Accordingly, the reason other countries have a lower crime rate must be because they have strong gun control laws. In my book, I looked at gun control in seven democratic nations in addition to the United States. I found that, of the seven nations I studied, the two safest nations by a wide margin had very strict gun control laws. The first of these two nations with strict laws is Japan. In Japan, rifles and handguns are entirely outlawed and the possession of shotguns and air guns is only allowed under a very, very severe licensing system that imposes an enormous bureaucratic burden on the potential licensee.
Japan is an extremely safe society.
I think the Japanese gun laws have quite a lot to do with that, indirectly, because guns are unavailable. Japan has a very strong organized crime group known as the Yakuza. Illegal drugs, illegal guns, illegal anything else you want, Filipino sex slaves literally, all those kinds of things are available through the Yakuza. But there is very little demand even within the criminal community for guns. People are expected to subordinate their individual desires to the greater collective good.