Actually there WAS no japanese ninja sword culture. The Shinobi would not use the fine swords which took great effort and time to make, the katana, wakizashi, tanto of the traditional samurai was very different in the way it was viewed. To a samurai, their blades were close to sacred, to a ninja (Shinobi, essentially the first spooks, they were terrorist/dissenters/saboteurs/assassins and intelligence agents for hire), the ninja wouldn't have such attachment to his weapons, and ninja-to blades would be essentially fit for purpose, but something that could rapidly be discarded if needs be. Early japanese equivalent of stamped sheet metal parts and rapid manufacture turnover, akin to say, the more modern sten gun.
I know, I own one (there was a ban on samurai swords here, or rather curved blades over a certain length. The fact that my ninja-to ends in a shallow acute angle sidesteps said ban. True katana are only legal here in the cases of swords having great historical value, and those used in martial arts practices, but anyone can go and get themselves a ninja-to and as said, go turn a shopping mall into an abattoir if they happen to be a psycho fuck, the curve vs acute angle doesn't make any difference in what happens to something hit by a long blade like that, where its solely at the very tip, no extra leverage produced that one curved in the middle and shaped like a machete etc. would provide)
As for criminals and guns..if you take away all capacity to get guns, its ONLY the law abiding who are affected, those who wouldn't go on a murder spree in the first place. The criminal underworld doesn't have any regard for such laws to begin with and they already get their hands on illegal, untrackable guns. The ones not affected by the bans are limited to the ones who would already think nothing of shooting up an orphanage.
Edit to reply to bigguycia-
Excellent analogy to prohibition. What happened when the US began prohibition? it created a massive market for mobsters to muscle in on the alcohol trade. Also things happened that were truly tragic, such as the drinking of ginger extract (an ethanolic extract), that was very strong in alcohol content, up to about 70%, and was required by tax/customs dept. to have a minimum ginger content that would make it unpalatable to drink. As a result, various adulterants were used to trick customs, eventually, a particularly bad one, tri-(ortho)-cresyl phosphate, which proved to cause a demyelinating polyneuropathy particularly affecting the extremities, hands and in particular lower legs and feet, causing a distinctive walk due to the paralysis of certain muscle groups, known as jake leg, in those who were not killed or paralyzed to an extent they could not function. 50 thousand casualties, mostly the poor and the downtrodden, who recieved little or no help from the govt. afterwards.
Prohibition just made more and worse criminals and brought all the nasties to come sliming their way out of the woodwork. It not only didn't succeed, it could not. Just the same with the awful 'war on drugs' (in reality a war on drug users, waged with armed troops against the civilian populace of countries who did not wish to engage in warfare to begin with, on citizens of the same countries as send their armed thugs to assault, kidnap and sometimes kill them)
With alcohol, its happened in several countries, ireland, US, poland, alcohol prohibition led to a switch too, where those who would formerly drink alcohol would drink diethyl ether instead, a fairly common lab solvent, although it isn't toxic, and actually, IMO, is better for you than alcohol. I drink it from time to time, as I'm not a big alcohol fan, and ether doesn't cause those filthy hangovers due to acetaldehyde formation as a metabolite of alcohol. Make quite a good cocktail with it actually, something I call a 'manhattan project' as a bit of tongue in cheek humor based on the manhattan cocktail and the US nuke program.
There has been a demand for intoxicants dating from time before measure, ancient prehistory. Even gorillas have been observed to dig up certain roots in parts of tropical africa which they get shitfaced on. Dolphins will use (and even pass around and share, as if they were people passing the bong
) puffer fish, that produce tetrodotoxin, the infamous 'fugu' japanese sushi paralytic poison, molesting the fish but not eating or killing it, just to make it release low levels of TTX, and seem to get hammered on it.
People have used various seeds, tree bark, tree resins, roots, plants, fruits, certain animals, to become inebriated, for shamanic and for social reasons, and purely recreationally since before people had cuneiform inscriptions on stone tablets. The demand is there, it will not go away, something that deep rooted can't just be pulled up like a weed and thrown away. Nor, IMO should it. Regulation is the answer. Quality control overseen, prices would drop, the virulent murdering, butchering cartels would be put out of business overnight and reduced to penury. The illegal market would evaporate, and instead people could buy known pure, safer compounds from dispensaries, pick up their MDMA, LSD, the safer synthetic cannabinoids, their opiates, amphetamines from pharmacies. And receive health advice from qualified pharmacists, if things weren't illegal, things like heroin habits driving people into destitution wouldn't exist. And things like ibogaine therapy for treating addictions would be available and advertised by the clinics rather than this wonder-drug for addiction treatment having to go via covert underground channels.
Fighting such a 'war on drugs' can't win, because there is no centralization. There is no bin laden, no head of the snake to lop off. Traffickers are concerned with their own links in the chain, manufacturers are concerned with synthing the produce and getting it to their connection. Remove one and ten more will spring up to fill the vacuum. Thus, this phony, barbarous war on drug users, it failed before ever pen was put to paper to draft a bill of law.
And the only option is to legalize and regulate and provide safely. Or to keep murdering and butchering and incarcerating those who have never employed violence, never stolen, but simply possessed a substance or plant for their consumption.
The habits of addictive drugs, if the prices, after legalization and regulation, reflected the actual cost of production and distribution plus some profit of course for the people making, selling and transporting, the things that go for £20 a couple of hundred mg and require unreliable, shady fucks to deal with, would cost a few pounds, and be there when one would need them, addicts could self-taper, if they did become addicts in the first place.
Things like medical practitioners being afraid to script opiates to pain patients in agony (something I know too much about. I've got injuries that won't heal, that leave me in constant, severe pain that is often disabling, and while I've now got painkillers, even now, I get looked at like a damn criminal, like a dirty undesirable just for asking for something, like, say, if I become injured and require pain relief, just voicing the question will make most doctors react as if I'd just told them I was going to rape their children and burn the family cat alive, or as if I'd just thrown a poisonous snake into their lap. Just BEING on pain meds is these days as near to being vermin and a criminal as it can get without actually being convicted of an offense. And just needing more for a week or two because of a wound the meds one is already taking are insufficient to allow one to walk far enough to piss or get food. This happened to me only weeks ago, after badly hurting my foot, leaving me stuck on the couch, immobilized and pissing in a bottle. Yet now I'm being looked at by all but one doctor at the surgery, as if I'm dirt, just for needing to be able to roll over and urinate in said bottle without being in so much pain I couldn't manage to do so)
