Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
From: [r--s] at [cbnewsc.cb.att.com] (Morris the Cat)
Subject: Open letter from David Kopel to the Japanese people.
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1993 18:52:10 GMT
WHY AMERICANS ARE SO ATTACHED TO GUNS
By David B. Kopel
This opinion piece was sent to 30 Japanese newspapers.
The tragic death of Yoshihiro Hatori is understandably causing many
Japanese to question the nature of American society, and its attitudes toward
guns. As the author of a book which contrasted Japanese and American gun
control policies, perhaps I can explain why America treats guns so differently
from Japan.
In Japan, personal security is a basic reality. In the same way that
Japanese (and Americans) do not spend much time worrying if their drinking
water is contaminated, Japanese usually do not need to take extraordinary
steps to protect themselves from violent criminal attack.
Americans are not so fortunate. Unlike the Japanese, the Americans
kidnaped slaves from Africa, and, after the slaves were freed, kept Black
people in very poor conditions. Much of America's current crime is a direct
result of racist mistreatment of Black people in previous years.
In addition, the American police spend an enormous amount of their
resources enforcing the drug laws; consequently, there are insufficient police
resources to fight violent crime.
And of course America's government-run schools are a disaster. Many
students graduate from American high schools unable to read; such people often
find that they cannot find a job which will pay as well as does a life of
crime.
With so much crime, police protection is simply unable to protect all
people at all times. In fact, under the legal doctrine of "sovereign
immunity," American police forces have no legal obligation to protect people
before a crime is committed; police only have the legal duty to investigate
crime after it has taken place.
If the government in Japan failed to supply clean drinking water, people
would find their own water. In the United States, where the government cannot
provide personal security, people provide their own.
Firearms are one option that many people choose for security, and, on the
whole, firearms in the hands of law-abiding people make America safer than it
would otherwise be. According to criminologist Gary Kleck, of Florida State
University, Americans use handguns about 645,000 times a year to defend
themselves against criminal attack.
About half of all American homes contain a gun, and the prevalence of
guns in American households plays a major role in reducing burglary. As a
result, an American burglar's chance of getting shot is about equal to his
chance of getting caught and going to jail. In countries such as Great
Britain, Canada, or Australia, where people are not allowed to own guns for
protection, the burglary rate is much higher than in the United States.
When American burglaries do occur, the burglars generally break in during
the daytime. American burglars take the extra risk of daylight entry because
they realize that if they break in at night, people may be home, and the
burglar stands a good chance of getting shot. Burglars in other English
speaking countries, in contrast, are much more willing to attack a home when
people are present.
Another reason so many Americans choose to own guns is the example set by
government. The Japanese police almost never draw their revolvers, and instead
use their expertise in judo and other martial arts to subdue criminals. In
America, on the other hand, about a person a day is fatally shot by the
police. The frequent use of guns by American police legitimates of the use of
guns in general.
Mr. Hatori's grieving family has circulated petitions urging the American
government ban the possession of guns in the home. Such a measure would be
unlikely to be successful. Whenever American cities or states have enacted
laws forbidding the possession of particular types of guns, or simply
requiring that people tell the government what kinds of guns they own,
Americans have refused to obey such laws. Depending on the law and the region,
disobedience rates ranges from 75% to 98%.
In the case of a prohibition against owning guns in the home, at least
50-60 million Americans would refuse to comply. The American criminal justice
system, which cannot even control a few hundred thousand violent criminals at
present, would simply collapse under the weight of 50 million new "criminals."
And, incredible as it may sound to Japanese, many Americans would shoot a
policeman who came to confiscate their guns.
And perhaps even more incredibly (from a Japanese viewpoint), the
American Constitution implicitly endorses such behavior. Americans are, in
their hearts, deeply afraid of the government. The Second Amendment of the
American Constitution guarantees the right to own and carry firearms. The
historical record shows that the core purpose of the Second Amendment was to
ensure that if the central government ever became dictatorial, the American
people would be able to overpower it. The people who wrote the American
Constitution presumed that any government that would confiscate guns would be
doing so as a first step toward enslaving or murdering the people.
Indeed, many Americans would argue that the Japanese historical
experience validates the importance of an armed populace. As the Japanese
historian Hidehiro Sonada explains, the military was able to dominate Japan in
the 1920s, '30s, and early '40s partly because "The army and the navy were
vast organizations with a monopoly on physical violence. There was no force in
Japan that could offer any resistance."
Many Americans would not be surprised that when Hidyoshi disarmed Japan
in 1588 with the Sword Hunt, he did so because, as he put it, the possession
of weapons by peasants "makes difficult the collection of taxes and tends to
foment uprisings."
And once the peasantry had been disarmed, they became increasingly
oppressed. American historian Stephen Turnbull notes that after the Sword Hunt
was completed, "The growing social mobility of peasants was thus flung
suddenly into reverse." Having once enjoyed the freedom to chose jobs as they
pleased, the disarmed peasants were forbidden to leave their land without
their superior's permission.
To many Japanese (and to the small American lobbies which advocate
disarming the people), the idea that an armed populace could resist a powerful
army seems preposterous. But as America learned in Vietnam, Russia learned in
Afghanistan, and Japan learned in Manchuria, an armed population can wear down
even the mightiest imperial army.
Indeed, the United States won its independence in 1783 after armed
citizens using their own muskets, rifles, and handguns fought an eight-year
guerilla war against the mighty British Empire.
The American ownership of guns is, therefore, deeply tied to American
concepts of individualism, self-protection, and freedom from oppressive
government. To Japanese, whose orientation tends to focus on the group rather
than the individual, the American attitude may seem absurd or even barbaric.
But just as Japanese would resent Americans who gathered petitions telling the
Japanese how to run their own affairs, Americans will not change their ways
based on pressure from abroad. Perhaps the best path to international harmony
between America and Japan is for each nation to respect other nation's basic
values, and not to attempt to force one country to become like the other.
--30--
David B. Kopel's book The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America
Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? won the Comparative Criminology
Book Award from the American Society of Criminology. He serves as Research
Director of the Independence Institute.
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