You can support gun control without supporting total suppression; even Japan, with some of the world’s strictest gun control laws, still lets you buy one if you qualify.
And to qualify, you usually have to be extremely rich and well-connected, thus enforcing the idea that there are two sets of laws - one for hoi polloi and one for the exalted elite. I think it's better when there's just one, and your rights do not depend on who you know.
That's just straight-up wrong. Legal ownership of a gun in Japan requires an extreme amount of bureaucracy, but it's entirely possible and most legal gun owners in Japan are (non-rich, non-well-connected) farmers.
OP may very well be referring to California. There are some districts where concealed carry permits are "may issue" -- issued at the discretion of an authority like a sheriff -- as opposed to "shall issue" -- mandatory issuing if you meet the legal obligations / restrictions. In practice, this results in celebrities and the well-connected getting permits, and "nobody" citizens with clean records and legitimate personal safety concerns being denied permits.
You are the second person in this thread who has claimed that the Japanese system is elitist. When I looked and replies to the other person I couldn't find any evidence of this, so I'm interested where you got this idea.
Here's a story on how to buy a gun in Japan[1]. The only fee is $60 for the gun license course, so I don't see where the argument about having to be rich is coming from.
Japan doesn't have low gun violence because of strict laws, it's because culturally there is simply no desire to own guns (per-capita ownership rate is 0.3, near the bottom of all countries[1]), combined with an overall low violent crime rate due to their high trust, homogeneous society.
There's simply no comparison to the USA where firearms are a deep part of our history and culture, and where our right to bear arms is recognized right in the Constitution. That's reflected in our per-capita ownership rate.
If you look just at the laws, Venezuela has even stricter gun control laws than Japan (complete private ownership ban) yet it has the highest gun homicide rate on the planet.
This is a really bad example, specifically wrt Paul Allen. Many of those arguing against him dislike the idea of having two classes of folks, the elite that can own weapons, and plain folks. Japan is the definition of this system...
I'm not familiar with the Japanese system, but according to the library of congress report[1]:
According to gun-shop websites, although obtaining a gun-possession permit the first time is cumbersome, it is not difficult if one follows the requisite steps
Reading through the requirements the only thing which seems "elitist" is (maybe) that undischarged bankrupts can't own a gun. The rules seem pretty reasonable and sensible to me.
I'm interested why you think this is about two classes?
