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A 1980s study on juvenile crime in Japan sheds light on American gun culture

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Re: A 1980s study on juvenile crime in Japan sheds light on American gun culture

#81

Post by forapurpose »

ggg9990 wrote: post #32
jMyles wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need to see some evidence of these claims. I doubt that prison is materially similar to a "networking retreat". Are people really pleading down to manslaughter, after literally shooting and killing someone, and serving less than 3 years?

The large numbers of prison gangs is evidence of the networking function. And in gang ridden neighborhoods most murders aren’t even solved, and 3 years happens regularly, because of the low evidence an lack of witness cooperation causing prosecutors to cut plea bargains.

I agree with the GP; I'd need to see some evidence.

> in gang ridden neighborhoods

Gangs are no longer a problem in most American cities, afaik. It's a obsolete myth in the minds of people who never step foot in poor and working-class urban neighborhoods, but they see lots of TV and movies.

Re: A 1980s study on juvenile crime in Japan sheds light on American gun culture

#82

Post by DrScump »

sametmax wrote: post #77
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know guns are legal outside of Paris and you can buy silencers over the counter right? The most serious restriction on guns in France is you can only own two at any time that accept military calibers. So 9x19mm, bad, but 9x21mm A-OK.

You need to practice at a shooting range with professional to even get access to a simple gun. A process that is hardly as casual as this: http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/19/news/guns-background-checks/... And come on, if you get an FFL licence, you can even get a silencer or a machine gun as a normal citizen. The difficulty is not even on the same scale.

  And come on, if you get an FFL licence
It became very difficult to get an FFL without having an actual storefront, or being a gunsmith, starting with the Clinton administration.

  you can even get a silencer or a machine gun as a normal citizen
That's flat false. Being a conventional FFL doesn't bestow any access to any NFA weapons.

Re: A 1980s study on juvenile crime in Japan sheds light on American gun culture

#83

Post by forapurpose »

StudentStuff wrote: post #63
sametmax wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say it this way: imagine it was not prison, but a full therapy treatment and rehabilitation. Do you think that 3 years is enough to rehabilitate an adult that all the events in life lead him or her to kill somebody ? Some people take 10 years to quit smoking. Also, while I agree with your point on abusing the justice system and not using it for revenge, you must not forget that: - currently we also use it as a…

A murderer will murder, regardless of whether they are in prison for 1 year or 100 years afterward, they are not apt to estimate what a judge will give them for a particular crime. Deterrence for higher level crimes through harsher sentencing is ineffective.

It would be great if we had some evidence to back this up.

Re: A 1980s study on juvenile crime in Japan sheds light on American gun culture

#84

Post by fenomas »

UncleEntity wrote: post #73
fenomas wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Japan Times isn't state media, it's a regular private newspaper. Japan Times reporting on Japan is akin to the New York Times reporting on New York.

So highly biased and lapdogs of the ruling elite then?

If you're the sort of person who feels better thinking such things, sure. The point is that any biases are the paper's biases, not (necessarily) the state's.

Re: A 1980s study on juvenile crime in Japan sheds light on American gun culture

#85

Post by philliphaydon »

ezoe wrote: post #76

Seriously? As a Japanese, I can't agree any of the auther's claim. First, It's less than 20 years old for a crime to be punished differently than adults in Japan. Not 21 years. An article containing this level of mistake cannot trusted further. It said, Japanese biker gang can get a gun but not doing so because of honor, “Being able to move your finger on a trigger is not really a skill that wows anyone.” What? It co…

Huh, Japan is trial as adult from 21 on-wards... Juvenile is up to 20 years old...

Re: A 1980s study on juvenile crime in Japan sheds light on American gun culture

#86

Post by ggg9990 »

forapurpose wrote: post #81
ggg9990 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The large numbers of prison gangs is evidence of the networking function. And in gang ridden neighborhoods most murders aren’t even solved, and 3 years happens regularly, because of the low evidence an lack of witness cooperation causing prosecutors to cut plea bargains.

I agree with the GP; I'd need to see some evidence. > in gang ridden neighborhoods Gangs are no longer a problem in most American cities, afaik. It's a obsolete myth in the minds of people who never step foot in poor and working-class urban neighborhoods, but they see lots of TV and movies.

You don't see Crips and Bloods wearing colors but in the several cities I've spent significant time in, there are organized drug-dealing operations with management hierarchy. That, to me, is a gang.

Re: A 1980s study on juvenile crime in Japan sheds light on American gun culture

#87

Post by krapp »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #14
krapp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet (as I hear) the Samurai they emulate considered their bows to be their primary weapon, and their spears their secondary weapon, and considered it a disgrace to ever need to draw their sword. They also used guns when they became available. They were soldiers and mercenaries, after all.

Of course manga heroes are more about romantic ideals than historical accuracy, but even so, you can't really generalize about all samurai any more than you can generalize about all European knights. The samurai class existed in one form or another for around a millennium. I rather doubt that they all considered it a "disgrace" to draw their sword.

>The samurai class existed in one form or another for around a millennium. I rather doubt that they all considered it a "disgrace" to draw their sword.

That's fair. I was just trying to imply that the samurai (and Western cowboy, and European knight, and even modern yakuza and mafia) all present a romantic facade in popular culture that wasn't and isn't necessarily reflected in practical reality.

Apparently even the concept of Bushido is a cultural retcon[0,1] as is, almost everything related to ninja[2,3]. Some young Japanese hoodlums might buy into the hype, but I don't necessarily trust that anecdata as a basis to make some general statement about Japanese culture mistrusting guns because they're less honorable.

[0]https://www.tofugu.com/japan/bushido/

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11990721

[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-UePD6Wp5A

[3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR43l77jlpY

Re: A 1980s study on juvenile crime in Japan sheds light on American gun culture

#88

Post by scythe »

DrScump wrote: post #78
scythe wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sentence is more like ten years, parole in three. Manslaughter unlike murder is supposed to be unintentional. Of course if the criminals are "networking" in prison, that should prevent parole, but cost-cutting privatization in the prison industry has ensured that doesn't happen. Likewise the only reason that it's a manslaughter charge in the first place is that witness protection, and therefore cooperation, is dismal…

the legitimacy of the US government Homicide is very rarely charged as a Federal crime (special cases like assassination or terrorism).

I didn't say federal government, now did I? My point is that when people don't respect the authorities, we refer to this as the "legitimacy of the government" and because no state was specified I went with US, because all states and their governments are part of the US. So yes I anticipated your semantic quibble.

Re: A 1980s study on juvenile crime in Japan sheds light on American gun culture

#89

Post by boomboomsubban »

Lazare wrote: post #69
rangibaby wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan didn't embrace gun culture but certainly built up its military after being forced to abandon isolationism by (literal) threats of destruction from western powers.

Quite right. The question is why ? If culture is driven by events, it feels like they should have embraced gun culture given how huge that event was. If it's not, then when triggered the earlier abandonment?

The abandonment was triggered by the shogunate having a large amount of control over anyone wealthy enough to own a gun. Afterwards, the military certainly embraced gun culture, but civilian gun culture largely rises from colonialism.

Re: A 1980s study on juvenile crime in Japan sheds light on American gun culture

#90

Post by jschwartzi »

acct1771 wrote: post #70
kungtotte wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scenario A: you are at a bar and someone starts a fight with you. You fight back and due to unfortunate circumstances they fall and hit their head in such a way that they die. Scenario B: you are angry at your neighbor for always taking your parking lot. So you acquire a gun, and in the middle of the night you sneak over to his house, break in, and shoot him while he's sleeping. Two dead victims, two very different s…

I was imagining a scenario of "crime of passion" e.g. when someone catches their wife in bed with another man. Murder is murder. Self-defense obviously changes that paradigm completely, and because of that, I'd consider that example moving the goalposts of this discussion

Crimes of passion aren't prosecuted as murder in many jurisdictions. They're prosecuted as manslaughter. The killer didn't plan to kill anyone, but they were provoked to do so by the other parties.
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