From an Association Press Article, it seems that there’s been a spate of violent crime in normally low crime (and gun free) Japan:
Japan, a country of 127 million people, had 1,391 homicides in 2005, compared with 16,692 in the United States. But overall crime in Japan jumped to 2.27 million cases that year, from 1.81 million in 1996, the National Police Agency said.
“Anxiety is mounting in Japan about the increase of high-profile crimes. Due to rapid globalization, the traditional rules and social order are changing dramatically,” said Jun Ayukawa, an expert on criminal psychology at Japan’s Kwansei Gakuin University.
The surge in high-profile violent crime has spurred debate over tougher gun-control rules, calls for strengthening the moral fiber of youth in schools and concerns about the state of parenting.
How do you get tougher gun-control rules than “You may not have them, except under very rare circumstances”? I suppose after the gun control advocates achieve their goal of banning guns entirely, the next step will be to double ban them. Because if the first ban didn’t work, clearly you need to ban them one more time, just to be sure.