How many of those countries have a democratic republic style of governance like the US? Perhaps it is more dangerous to live in a freedom-loving democratic republic, but the number of people clamoring to get into the US vs the lack of people trying to leave tells us there's value in the risk.
That's not to say we shouldn't strive to get those numbers down, but personally I think we should be focusing on mental health, of which social media has a huge impact. Banning the weapon - as is the common suggestion - is treating the symptom, not the cause.
But we also place too much emphasis on school shootings when, as demonstrated, other things are far more dangerous to kids.
I understand the motivation behind this argument, but I haven’t seen compelling evidence that mental health issues are the “cause” and weapon availability is the “symptom.” There are mentally ill people all over the world, many of whom attempt to commit mass murder but are not as successful as they are in the US. Try killing four people in a row with a knife and you’ll have a much more difficult time. Contrast that to my city, where a fourth person was accidentally killed because they were in proximity of a gunfight a few years ago (in a decent part of town too. Scary.) As large as it is, the same will never happen in Tokyo.
Strictly speaking on numbers though, the evidence I’ve seen weighs heavily on the side of weapon availability being the root cause, with countries and states with fewer weapon restrictions having more weapons-related deaths per capita. All this talk of “weapons aren’t the problem, people are” therefore strikes me as disingenuous.
I thoroughly believe in keeping rifles around because hunting is vital to my community. I remain unconvinced that handguns and automatic weapons are at all important to protecting US democracy (though I’m certainly willing to be disproven).
Statistics from places like Canada or Switzerland (which have and historically had lots of guns per capita) demonstrate that weapon availability itself does not cause such violence.
You compared Japan's rate of violence to America's, and conclude that America's policies must be the cause. This is wrong because you're comparing completely different groups of people. What you should be doing is to compare Japan's rate of violence to the rates among Japanese immigrants in America.
If you want to figure out which variable matters you need to isolate that variable. And if you do, you'll discover that results come from the people much more than the policy.
The difference between America and these places is that America harbors specific subcultures which glorify violence, gangs, drug trade, criminality and generally antisocial behaviour. If you're not involved in these subcultures, or in close proximity to them, you really have nothing to worry about. Hyper-rare stray bullet incidents "in a decent part of town" don't change this. (I recognize that some people can't escape these subcultures and suffer from them, but again, this is a subcultural problem).
That's not to say we shouldn't strive to get those numbers down, but personally I think we should be focusing on mental health, of which social media has a huge impact. Banning the weapon - as is the common suggestion - is treating the symptom, not the cause.
But we also place too much emphasis on school shootings when, as demonstrated, other things are far more dangerous to kids.