Japan's very low gun crime rate

[Ovenpaa]

We have had orders from Japan in the past and one took time to explain their equivalent to our FAC system, I will see if I can dig his email out at it was very interesting.

[Mike95]

The article that I read claims that nothing other than shotguns and air rifles can be purchased. I find this difficult to believe. Thrre must be hunters, game rangers etc who have firearms. The Japanese produce an awful lot of high quality rifles...I have a Howa....presumably they are all exported?

Mike95

[saddler]

The article that I read claims that nothing other than shotguns and air rifles can be purchased. I find this difficult to believe. Thrre must be hunters, game rangers etc who have firearms. The Japanese produce an awful lot of high quality rifles...I have a Howa....presumably they are all exported?

Mike95

Chances are such guns are NOT privately owned, but part of "work equipment"* & stored securely in Fat Boy proof cabinets with more alarms than go off in my head every time the Sturgeon-beast shows it's dried leathery faces on the TV screen!


* Same as our "estate rifle" scenario, or the fact that soldiers in the JDF will use guns but not take them home for sake & a sing song, of an evening

[Christel]

We have had orders from Japan in the past and one took time to explain their equivalent to our FAC system, I will see if I can dig his email out at it was very interesting.

As you can imagine, the gun control here in Japan is extremely rigorous.

Because police don't want to let people own a gun, all the procedures are laborious and time-consuming. And of course, it costs. Number of gun owners are constantly decreasing. So, we are like endangered species on the Red List. Because number of customers are decreasing, gun shops close their business here and there.

In Japan, a gun license is issued to a specific gun and a person. If you wish to own two guns, you have to apply two licenses for each guns. Police will interview your three neighbours and two other persons relating to your business to assess whether you are decent enough to own a gun. License will not be issued if you have a connection to a gangster, or if you are record of drug addiction or criminal.

You have to pay for another license to purchase ammunition and gun powder at a local police station which is valid only one single year. Besides you have to submit your ammo/powder consumption plan when you apply the ammo/powder purchasing license.

License renewal is every three years. The police interview to your neighbours and business-relevant people will repeat.
It is really, really hard to keep owning guns in Japan.

[Christel]

The article that I read claims that nothing other than shotguns and air rifles can be purchased. I find this difficult to believe. Thrre must be hunters, game rangers etc who have firearms. The Japanese produce an awful lot of high quality rifles...I have a Howa....presumably they are all exported?

Mike95

That article also said that

There are a limited number of longstanding rifle owners in Japan - when they die their heirs must hand the rifles in

[glevum]

You cannot compare Japanese culture with British Culture. The two are very different. There are a lot of things in Japan that are considered normal by the Japanese that would not be allowed in the UK

For example you find some very strange vending machines in the Tokyo Metro Stations...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burusera

[Sandgroper]

According to the following web pages, obtaining a rifle for sporting and hunting purposes in Japan is possible -

http://www.loc.gov/law/help/firearms-co ... Possession

http://yarchive.net/gun/politics/japan_gun.html

[David Nimrod]

You cannot compare Japanese culture with British Culture. The two are very different.

Which is what makes them, and their frankly bizarre culture, so fascinating

[glevum]

The other thing to bear in mind if you go to Japan, is that swords treated in a very similar manner to firearms.

You don't want to buy an illegal sword in Japan.

I worked with a guy who did. He got caught and had a very unpleasant time with the Japanese Police.

[andrew375]

The main reason for this statistic being more than a bit "fishy" is that the Japanese do not include crimes committed by the yakooza, their version of the mafia, in their crime stats. The official explanation being that the chances of such crimes being solved is considered virtually non-existent. Not only don't these crimes get included in the crime stats but being labelled "yakooza" is an accepted reason for closing a case. This has long been a bone of contention with, amongst other bodies, the UN that publishes international crime stats but obviously the omission of "yakooza crimes" renders japanese data useless.On top of that there is more than a bit of suspicion that the label "yakooza" is used to make clearance stats look good and to make difficult cases go away.

In any case what has legal ownership of anything got to do with anything? For start legal ownership of automatic weapons has been virtually impossible in the country for nearly a century, and yet that didn't seem to have any impact on the IRA or the drug dealers that infest our cities.