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“I’ve never heard any of my friends or colleagues complain about there not being a Second Amendment here.” – John Durkin in For some expats, U.S. gun violence makes Japan feel like a haven [via washingtonpost.com]

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99 COMMENTS

    • And wisely they have none of them, nor the blowback that comes from such ill-advised things.

    • It’s a pretty good bet they don’t have neighborhoods full of Muslim immigrants practicing Sharia, or Wahabiism, either.

      • consideing that Japan has strict rules against allowing muslims into the country for any length of time, you would be correct.

      • WE can all agree Japan has the right idea when it comes to immigration. it understands the lie of multiculturalism and wants no part of it, With some hope Trump will restore Immigration Sanity via an updated 1924 Immigration Restriction Act

        • Peter Goznya, Only 11 more days til you get your EBT money for August!! Yah, lucky you. Can you stretch it out til the 31st; or do you need a welfare “Go Fund Me” page? FLAME DELETED…

        • No. We can not all agree. And if you’d ever been to Japan you’d realize how desperate they are for outside influence.

    • Yeah, don’t see Japan bringing in muslim refugees, some of whom are likely ISIS members.

  4. None of my friends or colleagues give two shits about John Durkin, his friends or colleagues or what any of them think.

  5. If Japan had high uncontrolled immigration and became a multicultural nation, he wouldn’t feel so safe.

    It is because Japanese society is so homogeneous and allows certain vises not permitted in the West that crime is generally low. Their suicide rate is very high, though.

    • It is my understanding (citation needed) that if a man murders his family and then kills himself it is considered four suicides.

      • That is correct. They treat it that way so as not to dishonor the family. Japan’s actual murder rate is much closer to the US than most people think but Mr. Durkin is correct, he has less to fear from random crime in Japan than the US unless he has married into a Japanese family.

    • This! If you think Japan is an awesome 2A free haven, pack your shit and move there. Live with like minds and stop trying to change mine.

  7. I’m sure Japan’s absence of “minorities” and illegals does make it feel like a haven. Perfect refuge for leftist elites.

    • It won’t be if a lot of leftist elites decide to go there. I think the Japanese government wouldn’t let them in anyway.

  8. When the population of the United States is as homogeneous as Japan, and U.S. families are as intact as Japan, and everyone in the U.S. insists that their own actions and other peoples’ actions are as honorable as Japan, and the resulting violent crime rate in the U.S. is lower than Japan, we can talk.

    • Google Looting and Rioting in Japan during the Fukushima catastrophe. guess what, it didn’t happen. Try that in any major city in the US. And that is one reason I like my 2nd Amendment.

  10. Why pay any attention to what this guy thinks? He’s so racist he left the country to get away from black people.

    Might also add that all those Japanese people committing suicide by ripping their guts out with daggers probably miss the Second Amendment.

      • They have such a problem with people jumping in front of trains, they have enacted a law that fines the family of the deceased for the loss of efficiency when they have to stop and clean up. Also lets point out modern Japan is the brainchild of successful US interventionist policy. Don’t BS me about “exit strategy”, Okinawa ring any bells? Funny liberals cant even comprehend how much they contradict their own positions.

      • And don’t forget The “suicide ” Forest …As for crime in Japan..Thought that goes hand in hand with the Japanese govs. Involvement with the Japanese Mafia. I’m sure there’s plenty of petty crime…Just not reported for effect like the USA.. Japan gov collusion with Yakzna , culture taboos, strange ideologies, social control, etc…

        • I’d have to go with the bullet train since its moving faster than the .45acp slug.

    • So because Japan has suicides we should ignore the fact that many urban areas in the US are essentially no go zones and cops are literally fighting a low level insurgency against black nationalists? lol, OK…

  11. Japan has so much to brag about:
    Pearl Harbor
    Mass killings all over Asia
    Human experimentation and biological warfare
    Use of chemical weapons
    Torture of prisoners of war
    Execution and killing of captured Allied airmen
    Cannibalism of US troops
    Forced labor
    Forced prostitution
    Looting
    Fake surrenders to lure in American troops into ambush
    Suicide attacks

    All that shows that their traditional culture is worse than ISIS or any of today’s Muslim extremists. Only a severe ass-kicking has pacified them. A lesson we should remember. Currently, Japan has the third highest suicide rate of any country, nearly twice that of the US. Yeah, maybe it’s for the best: They couldn’t handle something like 2A.

  12. Subjects accustomed to bowing down before their betters rarely complain about rights when they don’t have the tools to back up their grievances. Just sayin’.

      • Antis would have a hissy-fit of they read that original comment. I’m beginning to think the anti-gun agenda has less to do with the gun as much as it has to do with the gun holders philosophy….and how the antis want NO dissent in the populace.

  13. 1) They do not have immigration nor do they have a multi-cultural society — they have a single culture that does not promote criminal activity nor a welfare state.
    2) Japanese are notorious for not reporting all their crimes and the English Japan Times has reported many times that Japan as a whole under reports crime by as much as 30% The category most under reported — Rape.
    3) They do have the highest rate of Fraud including Fraud involving fake police and lawyer which goes under reported and rarely punished or even an arrest made. Scams are the biggest crime.

    So, yes, Japan does not have the murder rate of the USA and is considered one of the safest countries provided you are not a women or elderly being scammed. And, the Culture is different — they have no Chiraq.

    And at the same time, so what? They do not have 2nd Amendment that is their problem but when you go to Vegas or other fun gun ranges, you will see plenty of Japanese tourist lined up to have some fun with guns — they also have a different history than ours.

  14. No one “Needs” a first or third or fourth amendment but if one trys to take away any of those you will want a second amendment. Ya see the second protects all of the others. You can use your first amendment to tell us all how stupid you are but hey we can use our first as well ya idiot.

  15. Our country changed dramatically 240 years ago.
    Their country changed dramatically 70+ years ago. Heck, we probably told them they couldn’t have a 2A. (Recent history is not my forte).

    • Upon surrender, Japan was demilitarized and people required to turn in swords, a confiscation orchestrated by the US military.

      If you like Japan, remain there.

      • Japan already had a ban on swords and guns for the general populace for 330 years before WWII. The Shogun made it illegal for anyone except samurai to carry a weapon larger than a knife, restricted sword and gun manufacturing to a few individuals, and allowed samurai to behead commoners in the street for fun. In the 1860s when the Emperor was restored to real power he made it illegal for samurai to carry lethal weapons unless employed as police, and left the previous bans in place.

  16. The one thing often not mentioned in Japan is that civil rights more-or-less do not exist.

    Most (almost all) criminal convictions are by confession, and police in Japan can effectively detain you indefinitely until you confess. And coercion by the police to obtain a confession is tolerated by the government and courts.

    • One reason for the low homicide rate in Japan:

      In USA, most murders are committed by people who expect (rightly or wrongly) to get away with it.

      In Japan, if you murder somebody, it’s because you’re willing to trade a murder conviction for them being dead. There is no expectation of getting away with it. Mostly because, as you say, police have wide latitude in their investigative techniques.

  20. The wonderful thing about other nations is that based on their culture and history they may choose which laws they want. The United States was founded after a revolution to throw off the shackles of a monarchy. Since before the birth of our nation we knew the importance of self reliance and how firearms helped guarantee that.

    Geographically Japan is many small islands, so it has no land border. By contrast the United States has a very porous land border from which narcotics and gang members flow. The crime rates between the two countries are also very different.

    So by all means compare apples to apples. But do not be surprised if comparing apples to table lamps does not work out so well.

    • “Geographically Japan is many small islands, so it has no land border.”

      Nothing small about Honshu (the big island).

      Over 800 miles long and a population of over 100 *million*…

  21. I also seem to recall a time in the ’80s when “Mein Kampf” was a best seller in Japan.

    I enjoy Japanese culture.
    I (in general) like Japanese people.
    I had fun in Japan in 1981.

    I don’t want to live in Japan, OR make the United States like Japan. I think we have more than enough political corruption and open racism NOW.

    I also don’t want to live in a country where, lacking the right of self-defense, I have to self-censor myself to avoid being MURDERED by ultra-rightwing gangsters. I can talk about slavery, Jim Crow and lynching to my heart’s content, and if somebody tries to kill me for it, I can Mozambique them. Can a Japanese make the same claim about speaking out about the Rape of Nanking? He can’t even utter the WORDS “Rape of Nanking” in public without fear of violence.

  22. Japan, like Switzerland (guns everywhere) has a strong culture and a highly exclusionary immigration policy.

    Can’t compare. If the U.S. Adopted Japan’s immigration policy the entire county would be white… I doubt this author would want that…

    • We did and were until 1965, and we will have such immigration sanity again very soon.

      • Where do you come up with this crap? Latin America has been the primary source of legal immigration in this country for 100 years.

        • That is a laughable assertion. Flat out wrong. Up until 1965 90% of immigration had to be from Europe to match the demographics. The 1965 immigration act reversed that and now we have the problems that we have. None of this is a coincidence.

        • Some guy, I’m pulling my data from the Migration Policy Institutes archive. If you are talking only strict applications for immigration, Italians lead the way at 16%, and Latin America at 15%. If you include immigration and work visas longer than 1 year (so not just migratory workers), you get Latin America at 28%. Considering work visas from all other countries longer than one year is at 2%, you see the overwhelming amount of people actually in this country legally from somewhere else for long periods of time are from Latin America.

  23. And if Japan did in fact have the Second Amendment, along with the other nine, then perhaps, just perhaps, the Pacific War would not have happened and millions of people would not have been murdered. Perhaps this “intellectual” shithead should have pondered about that.

  24. They have a common culture unlike the hodgepodge we have at ends with iteswlf. They also have a 98 percent conviction rate and their jails are rough and discipline heavy.

  26. The 2A wasn’t missed by Adm. Yamamoto – “…. There will be a rifle behind every blade of grass.”

    • It’s a good statement and I do think it applies to describe the reality in the US (then and now), but there is no proof he actually said this.

  28. For the Progressive/Marxists claim to want diversity so bad, what is up with trying to make the US look like every other country on the planet?

    What is so fundamentally WRONG with different nations choosing their own laws and cultural identity?

    It’s the ultimate statement in freedom of association.

    But, the Proggie push to ‘diversity’ is nothing but collectivism…the collective, in this case the entire world, has to be uniform and homogeneous.

    Same laws, same ‘cultural’ viewpoints on things like guns? How is that ‘multicultural?’

    • I’d say it’s less a push towards global collectivism as it is a coordinated plan to destroy all western nations and their prosperity. You don’t see Argentina, China, Ethiopia, or other middle-eastern countries being pressured to let Syrian refugees in. You don’t see demands for central/south America adopt Mexicans fleeing their failed state.

  29. Right now Japan has to worry about a declining population. Young Japanese lack interest in forming relationships. At all.

  30. I love showing white-guilt ridden, culturally masochistic millennials all the sides of Japanese culture that aren’t food or anime, which is usually all they know. The aversion towards foreigners, lack of “diversity”, strict immigration policy, stores that are for natural-born citizens only, etc. Some heads have exploded, it’s quite fun to watch.

    • I remember a black associate of mine stating his desire to move to Japan because they don’t have any “racial hangups.” It didn’t take long to get him to reverse his position once I explained how Japan is the most insular and xenophobic culture in the developed world. The people of Japan have an extreme distrust of any kind of foreigners, and even if they tolerate your presence, they will never, ever accept you; once a gaijin, always a gaijin.

      And if your skin is any darker than theirs? Hoo, boy. You know how we Westerners gradually came to acknowledge the hurtfulness of racial stereotypes and become more understanding of those who look different from us? Yeah, Japan never got around to doing that.

  31. I’ve spent a good deal of time in Japan, I speak the language passably, and generally enjoy the country.
    And if I was not a large male, there is absolutely no way I would travel through the country. The rape culture in Japan is right out in the open, and so common that many young girls grow up with the knowledge that they will be sexually assaulted at some point in their youth. And that’s just accepted.
    Again, anti-gun=pro-rape.

    • You’re right. The quote illustrates why a fixation on “gun violence” is absurd. There are many other types of violence in a society. If this guy were a young female who had to ride the train every day, he’d have a different perspective on crime and fear in Japan.

  32. I’m going to guess your friend and colleagues are not the same as mine. Ask a kool-aid drinker if he likes kool-aid, I bet you’ll get a yes.

    Ask the legion of Japanese hardcore airsofters what they think about no 2A.

  33. Stay in Japan gaijin(?). The world leader in racism and hopelessness. Proving once again you don’t need no stinkin’ gun to kill yourself. Just bow and disembowel…

      • Actually, just re-read your comment and think you may be using “gaijin” incorrectly…!

        It means “foreigner”, so if you mean “stay in Japan, foreigner(s)” then you’re spot on; but if you mean “Stay in Japan, Japanese people” then you want the word “nihonjin” (日本人; Japan person) instead.

        Sorry, geeking out here…! 🙂

  34. “I’ve never heard any of my friends or colleagues complain about there not being a Second Amendment here.”

    Young liberal woman in 1968: “How did Nixon beat McGovern? Nobody I know voted for him!”

    • “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”

      — Pauline Kael (1972)

  35. Compare crime rates after you take out the dindu nuffins and the ghettos, let’s see what real America’s crime rate is.

  36. I lived in Japan for a year (2005-6), while studying Japanese language at college, and found it to be a generally miserable place to live.

    As a number of commenters have pointed out, it’s a very ethnically homogeneous country and that’s reflected in cultural attitudes both positive and negative.

    On the positive side, there is a very broad consensus of opinion that individuals are accountable for their own actions – success and failure – and that is reflected in the ‘honour culture’ and the acceptance of suicide as the ultimate atonement.

    On the negative side, misogyny and racism are absolutely rampant. I worked at an educational publisher while living there, checking English language exam scripts. One English Comprehension question that I objected to (strongly!) but which nonetheless was used in a national high school level exam went something along the lines of:

    “Taro’s house is on a quiet street. One day Taro came home and found that his window was broken. Taro knew that the Japanese children living on his street would not do that. He thought it was probably an African immigrant, because immigrants are responsible for all crime in Japan.”

    QUESTION: Why did Taro think that his window wasn’t broken by the Japanese children who live on his street?

    —

    I also found that there was a huge variation in attitude between Japanese people of different generations. In general, those under 25 thought the West was cool and interesting; those between 25 and 50 tended to be anti-Western and quite rude about it; and those 50+ tended to be anti-Western but polite about it…

    It’s a beautiful country with a lot of fascinating things to see / do, as a tourist. But my God I’m glad I don’t live there…!

    • “I also found that there was a huge variation in attitude between Japanese people of different generations.”

      That goes for other countries and their native populations as well.

      In 1981 I was in France briefly. Near universally, the French under the age of 30 were condescending and rude, and damn proud of it.

      The French adults, on the other hand, were very nice folks.

      The adults remembered what it was like under the German occupation, and who cured them from that malady…

  37. One of the things to understand about Japan is it’s culture.

    Part of that culture is not taking on jobs that you cannot complete thereby bringing shame on yourself.

    It has been proven that Japanese police routinely rule murders to be suicides if their initial estimation of the crime is that it won’t be quickly and correctly solved. There was a case a few years ago that was studied by the guys from Freakonomics where the police found a dead guy in an ally. He had been shot six times in the back but the case was ruled a suicide and closed. Privately the police admitted that they suspected a Yakuza hit, but with the pressure to clear cases and not investigate ones that would likely go nowhere, they declined to investigate further.

    So yeah the murder numbers, especially the gun murder numbers in Japan are suspect at best.

    • Although it’s also worth noting that gun crime is exceptionally low in Japan – substantially due to the massive judicial penalties attached to it.

      You automatically get the highest possible sentence for any given crime if a gun is involved. There’s an interesting doctoral thesis (can’t find it to cite, but it’s out there) looking at methods of violence by criminal gangs in Japan: in short, use of extreme violence is relatively common, but very very rarely involves guns because the LE response will go into hyperdrive.

      • The Freakonomics study found that while they are still a relatively small portion of violent crimes, gun murders are significantly higher than are reported in Japan because if they can’t solve it virtually immediately (as in, have the gun and the suspect in custody within 30 minutes) they rule it a suicide.

        So yes, I suspect that attaching extreme penalties to gun violence does have a deterrent effect. However, it’s still true that gun crime is much more common than the Japanese police/government are willing to admit.

  39. I thought they also had problems with men being masculine, suicide, social isolation and horrendous work conditions.
    I do like their prison ideas though, I’m sure none of these things would be happening if perpetrators knew that they would be captured alive and had 12hr work days to look forward to along with none of the rights prisoners here are afforded.

  41. “…U.S. gun violence makes Japan feel like a haven”

    Just watch your head for all the falling bodies…

  42. The US is going to get worse. That is for certain. The society is cracking at the foundation. In 20 years Japan will be even more safe that it is now when compared to the US.

    Please note, I am not blaming this on the second amendment. 50 years ago the US was one of the safest countries in the world. I blame the laughable notions of egalitarianism and multiculturalism.

    • When you say “egalitarianism” do you mean the notion that all men are created equal? Or that we should all get the same stuff?

      • The idea that all men are equal in ability is a large cause of the issues we face. The idea that all cultures/people are equal and interchangeable is another.

  43. jwtaylor says:
    July 20, 2016 at 18:05
    No. We can not all agree. And if you’d ever been to Japan you’d realize how desperate they are for outside influence.

    Why should they? Japan is for Japanese influence. And as for the other guy, scream “racist” at others or bring up “stormfront” just proves you have no point. its ok, your time is over, our time is here.

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