miller studied 26 developed countries to test whether gun ownership was associated with homicide rates.
They found "a highly significant positive correlation between the total homicide rate and the two proxies of gun availability." They also find little evidence that higher rates of gun homicides are associated with lower rates of other homicides (such as stabbings).
Interestingly, these results tended to hold even after excluding the United States, which has very high homicide and gun ownership rates. "In developed countries, more guns are associated with more murders," Hemenway and Miller concluded.
Another study by Berkeley's Franklin Zimling and Gordon Hawkins found that while the U.S. crime rate is comparable to similar developed countries, the rate of fatal violence is much higher due to higher gun ownership. high.
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Japan's experience also suggests that gun rights slogans such as "banning guns only criminals will own guns" are exaggerated. It is true that it is associated with crime syndicates. However, the yakuza are killing far fewer people than armed groups in the United States.
Some reports say this is because criminals are afraid to carry weapons for fear of harsh legal punishment.
"Under current law, if a low-level yakuza is caught with a matching gun and bullets, he will be charged with aggravated possession of a firearm and then face an average of seven years in prison," said a longtime Japan correspondent. Employee Jake Adelstein writes in The Japan Times. “If you fire a gun, you get three years in prison for life. And… yakuza bosses may decide the death penalty is more appropriate if their men are miraculously released before they go to jail.” There is [because the complicity law allows the boss to be prosecuted along with his charges] subordinate]”
Adelstein spoke to real Yakuza bosses, and they said the same thing. "Having a gun now is like having a ticking time bomb," said the Japanese gangster. "Do you think any sane person would want to have one at home?"
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Again, this is not to say that Japan has come up with a solution that works as well as the United States. Nor am I saying that Japan's gun control is the only reason for its extremely low murder rate. As Monday's horrific events show, it doesn't mean that Japan is completely immune to genocide.
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