Japan has less crime period. Now, before you start saying that that's because of strict gun control, know that they have less knife crime, less fraud, less divorce (though it has dbl since 1990), you get the point. There is no ban on knifes in Japan and yet there are far less crimes commited with them. Your correlation is not causation.
Japan has a completely different demographic and social makeup. Shame plays a huge part of their culture. Traditional family values were the norm until recently.
I would argue that your thinking that gun control is the cause of low crime in Japan as misguided.
"Shootings [in Japan] rose to 66 compared with a record low of 53 in 2006, the National Police Agency said in a report. The figure was up for the first time since 2001. [...] The number of those who died from shootings rose to 22 from 2 in 2006, the report said. Those wounded numbered 18.
Gun-related crime had been rare in a country with strict gun control laws, but last year's string of shootings shocked the public and prompted the government to further strengthen its firearms law." [1]
Make a wager; will stricter gun laws help? Have strict laws banning drugs helped? (Heck, how did prohibition go?)
You say that Japan has less crime overall because of gun control; I say it’s a culture / demographic thing. Maybe we are both wrong. I think it is the traditional values of Japan, and I am not alone in supposing this.
“But [Ichita Yamamoto] also fears the increase in gun violence could be a symptom of something more worrying.
‘There are few people who do this kind of thing in Japanese society,’ he says.
‘There is no culture in Japan that we shoot other people.’
What concerns him though is that perhaps Japanese society is changing.
‘Japanese traditional values have changed, the concept of family is changing, relations between people are changing,’ he says.
‘A lot of people feel lonely or isolated, so this kind of incident could be something to do with changes of this kind.’
Shootings do, as the gun-owners complain, get blanket coverage in the media.
But while newspaper columnists and pundits are good at wringing their hands about the fact that gun crime is increasing, they are not so successful when it comes to agreeing what it reveals about the state of Japanese society.
And more importantly, perhaps, they cannot agree on what to do about it.” [2]
Yeah, very possible that culture is a big part of it. I would attribute a lot of it to that, along with the homogeneity of the population, which probably reduces the race-related tension which is so prevalent in the US.
I was mainly saying that your argument that the great-grandparent of this was using noone incorrectly was wrong. 53 in a country that large is a rounding error, as is the rise from 53 to 66 which you just stated. Statistical noise.
You can't really compare it with prohibition or the ban on Marijuana, either. Culturally, that seems like a much more ridiculous law than gun bans do - drugs and alcohol affect ones self, and people generally feel that they have a right to choose what they do to themselves. Bans on things that are addictive? Of course those will be broken. It's not a very good comparison.
Japan has a completely different demographic and social makeup. Shame plays a huge part of their culture. Traditional family values were the norm until recently.
I would argue that your thinking that gun control is the cause of low crime in Japan as misguided.
Make a wager; will stricter gun laws help? Have strict laws banning drugs helped? (Heck, how did prohibition go?)You say that Japan has less crime overall because of gun control; I say it’s a culture / demographic thing. Maybe we are both wrong. I think it is the traditional values of Japan, and I am not alone in supposing this.
.[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/idUST252568
[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7257072.stm