Gun Control: What America Can Learn from Japan

by Holly Drummond

Over the past few years, America has come across its largest spike in gun related violence, caused by the self inflicted wound that is the right to bear arms. Countless Americans strongly defend their right to have their precious firearms, ignoring the many facts and figures giving clear signs that their guns are one of their biggest issues. In 2012 the gun related homicide rate in America was almost four times higher than the rate of Switzerland, the country with the second highest rate. America not only has one of the highest numbers of mass shootings, gun related deaths and injuries, but also the easiest access to guns with the least amount of rules.

Firstly, It's easy to see that America needs to change how easy it is for anyone to get access to guns. Anyone off the streets can walk into a gun store and leave with all the supplies they want with the most minimal requirements for a background check. Anyone off the streets regardless of criminal history or mental stability can gain access to a scary number of firearms. Anyone off the streets can gain what they need to kill another human, or themselves with no questions asked. Does that sound like a place that is safe to live? 17 of 50 states in America is unrestricted to carry a concealed weapon, 31 states allow the open carry of a handgun without a license or permit, and only 8 states have rules against openly carrying handguns and long guns. It is obvious that these lenient and unrestricted gun rules are the prime causes of America's current crisis on gun violence. People who aren't mentally stable or are known criminals who get hold of guns can cause a lot of damage, and we can see that the gun laws and gun violence are not just correlated.

Take Japan for example, due to their strict gun laws they have almost completely eradicated gun violence. In Japan the law on guns is: ‘no one shall possess a firearm or firearms’ and the only exceptions are for hunting or for sport, and even then to obtain the weapon you must go to a shooting class, complete a written exam, have your criminal record checked and an extensive mental health and drug test. And purely down to numbers we can see that this is the way It should be done. Over many years in Japan, per 100000 people only 0.06 people were killed as a result of gun violence whereas in America, per 10000 people 11.96 people were killed in 2016 alone. This means than in america you are almost 200 times more likely to die from being shot than in Japan.

This is a clear sign that the gun laws in a country cause the amount of gun violence. Causation... not correlation. The law in America states that no person bearing firearms should come within 300 meters of a school premises and yet since 2013 there have been 305 school shooting incidents. It's hard to believe that Americans right now are more protective of their rifles than they are of their own children. Over 15,000 Americans have been killed in mass shootings in 2017, over 9,000 of which are children. It is sickening to think about the waste of life that could have been  stopped so easily.