Gunning Down a Civilization : The horrible death of two students

“W hy doesn’t Japan have problems like this? They don’t have guns on the street. We’ve got to have stronger laws or we’re going to kill each other off.”

--Erica Stenta, a student at Marymount College Stenta’s plaintive call for tougher gun control laws echoes across the nation as we mourn the murders in San Pedro of two much-admired college students from Japan.

Takuma Ito and Go Matsuura were gunned down in a carjacking last Friday at a supermarket parking lot. The 19-year-olds died Sunday from shots fired at close range into the backs of their heads. They had come to Marymount College to become filmmakers.

Their deaths are yet one more grim reminder of the need to move America toward a near-total ban on the possession and manufacture of handguns and assault weapons to reduce the supply of firearms that are contributing to gunshot homicides and accidents. For while the shooting of the Japanese students grabbed world headlines this weekend, and was an international embarrassment for the United States, a crime of this sort was nothing new for police. Every week police blotters fill with gunshot victims no less innocent than Ito and Matsuura; almost every day the targets of bullets die with scant notice.

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Walter Mondale, in expressing official condolences in Tokyo, stressed that such crimes do not represent everyday American life. Granted. But shootings do occur far too often here, in part because it is too easy to get a gun.

To foreign--and now, especially, Japanese--eyes, U.S. gun laws are irresponsible and impossible to understand. Japan’s gun laws are among the world’s strictest. Guns can be sold only to those legally authorized to possess them--members of police or defense forces, prison guards, licensed hunters and marksmen who compete in approved competitions. A gun owner must carry a permit, as well as proof that the weapon is registered. And police have the authority to look for and seize firearms.

Sounds like a plan to us.

In 1992, 66 people were killed in firearm-related homicides in Japan, a country of 124 million; handguns were used in 60 of those killings. With almost double the population, the United States that year had 15,377 gun murders--13,220 by handgun.

Certainly the United States and Japan are not entirely comparable. Japan is homogeneous and an island nation; America is diverse with porous borders. But respect for life crosses cultures and oceans--or at least it should. Unfortunately, sometimes in the United States guns get more respect than people.