Historically, no bans in the US have worked including alcohol, cocaine, weed, etc. The only way a gun ban would have a substantial impact is if the borders are tightly controlled. It is impossible to have a gun ban without tight border control. They go hand in hand. Do either of you think that it is hard to produce a gun? If there is a ban in the US and there is a demand for guns, the cartels will produce them and sell them in the US. Furthermore, Japan and the US are not comparable. The societies are very different.
Lucky we have guns to defend ourselves. Why don't you delve a little deeper into those numbers? Maybe look at the racial composition of the offenders. I know our position on guns is difficult for a foreigner to grasp. Our basic position is not that different from the euro position on muslim immigration and terrorism. We are prepared to tolerate a level of violence if it is necessary to retain our freedom to keep and bear weapons. The more violence, the more we feel the need to have guns. We don't trust the government to protect us. We have seen too many incidents where the local authorities pulled back the police and let rioters run wild. In addition, we are a big country and have natural disasters where there might be no police protection for days or weeks. Better to have weapons and not need them, than need and not have.
I have to disagree with this one... Of course there are differences between countries... But to say that they are not comparable, that makes no sense... Countries are made of people and people are essentialy the same, at least in their "core"... If you look at history, what made Japan turn into the country it is today? Essentialy, what made Japan such a developed country, was to follow, in a broad sense, the same policies that turned the US in the wealthiest country in the world: Free Market. It's interesting to see the comparison Milton Friedman does in his series "Free To Choose" between Japan(before the Meiji Restauration) and India. The two countries were essentialy in the same place and were VERY SIMILAR, but thirty years later, India was still a shithole and Japan had turned into an economic power. It's all available on youtube, for free. Incidentally, both countries(the US and Japan) have gotten A LOT worse over the years, because they went in the other direction: more government intervention in practically all areas. That being said, as with any other subject(including guns), one has to take into account the factors and see if these factors actually have a relationship and/or influence the subject being studied. The fact that Japan has banned guns and has a low crime rate and other various countries have banned and still have high crime rates, just proves that the ban on guns does not have a decreasing effect on crime. That's it. So, if one really wants to solve the issue, one has to simply disregard this factor(the ban on guns) and go look for the factors that actually decrease crime.
And immigration is not a problem... It's actually a good thing, provided that the people who are coming in, are doing so to work and produce and not take money from others. In other words: immigration is a great thing, IF the welfare state is completely erradicated. This way, instead of attracting people who want to live at the cost of others, the country will attract only people who are willing to work, produce and compete in the market, which will make products and services better and at better prices. That's much more logical than "controlling immigration". Erradicate the welfare state and you get a bonus: you can erradicate all the useless work of trying to control immigration by the government. Can you imagine the billions that would be saved and that could very well be turned into tax cuts?
And one of those factors has to be culture which is different than that of Japan. To say that we are comparable in culture is off IMO.
You are comparable in culture: you have different cultures. That's a comparison. But in many other ways, at the "core", as I said in the earlier post, you, I and the japanese are VERY MUCH similar... That's why a free market economy will have the same results, if actually applied, in the US, Japan or Brazil or anywhere in the world. So, despite cultural differences, if a free market economy is established, you have similar results. That means that "to have or not a free market economy" actually influences how developed a country will be, no matter what country. Culture, on the other hand and by the same token, is NOT a factor that influences how developed a country is. So, if someone comes and says that Japan has to change it's culture, in order for it to develop itself, that would be VERY STUPID. The analogy with guns is this: the ban on guns is like suggesting a country to change it's culture as a measure to develop itself, it makes no sense, because it is not an influencing factor on decreasing crime rates. P.S.:You may have cultural changes as A RESULT of a free market economy, but NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND, which reenforces a free market economy as a deciding factor.
This stupid thread comes up all the time. I'm going to cut and paste from the NRA Hijinks thread my response to the ridiculous idea of "let's just ban guns"...Let's pretend we put a law in place to ban guns. 1. All guns are made illegal. Sales are banned, a grace period buyback is instituted to return all guns to your local police department and you would get the avg. value of the weapon from the Federal Government buyback program. The number of legally owned firearms in America - by civilians is estimated at 290 million. To be ultra conservative (meaning, to take the extreme low side on value) let's assume that the avg. firearm cost is $500. That means the Federal Government's buy back program at 100% of LEGAL compliance (forget the illegal weapons, lets assume criminals don't turn in their guns because the government wants them) is $145 Billion. LOL! Riiight. And that's the low side of the equation. And then there's the cost of the program, managing it and the destruction cost of all those millions of weapons. Who knows how high this goes? Additionally, the ban on all gun sales removes $33 Billion from GDP, and approximately 200,000 employees from the workforce - and that's just the workers that work directly for manufacturers and direct gun sales. It doesn't count all the folks in the gun retail environment, shooting ranges, sportsman clubs, gun smiths, pawn shops,....whatever. But lets ignore all this and say you don't care about the economic impact, you want guns off the damned street. Ok. 2. Guns are removed from the legal population. Now we've got a few million illegally owned guns out there. Crime statistics show that the vast majority of gun crimes are committed by people who have illegal firearms. So you don't really get rid of any crime. Sure, you might make a 1% dent in the overall crime rate by removing the few and far between situations where some legal gun owner goes nuts or something happens, but this would likely be countered by a LARGE increase in violent crime as criminals now know they don't have to worry about homeowners and people with guns to defend themselves. 3. As time goes on, the price of illegal weapons on the streets skyrocket. Weapons begin to be smuggled in through the border, and legal residents go out and acquire an illegal firearm to protect themselves from the criminals that have them. I know I would. I'd get a pistol and keep it safe in case I was ever attacked in my home. Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6, right? 4. People begin to be arrested for defending themselves with an illegal firearm, and subjecting normal law abiding, otherwise harmless individuals because they now own an illegal gun after you took their legal one away. Meanwhile the criminals using guns continue on their merry way, unmoved by your ban - because if I'm a criminal and I'm going to commit murder (which might incarcerate me for life), why do I care about your silly gun law? Is that what you were hoping for? Guns will NEVER be banned. Ever. Ever ever. There will never be the political capital to pull it off, nor the money to make it happen. But even if it did, it wouldn't work out like liberals want it to. This doesn't even consider things like how you can make 3D printed guns.
My point is that if there is a demand there will be a supply. Just like there is a demand for illegal cocaine that is apparently imported en masse. I did not mean to infer that people in the US are currently importing illegal guns en masse however the is a current market for illegally imported guns. Without a tightly controlled border how can the US keep out illegal guns, cocaine or any other banned/illegal items? You can learn about illegal gun manufacturing of ghost guns below.