Sadly, given the apparently draconian court and penal systems in Japan, it’s probably not a great model to aim for. 
I’m more interested in the fact that Canada has 33% as many guns but not nearly that proportion of murders, be it by police or otherwise.
(of course, a large part of this is likely the number of long guns owned by our prolific hunters up north…)
I think a lot it is down to violent tropes in US movies and TV shows. It starts with the wild west where everybody has a gun on their hip and continues with cop shows where absolutely every police officer gets shot at and has to return fire to save their life.
Yes, there’s been very few Andy Taylor’s or Columbo’s on TV who never even draw their guns. But I also think the saturation level of weapons leads cops to believe, with cause, that any random person they confront is armed. That 66% difference between US and Canada is plenty to justify that difference in response. I’m certainly not excusing the rate of wanton murder by cops, just saying there’s something there besides their own behavior.
It is more complicated than the other replies seem to understand.
You can count gun amount by the amount produced and sold, and the models and serial numbers.
Ownership you really can’t accurately assess. What if someone buys 100 guns and sells them off the books to 99 people. Sure in that group of 100 people it would apear 1% own guns. When really 100% own guns. It doesn’t even have to be sold, what if your father owns 10 guns and has 5 people living in his house. 1 person owns them but 5 have access.
Amount of guns is not a perfect metric, but its the only one they can calculate to a reasonable accuracy using real data.
the number of tool owners is the real problem, if you emphasize the proPER sylLAble
Gun ownership and per gun ownership are both estimated via surveys - like many other metrics. I typically use 80 millions as a conservative number for the number of gun owners, but it could be over 100 million.
New guns sales and yearly number NICS checks are also a measure of the size of the legal market. NICS checks are both for new and used guns, as long as they go through an FFL.
The people under represented in both metrics are the criminals buying through black markets, and the kooks going through legal 2nd hand markets who never answer their telephone or door.
The USA sees violence as a viable/go-to means to solve problems, other cultures see it as last resort if all other options fail. This is reflected in death penalty, police brutality, foreign policy, military worship, domestic policy (Got a problem with something? Declare a war on it! War on Crimes, Drugs …).
Or you could just switch the comparison to basically any other developed country and avoid that issue altogether.
The murderousness of US police is a massive outlier by almost any measure.
So that’d be roughly four 9/11s per decade, yes?
Weeeeiiird! That’s just crazy to think about.
Another interesting thing about these statistics is the difference between homicide rate between France and Germany. France has double the Germany’s rate. I’ve once spent two weeks in Paris, sightseeing mostly on foot and by public transport and it seemed quite safe. Any ideas?
Oh wow. I did not know about that.
The one guy.
By the time the ten guys have agreed on which of them gets to use the gun, any situation warranting the use of said gun will be over one way or another.
Much longer coastline = more smuggling gangs?
Or just more crimes passionels?
I don’t think you can attribute any difference between Canada and the US to consumption of US media. Canadians watch plenty enough American movies and TV shows.
Chicago and Toronto seem more similar than Toronto and Thunder Bay (a northern Ontario city), but somehow Chicago had 10 times as many murders in 2016. I think there are some obvious reasons to expect a higher murder rate in a place with higher income inequality, more police brutality and more racism*. I don’t know about 10 times the rate, though.
Maybe there’s something in the origin stories of our nations that lingers in the national psyche. America the protagonist that frees itself from oppression by force, Canada saying, “If we’re polite enough then things will work out in the end.”**
* Canada has plenty of racism. Sometimes Canadians pretend that if it’s not as bad here as it is in the US then we’re fine, not realizing how low a bar that is.
** This is a willful exaggeration of the founding of Canada for effect.
Meanwhile, on facebook, my cousin won a shotgun in a raffle.
On the upside, he can handle one.
Whoa. Only in America.
You cannot say racism is worse in the States and mention Thunder Bay at the same time…
2015 was the year of the Charlie Hebdo Massacre and the terrorist attack of the Bataclan, and few other events of the same nature. The police killed at least 13 terrorists in 2015. So, not exactly the best year to do that kind of statistics.
About Paris : there is cities in France with a higher crime rate, Marseille for exemple.
