From: [r--s] at [cbnewsc.cb.att.com] (Morris the Cat)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,talk.politics.guns
Subject: Japan's Gun Control Petition - What The Media Aren't Saying
Date: 18 Jun 93 13:44:23 GMT

Date: Wed, 16 Jun 93 12:54:01 EDT
Organization: Blue Moon BBS ((614) 868-998[0245])
 
Japan's Gun Control Petition
What The Media Aren't Saying
 
 Much national  media attention  has been  given recently to  the
pro-gun  control  petition  being  circulated  in  Japan  as  a
consequence of the tragic shooting of a Japanese exchange student
by a Louisiana  homeowner. Implicit  in the  media's message is
that, in Japan, gun control works.

  Heralded  is   the  fact   that  Japan--which  forbids   handgun
ownership to civilians and restricts rifle and shotgun ownership
to licensed hunters--has a crime rate much lower than the U.S.'s
and that the  Japanese don't understand  "America's love affair
with firearms."
      
 The  Japanese  may  not  understand  the  freedom quaranteed  by
our Second Amendment. The criminal  justice system the Japanese
live under  also  precludes  any  appreciation  of  the  rights
guaranteed American citizens by the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh
and Eighth Amendments of the Bill Of Rights.

 Here  are  some  aspects  of  Japan's  criminal  justice  system
that the  national media,  captivated by  gun control,  fail to
address:
 
* Japanese police routinely search citizens at will and twice a
  year pay "home visits" to citizens' residences.
 
* After arrest a suspect may be detained without bail for up to
  28 days before a prosecutor must bring him before a judge.
 
* Suspect confession rate in Japan is 95%.
 
* Suspects who insist on standing trial have no right to a jury.
 
* Japanese trial conviction rate is 99.91%
 
* The Tokyo Bar Ass'n has stated that Japanese police routinely
  "engage in torture  or illegal  treatment. Even  in cases where
  suspects claimed to  have been  tortured and  their bodies bore
  physical traces to back their claims, courts have still accepted
  their confessions."
 
* Amnesty International has called  the Japanese police custody
  system a  "flagrant  violation of  United  Nations  human rights
  principles."
 
  As  David  Kopel  concludes  in  his  award-winning  book,   The
Samurai, The Mountie, and The  Cowboy: Should America Adopt the
Gun Controls  of  Other  Democracies?:  "The  Japanese criminal
justice system is based on the government possessing the inherent
authority to do whatever it wishes."
 
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