By Karen Hill Anton

STATISTIC: People killed by handguns in various countries in 2023

Japan—10

Great Britain—50

Switzerland—47

Canada—611

United States—38,658

“Ten? That many?” That was the shocked reaction of a friend, an emergency room doctor in Japan who’s never had to treat a gunshot victim.

I’ve never seen a gun — that is, a gun that was not in a policeman’s holster. That’s probably because I’ve lived in Japan for the last 50 years.

My children and grandchildren, raised in Japan, have never walked through a metal detector in a school. Their schools have never held an “active shooter drill.” A potentially traumatizing experience, it's something American children are subjected to on a regular basis.

STATISTIC: The biggest cause of death of children and teenagers in America is firearms. [I could find no data of a child being shot in Japan.]

Recently, I listened to a podcast in which three journalists discussed the shooting in Minnesota at a Catholic church. In case that shooting has been overshadowed by recent ones, two children were killed and 18 injured by a shooter at a Catholic church in Minnesota in August.

The possible reasons for the killings they discussed were: It was an act of political violence, a mental health crisis, the shooter’s community overlooked warning signs, Minnesota institutes insufficient measures to protect children, or the church lacked of security and armed personnel.

Never once did they mention the sheer number, proliferation, and easy access to guns in America.

[Noting the political killing in Utah this summer, and the shooting at Brown University this month,  and reflecting again on the easy access of guns, I’m reminded that the person who assassinated Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe in 2022 had to make his gun.]

Researchers have demonstrated that a gun in the home vastly increases the chance of suicide. And accidents. When I read that a 5-year-old girl had shot and killed her 4-year-old sister, my first thought, and fervent hope, was that the girl’s young age meant that she would one day forget.

Whether a baby is shot while in a stroller or struck by a stray bullet in her grandmother’s arms, one does not need to be a cynic to note the sun does not set on a day in the United States in which a person with a gun hasn’t brought terror, grief, and heartache to families and whole communities.

I truly thought the tragedy and the horror of Sandy Hook would be the defining moment when Americans said goodbye to guns. Surely that would be the reaction when they learned the parents of the children massacred were not allowed to see their bodies — because attending doctors advised it best they not see the damage a bullet does when it rips through flesh, organs, bones, brains.

No matter how bad we may feel, or heartbroken we may be, no matter how much pity and sympathy we have for the parents who lost children — we will never know their suffering.

Years ago, I remember visiting my sister in Harlem, NYC, and being perplexed to see the number of young people, boys, in wheelchairs. Most too young to have served in any war, my sister said the most likely explanation why they were paraplegic was the result of a bullet having severed their spinal cords.

STATISTIC: The leading cause of death of young black males, age range 15—34, is homicide, most often by firearms. While this demographic represents 2% of the U.S. population, they constitute 34% of all murders.

Laws vary from state to state, but any waiting period being imposed before a person can legally buy a handgun has faced fierce opposition.

The wait is ostensibly supposed to give authorities the chance to check a person’s background, for criminal behavior, or evidence of mental instability.

But the sad fact is: Not all homicides are premeditated, nor are they the acts of the criminally insane. Rather, and too often, supposedly normal, responsible, people ‘flip.’ Instead of shouting or pounding their fists, they take out their guns and take out their rage — on family members, shoppers in malls, children in classrooms, the driver who cuts in front of them.

The archaic Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizens the right to possess firearms, and many law-abiding people who do possess handguns would never dream of harming anyone. Fear of violent crime seems to be the main reason they acquire guns. And then, too, many Americans hold to the dictum:

“An armed society is a polite society.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. Japanese society is among the most polite in the world. I don’t know any person in Japan who has a gun or who wants one.

[Private handgun ownership is illegal and strictly prohibited in Japan.]

While writing this initial draft, an 11-year-old boy in Minnesota was shot and killed after pulling the childish prank of ringing someone’s doorbell and running away.

It was a chilling reminder of the Japanese exchange student Yoshihiro Hattori, who was shot and killed in Louisiana after mistakenly knocking on someone’s door.

At the time, an American woman teaching in Japan was quoted as saying:

“It was as much Hattori’s fault as the man who shot him. It’s important to know another country’s culture when you’re living in it.”

I found this thinking deeply problematic, and cynical, and could only wonder what gun possession has to do with ‘culture.’

However, I now acknowledge that gun ownership is very much part of American culture. This is evident in how normalized gun deaths are in America.

Still, I maintain the proliferation of guns that serve no other purpose than to maim and kill people is the unfortunate manifestation of a lethal aberration of American society. Few Americans can express shock at the number of gun deaths anymore — a number that tallies more on an average day than we have in Japan over a five year period.  

Where I live, people commonly leave the door unlocked, for the convenience of delivery people to come in and leave packages, often at night. No one fears they may have a gun pulled on them because they came to the wrong door, as was tragically the case with Yoshihiro Hattori. 

While we often learn in the news of the latest outrage following the most recent “mass shooting” — daily gun deaths routinely go unreported.

My brother was shot and killed. His murder was never reported in the news. A much loved family member, he could never be a statistic.

Karen Hill Anton is the author of the award-winning memoir The View From Breast Pocket Mountain, and the novel A Thousand Graces. Originally from New York City, since 1975 she’s lived in rural Shizuoka, Japan, where she also writes a Substack.