If you want to buy a gun in Japan you need patience and determination. You have to attend an all-day class, take a written exam and pass a shooting-range test with a mark of at least 95 percent.
There are also mental health and drugs tests. Your criminal record is checked and police look for links to extremist groups. Then they check your relatives too - and even your work colleagues. And as well as having the power to deny gun licences, police also have sweeping powers to search and seize weapons.
That's not all. Handguns are banned outright. Only shotguns and air rifles are allowed.
The law restricts the number of gun shops. In most of Japan's 40 or so prefectures there can be no more than three, and you can only buy fresh cartridges by returning the spent cartridges you bought on your last visit.
Police must be notified where the gun
and the ammunition are stored - and they must be stored separately under
lock and key. Police will also inspect guns once a year. And after
three years your licence runs out, at which point you have to attend the
course and pass the tests again.
This helps explain why mass shootings in
Japan are extremely rare. When mass killings occur, the killer most
often wields a knife.
Japanese police officers rarely use guns
and put much greater emphasis on martial arts - all are expected to
become a black belt in judo. They spend more time practising kendo
(fighting with bamboo swords) than learning how to use firearms.
"The response to violence is never
violence, it's always to de-escalate it. Only six shots were fired by
Japanese police nationwide [in 2015]," says journalist Anthony Berteaux.
"What most Japanese police will do is get huge futons and essentially
roll up a person who is being violent or drunk into a little burrito and
carry them back to the station to calm them down."
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