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A recent spate of mass shootings have prompted intensified discussions around gun control in the US.
Five people were killed and dozens more injured in a mass shooting at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs on Saturday. The attack comes on the heels of several other mass shootings in recent months, including at a Fourth of July parade in Illinois, in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
One of the biggest questions being asked: How does the US prevent this from happening over and over again?
Although the US has no exact counterpart elsewhere in the world, some countries have taken steps that can provide a window into what successful gun control looks like. Japan, a country of 127 million people and yearly gun deaths rarely totaling more than 10, is one such country.
“Ever since guns entered the country, Japan has always had strict gun laws,” Iain Overton, executive director of Action on Armed Violence, a British advocacy group, told the BBC. “They are the first nation to impose gun laws in the whole world, and I think it laid down a bedrock saying that guns really don’t play a part in civilian society.”
Japan’s success in curbing gun deaths is intimately linked with its history. Following World War II, pacifism emerged as one of the dominant philosophies in the country. Police only started carrying firearms after American troops made them, in 1946, for the sake of security. It’s also written into Japanese law, as of 1958, that “no person shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords.”
The government has since loosened the law, but the fact Japan enacted gun control from the stance of prohibition is important.
