It's never Ever enough.

So some in Japan are mulling over loosening some of their draconian gun laws.

Like reducing a waiting period for a rifle license from a "common sense" 10 years so a "blood in the streets" 5... years. In Japan the way to get a hunting rifle license is if you've had a shot gun license for 10 years. And no civilian handgun ownership at all, and no self defense or carry, and the expected storage and capacitance laws.

But these fairly mild changes... aimed and reducing crop damage due to animals are drawing some ire.


The comments are also illustrative. Runs from "nobody needs a gun" to "penis-penis-penis" to "gun owners are cowards and sociopaths - real men defend themselves with knives" to "hunting is a crime" to "civilized countries realize that guns only hurt people" to "I'm so glad to be in a country with no crime" to "You need NO freedom to..." to "a gun won't address those fears nearly as well as a good therapist" to "Hurr-hurr-Americans" to "If you have a gun you *will* kill yourself or someone else" and of course "But generally speaking I agree with the posters that keeping guns out of the hands of the general populace in Japan is for the best."

Ah, the special kind of arrogance that it takes to look at a population and go "Yes, one must keep the firearms and firewater out of the hands of the savage redyellow-man, it's for the best."

Their rage is based on the idea that Japan has low-crime because it has draconian gun laws and thus low "gun death". Thus the idea that any loosening of gun rights would result in blood in the streets. Hmm... sounds so familiar.

Though you gotta love people who see the proposal of reducing the waiting period to own a rifle reduced from 10 years to 5 years to be unreasonable. As one of the sensible commenters pointed out that the people on the waiting list already have a shotgun permit so it's not rapidly increasing the total number of gun owners (the horror if it were!).

And then you have the "I had to run the gauntlet so do the rest of you" gun owner.
Special bonus for Fudd-ism.

I have a Japanese gun licence and hunting licence. I think the current system is fine. It is longwinded and quite expensive, but this tends to ensure only serious people can be bothered to go through with it. Getting a gun on a whim here is just not possible. In rural communities, the local deer and boar populations are causing a lot of damage. With the aging hunter population and the unwillingness of younger people to take up hunting, this problem is only going to get worse... I seriously doubt relaxing the current laws would encourage many extra would-be hunters from taking up hunting. The lack of gun ownership/hunters isn't down to the current law; it's due to people increasingly being out of touch with the nature around them and the ease of popping to the supermarket.

Get that? Only serious people can be bothered. Sure there's a demographic shortage of hunters, but somehow the idea of it being a decades long process with repeat mandatory safety lectures *isn't* a restrictor on potential hunters.


I will give one of the commenters a bit of honesty. He wants guns totally banned from Japan, not just among the "serfs" but also among the government. Police and all.

There's also some fine ignorance on display and strong naivetee. Apparently, US gun laws are monolithically uniform and NYC has Wal-Mart giving AK15's to toddlers. Mexico and Columbia and South Africa all have loose gun laws just like the US. All civilized nations have gun laws on par with Japan (somebody tell Canada and Finland and Switzerland and hell Italy). Heck compared to Japan, Australia is an easy country to get arms. As for the naivete, well remember you can always outrun a man with a knife, and if you give the criminal what he wants you won't ever be hurt.


What all this does show is that nothing, *nothing* is enough for the anti's. 10 years to get a rifle? Too short. Swords (as much a part of Japanese culture as British) are just as banned as guns over there as they are in England. The comemnters even talked about knife crime and Japan's "slashing sprees" and how knives need to be looked at.

There's also the old gun-death chestnut specifically that suicide by a firearm is specifically worse than other types of suicide. And was cited by why the Swiss shouldn't be armed.

There's also an element of spite. (Some good old US do-gooder spite can be found here). They, specifically and emotionally, recoil at the idea of making things a bit easier for a gun owner in any way shape or form.

It is NEVER enough for these folks.

Via Unc