Under the auspices of the United Nations, no nation is working harder to disarm American citizens than is Japan. With help from Canada and Colombia, Japan is the main engine pushing the United Nations to promote “small arms” controls which would obliterate the Second Amendment.

There are three problems with Japan’s effort. First, it is a form of cultural imperialism, which shows ignorance of the ways in which American society’ is different from the Japanese. It also flies in the face of a constitutionally guaranteed right. Third, these attempts indicate a willful blindness to Japan’s own history—a history that supports arguments against gun control even in Japan.

Let’s start with the misunderstanding of America. In Japan, crime rates are very low. Burglary is rare, and most people feel perfectly safe. The Japanese usually do not need to take extraordinary steps to protect themselves from violent criminals. Conditions in America, however, are rather different. And the conditions are different not just because of guns; even if all gun crime were eliminated, America’s violent crime rate would still be many times higher than Japan’s. Our police cannot guarantee individual security; hence, many Americans must provide their own.

Firearms are one option that many people choose, and firearms in the hands of law-abiding people make America safer. Over a dozen studies —including one paid for by an anti-gun group—have found that Americans use firearms hundreds of thousands of times yearly for lawful protection. These uses usually don’t involve pulling the trigger; brandishing the gun generally is enough to frighten off a would-be assailant.

About half of all American homes contain a gun, and the prevalence of guns in American households plays a major role in reducing burglary. When American burglaries do occur, the burglars generally break in during the daytime. Burglars take the extra risk of stealing in daylight because they realize that if they break in at night, people may be home, and the burglars stand a good chance of getting shot. Since burglars don’t know which homes have guns and which don’t, the entire community—not just the gun-owners—benefits from the deterrent value of widespread gun ownership. By contrast, burglars in other English-speaking countries are much more willing to attack a home when homeowners are present.

Another reason so many Americans choose to own guns is the example set by our government. The Japanese police almost never draw their revolvers, and instead use their expertise in judo and other martial arts to subdue criminals, hi America, however, about one person a day is fatally shot by the police. The frequent use of guns by American police legitimates the use of guns in general.

Japan’s activism in the cause of gun prohibition was galvanized by the shooting death of Yoshihiro Hattori, a Japanese exchange student who was shot by a Louisiana homeowner in 1992 after Hattori left a Halloween party where he had been drinking, trespassed on the man’s property, and began advancing toward the man despite the man’s repeated warnings to “freeze.” Hattori’s grieving family responded by circulating petitions urging the American government to ban the possession of guns in the home.

While this family’s grief is understandable, its public policy is not, because even if Hattori’s family were to prevail, the result might not be what they intended. Whenever American cities or states have enacted laws forbidding the possession of particular types of guns, or simply requiring that people tell the government what kinds of guns they own, most Americans have refused to obey such laws. Depending on the law and the region, disobedience rates range from 75 percent to 98 percent. If the possession of guns in the home were prohibited, a significant number of Americans would refuse to comply. And, incredible as it may sound to the Japanese, many Americans would shoot a policeman who came to confiscate their guns.

Perhaps even more incredibly, from a Japanese viewpoint, our Constitution implicitiy endorses such behavior. The Second Amendment guarantees the right to own and carry firearms. The historical record shows that the core purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that, if the central government ever became dictatorial, the American people would be able to overpower it. The men who wrote the Constitution presumed that any government that would confiscate guns would do so as a first step toward restricting political and social liberties.

Japanese history itself shows the importance of an armed populace. As historian Hidehiro Sonada explains, the military was able to dominate Japan in the 1920’s, 30’s, and early 40’s partly because the “army and the navy were vast organizations with a monopoly on physical violence. There was no force in Japan that could offer any resistance.”

When the Japanese dictator Hidiyoshi disarmed Japan in 1588 with the Sword Hunt, he did so because, as he put it, the possession of weapons by peasants “makes difficult the collection of taxes and tends to foment uprisings.” Once the peasants had been disarmed, they were increasingly oppressed. American historian Stephen Turnbull notes that, after the Sword Hunt was completed, “The growing social mobility of peasants was thus flung suddenly into reverse.” Having once enjoyed the freedom to choose jobs as they pleased, weaponless peasants were forbidden to leave their land without their superiors’ permission. Just as the American Founders would have expected, disarmament paved the way for de facto slavery.

American ownership of guns is deeply tied to concepts of individualism, self-protection, and freedom from oppressive government. To the group-oriented Japanese, our attitudes may seem absurd or even barbaric. But in this century, it has been Japan, not the United States, which allowed itself to be run by a military dictatorship, and to start a world war. In a civilized society, the people control the government, and they are trusted by the government. It is gun prohibition, not gun ownership, that is uncivilized.

Most American gun owners have the good manners not to try to force their Second Amendment ideals on Japan. The Japanese should not try to force their own ideology on the United States.