In Japan, for example, sometimes the media is more violent than would be tolerated in America.
The movie Battle Royale was one of the
biggest domestic hits ever in Japan. It couldn’t even get released on video in the
United States. Because of the graphic scenes of junior high
school students killing each other, no US distributor was willing to touch
it.
It is also
worth remembering that in every country mental illness exists.
Japan can be a
high stress society that causes people to snap easily. Sometimes students who can’t take the
pressure of school will bring a knife to school and try to stab the teacher or
other students.
When I was
living in Japan, there were a couple of different incidents where mentally ill
people brought knives to crowded sections of Tokyo and stabbed as many people
as they could before they were overpowered by police.
The
difference between 5 people stabbed, and 20 children gunned down in a matter of
seconds, is the difference between a society that allows semi-automatic assault
weapons, and one that doesn’t.
I’m told by
my British friends that in the 1990s, a mentally ill man brought a gun to a
school in Scotland
and shot several children. As a result
pistols were banned in Britain,
and hunting guns are tightly regulated.
(If you own a hunting weapon, the police will periodically come to your
house to make sure the weapon is stored in a secure place.) There has not been a repeat incident.
In the United States,
we’ve had many many more school shootings since Columbine.
Anyone who
has lived abroad can tell you the rest of the world thinks we are insane on the
gun issue. I can’t even count the number
of times a British, Australian, or Japanese person has said to me, “Really,
what is it with America
and guns? Don’t you guys get it by now?”
In Japan,
it is impossible to get a hold of a gun without some sort of connection with
organized crime. Yes, the Yakuza does
still own handguns, but no mentally ill teenager is going to get a hold of a
semi automatic assault weapon.
In America
the genie is already out of the bottle to a certain degree, but it is not
impossible to reverse course. In Cambodia, the
streets were flooded with AK-47s in the 1990s as a result of the civil
war. The government decided it needed to
get these guns off the street in order to have a peaceful society, and within a
matter of years they had largely succeeded in getting back most of these guns.
Of course I
say this all knowing full well nothing is going to change. I guess I’ll just post again after the next
gun massacre in a couple of months. See
you then.
(PS—I do
not for one minute believe that immediately after a gun massacre it is
inappropriate to talk about gun control.
That’s like saying after a nuclear power plant meltdown it is
inappropriate to talk about nuclear safety.
The reason some of us are for gun control in the first place is
precisely because of this type of scenario.)
Link of the Day
No comments:
Post a Comment