Hey Graham, CJ here. I first want to congratulate you on your completion of your first marathon (I meant to on Tuesday, but forgot). It is honestly very inspiring, and I was moved to tears reading your final post about it. Thanks for sharing that with us.

Regarding the topic at hand, I'm surprised no one brought up the issue I've seen mentioned a lot during discussions of violence in the US compared to other countries, which is homogeneity.

I think it's much easier for people to get along in places that have cultural homogeneity versus the huge amount of diversity in the US. The wide range of different cultures and ethnicities present in many American cities is a double edged sword, with the benefit of diversity and the drawback of lots of conflict and distrust between different groups of people. Most small cities and towns in the US with more homogeneous populations are quite safe. It's the big cities where crime becomes common due to people having less respect for those outside their ethnic or cultural group, among other factors including broken homes and the teen parent rate, which is much higher than in Japan. Kids from these backgrounds are less likely to learn good values.

Add to that the much stricter immigration policies of Japan, usually only accepting highly skilled workers, compared to the many poorer low skilled workers that come to the US, Latinos and others, whose kids grow up in ghettoes, furthering the group mentality.

Scandinavian countries that have also been very homogeneous and known for being safe are now rife with violence between natives and what they view as Muslim immigrants "invading" their country and culture.
Having gun ownership or not has nothing to do with violence rates compared to all these other factors.

People typically are peaceful with those they see as being in their in-group. I've heard from acquaintances who are foreigners in Japan that they get treated like shit at their workplace oftentimes. It would be interesting to see how peaceful many Japanese would be if some other ethnic groups moved there in large numbers and were "invading and taking over their country." From what I've heard, they have a lot of ethnic pride, similar to Scandinavians. And if dark skinned people started moving there? Forget about it.

Sucks to hear how strict they are with drugs. Having grown up with a strict Filipino mom though, I'm not surprised. As a side note, I've been told that some other Asian groups don't see Filipinos as Asian because of their Spanish blood, thanks to centuries of Empire. But I digress.

I have more thoughts on this but this comment is already long enough, haha.

Keep it real!