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Getting a gun in Japan
In Japan, you cannot buy a handgun, much less an assault rifle. In fact, even off-duty police officers are banned from carrying guns.
You can buy a shotgun or an air rifle, but it is not easy:
- First, you have to take a class and a written exam.
- Then there's a skill test at a shooting range
- Next is a drug test
- Then a mental evaluation.
- Assuming you pass all those tests, you file with the police, who then run a background check.
No wonder Japan has one of the lowest gun ownership rates in the world.
But does it work?
In 2008, the U.S. had 12,000 gun-related murders. Japan had 11. More than double that number were killed in the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.
What does America's Second Amendment really mean?
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is the section of the Bill of Rights that enshrines American's right to keep and bear arms, or weapons.
CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin examined this text in the wake of the latest mass shooting in the United States.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
For 100 years, the Supreme Court said that the second part of the text had nothing to do with individuals' rights to bear arms, according to Toobin. But four years ago, the Supreme Court, in a case called “Heller,” said the Second Amendment does mean that individuals have the right to a handgun at home.
What is not clear is how much more Americans have a right to: whether they have a right to handguns in the streets, whether they have a right to machine guns, semi-automatic weapons. But handguns at home, at least, are protected by the U.S. Constitution.
MORE: Shell-shocked U.S. Senator and gun supporter: ‘Time to change gun culture’
Shell-shocked U.S. Senator: ‘Time to change gun culture’
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin has an “A” rating from the NRA (National Riffle Association), which is the most powerful gun-rights lobby in the United States. But the massacre at a Connecticut elementary school last week has prompted him to call for “total change” in American gun laws.
Stateless man stuck on island
By Samuel Burke & Lucky Gold, CNN
In the movie "The Terminal," actor Tom Hanks plays a man who suddenly finds himself stateless when his country ceases to exist. New York’s JFK Airport becomes his only home.
That movie was loosely based on a true story, but for Mikhail Sebastian being stateless is a dilemma that is all too real.
Sebastian is stateless. He is an ethnic Armenian born in Azerbaijan in what was the Soviet Union. He was forced to flee when the Soviet bloc began to crumble in the 1990s. He tried to take refuge in Armenia but eventually wound up in the newly independent nation of Turkmenistan. But Sebastian is gay and homosexuality is illegal there.
So once again, he had to search for a home. He came to the United States and was allowed to stay as a “stateless person.” There was only one catch: Since he still held the passport from the Soviet Union, a place that no longer existed, he could not travel outside the United States – a tough reality for a man who loves to travel. So Sebastian set out from his home in Los Angeles to too many parts of the United States, including the American territories of Guam and Puerto Rico.
Last December, he was allowed to fly to American Samoa – a U.S. territory in the South Pacific – for a brief vacation.
But while Sebastian was there, he took a short side trip to Western Samoa, not realizing that it is a separate and independent nation. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deemed that self-deportation and so for the past year, Sebastian's been trapped in limbo, unable to leave American Samoa and return to the United States.
Sebastian says his only wish this Christmas is to get back home to Los Angeles.
Plea from parents of missing American in Syria
By Claire Calzonetti, Samuel Burke & Mick Krever CNN
“I don’t have a death wish; I have a life wish,” Austin Tice wrote after his third month in Syria, working as a freelance journalist. “Coming here to Syria is the greatest thing I’ve ever done, and it’s the greatest feeling of my life.”
That was in July. A month later he was kidnapped, and is still missing today.
His parents, Marc and Debra Tice, say they are “absolutely” certain Austin is still alive. They sat down for a rare interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday to explain their son’s story, and plead for his safe return.
Thirty-one-year-old Austin Tice disappeared in mid-August while reporting outside Damascus. His writing had been featured in the Washington Post and McClatchy newspapers.
In what would be the final Tweet before his capture in August, the Texas native appeared to be in good spirits. On August 11 he wrote, “Spent the day at an FSA pool party with music by [Taylor Swift]. They even brought me whiskey. Hands down, best birthday ever.”
The Tices talked almost daily with their son, then suddenly they heard nothing from him for weeks.
After an agonizing wait, a video of the journalist surfaced on YouTube in September. The 47-second video showed Tice, obviously in distress, being led up a hill by armed and masked men chanting “Allahu Akbar” – God is the greatest.
Debra Tice said she went into physical shock when she saw the video, but also realized what it meant: Austin was still alive.
Tice’s father told Amanpour that “No parents, no family should see their son, their child, their sibling, in those circumstances,” but he hopes the video might ultimately lead to contact with whomever is holding their son.
Analysts say the video looks staged and that there are reasons to believe the men in the video are not the Islamic extremists they purport to be.
The U.S. State Department believes Tice is actually being held by the Syrian regime, a charge Damascus denies.
Tice’s parents say they do not want to speculate about who is holding him – they just want their son back home.
Debra Tice described Austin, the eldest of her seven children, as a passionate man. She tried to explain, for a mother, the seemingly inexplicable: Why her son would go to one of the most violent countries on earth.
“He likes to know what's going on in the world,” she said, and he was frustrated by the lack first-hand reporting from Syria’s civil war. He told her, “‘I'm someone that can go. I can face that danger because this story is important.’”
On the chance that Austin sees the interview his parents spoke directly to him: “Austin, we love you … we’re doing everything we can to get you safely home.”
The Tice family has established a website to help find their son: http://www.austinticefamily.com/
Strangulation of Iran's civil society
By Samuel Burke, CNN
Unlike many of its neighbors, Iran has enjoyed a strong civil society – the intellectuals and professionals who influence the national trajectory outside the spheres of government and business. This was especially true during the 1990s and early 2000s, during the presidency of reformist Mohammad Khatami.
According to Human Rights Watch, that distinction is slipping.
A conservative backlash to Khatami, the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the crackdown following the 2009 disputed elections have slowly strangulated the careers and lives of Iranian activists, human rights lawyers, bloggers and journalists.
Simply put, professionals are fleeing, fearing arbitrary arrests, detention and even death.
Since 2009, the number of civil society activists who have applied for asylum has steadily increased. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Iranians filed more than 11,000 new asylum applications in 2009, 15,000 in 2010 and 18,000 in 2011.
READ MORE: Number of jailed journalists worldwide reaches record high
Many activists have sought temporary refuge and an uncertain future in neighboring Turkey and Iraq, according to Human Rights Watch.
Faraz Sanei monitors the situation in Iran for the group, and told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that the Iranian government used the 2009 elections as a pretext to go after any sort of dissent or and opposition in the country.
“That meant going after independent NGOs, independent journalists who were critical of the government and human rights activists,” he said. “Many of them were imprisoned - arbitrary arrests and detentions. Many of them were detained in secret detention facilities, tortured often and put in solitary confinement. They did not have access to lawyers.”
Many of these civil society professionals were given unfair trials in revolutionary courts, Sanei said, and sentenced to anywhere from five to 20 years in prison. Often, he said, their imprisonment was punishment essentially for doing their job: speaking out against the government and its actions.
There are currently 45 journalists in Iranian prisons according to the Committee to Protest Journalist – the second most of any country in the world, behind only Turkey.
Years of crackdowns are causing a brain drain, though it is not enough to be called a mass exodus, and nowhere near the refugee crisis that has resulted from Syria’s civil war,
Human rights lawyers are fleeing or in prison, including many of the colleagues of Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, who is also in prison.
Sanctions are seen by many in the West as a tool to help force change from the government, but many ordinary Iranians complain that the global sanctions against the country are hurting the very people that presumably the world wants to help.
Groups like Human Rights Watch are pushing for targeted human rights sanctions, against high-ranking individuals as well as security and intelligence forces, who they say are implicated in serious human rights violations.
They hope these measures might reverse the shrinking space in Iran’s civil society.
SPECIAL PRESENTATION – A Nuclear Iran: The Expert Intel
CNN’s Juliet Fuisz produced this piece for television.
Who comprises the Syrian opposition?
Caroline Magee is a student journalist and guest writer for Amanpour.com
The United States, along with several European and Gulf countries have now recognized the Syrian opposition. But who exactly is the opposition?
National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces
This is the opposition group that is being internationally recognized as representative of the Syrian people. Indeed, it was created in Doha, Qatar for the express purpose of unifying the different opposition groups.
The Coalition is a political organization. Its goal is to replace the Assad regime and to support the Free Syrian Army (explained below). While many of the smaller rebel coalitions have now rallied around this group, it has faced criticism from other groups parts of the coalition, especially specifically the al-Nusra front and leaders of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, for being disconnected from the front line (the Coalition is establishing a base in Cairo) and because of ideological differences over Islam.
Free Syrian Army
This is the primary armed component of the opposition. It is comprised of defectors from the Assad regime’s army and is led by Selim Idris, who is a former Syrian army officer.
Al-Nusra Front
The United States has placed this rebel group on its list of terror organizations; administration officials say it is a branch of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Leaders of the Coalition say al-Nusra is relatively small, but also say they have been one of the most effective anti-Assad fighting forces in Syria. Because of al-Nusra’s fighting strength, many in the Free Syrian Army have protested the U.S. designation.
Kurdish Supreme Committee
This is the governing body for Syria’s Kurdish population. It receives support from the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (the PYD), which has a Turkish equivalent – the Kurdistan Workers’ Party – that the United States calls a terrorist organization.
The other group associated with the Kurdish Supreme Committee is the Kurdish National Council, which has had friction with the Turkish PYD over the group’s alleged past support of the Assad regime.
Backlash to U.S. moves in Syria
The Syrian Opposition Vice President
Christiane Amanpour speaks with George Sabra about the U.S. decision to recognize the Syrian opposition.
No diplomatic solution in Syria
The United States' former point man on Syria's transition says there's little chance for a diplomatic solution.
By Samuel Burke, CNN
The United States’ former point person on Syria admits that there is practically no chance diplomacy will ever remove Bashar al-Assad.
Former Ambassador Frederic Hof told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday, “My sense is that this will be ultimately decided through force of arms on the ground” – despite the Obama administration’s reluctance to give heavy weapons to rebels.
President Obama announced on Monday that the U.S. would formally recognize the opposition as representative of the Syrian people, but that may not have a significant effect, at least for now.
“I think in terms of the military situation on the ground, quite bluntly, it changes nothing in the near term,” Ambassador Hof told Amanpour. But he believes that politically, it is good for Syrians in the long term.
Despite the violence in Syria, many groups are nervous about what would happen if al-Assad were to leave - particularly minorities who have been protected under Assad’s rule. But Hof believes that the U.S. recognition puts a face on the opposition and will help reassure the various factions.
At the same time it recognized the opposition, the Obama administration designated a group known as al-Nusra as terrorists—a move which was been met with backlash in Syria. FULL POST
Oliver Stone's 'untold American history'
American film director Oliver Stone has devoted his career to an alternate take on American history. He is the director of Academy Award-winning movies like, "JFK," "Nixon" and "Platoon." He has often faced criticism for his deviation from mainstream history. His latest project is a 10-part TV series and companion book called "The Untold History of the United States." It is not the American history that you may have been taught, but Stone says that is precisely the point. The program will be aired inside and outside of the U.S. And Stone wants students of all nationalities to know what he believes was left out of American history books.
U.S. says Egypt opposition has ‘legitimate concerns’
By Mick Krever, CNN
Egypt’s opposition is expressing “legitimate concerns, both about the content and the process” of President Morsy’s proposed constitution, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner said on Tuesday.
“Let me be clear: Our view is that the constitution needs to be for all Egyptians,” Posner told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “It needs to be based on universal principles of human rights.”
Tensions are rising in Egypt as competing protests formed across Cairo on Tuesday, and a referendum on the proposed constitution nears. FULL POST
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