Global gun control, CNN's Kyung Lah compares policy in Japan with policy in the U.S.

In 2008, Japan had 11 gun-related murders while the United States had 12 thousand. Perhaps other countries can offer America ideas for more effective gun control policies. CNN’s Kyung Lah, who has reported extensively on Japan as CNN"s Tokyo Correspondent, looks into it this morning.

In Lah’s five years of living and reporting in Japan, she says she never covered a shooting because there wasn’t one. “In Japan, there are almost no guns. The average person just can’t get one,” she says. “It’s the safest place I’ve ever lived.”

Living in the U.S. has been strikingly different for Lah.  The Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre is the third mass shooting she's covered in just six months. “But these mass shootings, which are now a part of our American narrative, follow a familiar pattern: The shock, national outrage, memorials, funerals, then the conversation fades.”