Unstrapped

If I were a robber, Japan would be my Candyland. As a predominately cash-based society and with an unparalleled consumerism that makes even Americans look like conservative spenders, Japanese malls, convenient stores and pretty much anywhere else that financial transactions take place are packing tons of unprotected cash.

For gun control lobbyists, Japan is a dream come true. The law is simple: no one can bear firearms or swords under any circumstance. The only people allowed to possess a weapon at any time are police and the military. With one of the world's lowest crime rate and the gun crime rate nearly nonexistent, anti-gun lobbies tout Japan as the kind of nation America could be.

While Japan could be considered a parallel universe in comparison to America, I don't think gun control is what keeps the crime rate low--it's people control. Japanese society is kept on a tight leash by the government and the police force. Questioning personal freedoms and basic rights is rare, which is a basic motivator American's thrive on. The Japanese criminal justice system bears more heavily on a suspect than any other system in an industrial democratic nation.

Partly because the Japanese are so unified and homogenous, they accept and internalize social controls. It is this attitude of obedience and impulse control that matters most in the low Japanese crime rate. Guns or not, the Japanese are simply the world's most law-abiding people.

What interests me more about the lack of citizen-held weaponry in Japan is how it affects the people's system of worry. For most humans, our basic motivators for survival are the same. We think primitively about the safety and health of ourselves and our families, and the threat of gun violence or robbery is definitely something the majority of Americans have at least an inkling of worry about. We can't leave our doors unlocked or walk onto a crowded bus without double checking our pockets to make sure nothing's been picked.

But, in Japan, this type of threat doesn't exist. So, in turn, Japanese have more than enough time to worry themselves over other daily occurrences, that to an American, may seem trivial in the grand scheme of survival.

Even so, as long as my biggest concern is preventing myself from getting a curable disease (H1N1) and too much sun, I'll enjoy this gunless utopia and revel in the fact that I can walk home late at night without fear.