November 22, 2019

It has come to light that the Maritime Self-Defense Force let public junior high school students handle a gun during their visit to the MSDF Maizuru base (Kyoto Pref.) for a vocational experience program.

Activists from a teachers’ union, women’s groups, and pro-constitutional groups in Kyoto on November 20 made representations to the JSDF Kyoto Provincial Cooperation Office to protest against the matter.

In the representations, criticizing the MSDF’s act of allowing access to guns by junior high students, the activists said that such an act does not meet the purpose of school-based workplace experience programs. They submitted to the SDF office a written request urging Defense Minister Kono Taro and the cooperation office head to take measures to prevent a recurrence.

The activists’ group in the written request pointed out that the MSDF encourages children to hold guns, which violates the basic principle of the gun control act. They demanded that access to firearms be banned in vocational experience programs carried out by public junior high schools. In addition, they called on the SDF not to force local public organizations to cooperate in its recruiting activities.