china would never waste money on prisons, thats why they have deth penalty for everything. π
Discussion
China leads the world in executions. Thousands of them per year, but the population is over 1.4 billion. Without exact numbers, we can't calculate their pro-capita execution rate, but it's definitely the highest for a large country that isn't engaged in a large-scale war.

USA and China have roughly equal numbers of prisoners, but the China has 4x the number of people.
The probability of being arrested, in the USA, is 4x higher. Even if you add in 5k executions (a wild overestimate), it remains 4x.
2) However, the United States incarceration rate per capita is still outrageous, for such an advanced, wealthy country.

anytime someone groups all of america into one thing to make a point, i look up their country and compare it's size to a state. a *single state.
for example, germany is the size of wyoming. to me this means, you should keep your nice things by staying small and possible for people to agree on how to make things nice.
so, i bet i can find a state where the stats are different..
im not going to tho, my only point is.. america is big and not really the federal gov that has as much effect on crime rates and such as each state and the people in the state do..
at least, that's what it feels like.
Okay. Compare America to the EU, then. EU has 450 million residents and the USA has 347 mil.
Germany has 82 milllion residents and is highly industrialized and densely populated. Wyoming has half a million and is nearly empty. You would need something more like California or Texas.
EU has 111/100k in prison. USA has 580/100k.
Germany 70/100k
California 319/100k
Texas 450/100k
japan has half the incarceration rate as germany, silly germans, prob cause they ..
see, this is what stats sound like π
but yes, there is def a high incarceration rate in the US and it does suck. but it's not cause of guns, it's for many reasons beyond our control and taking away guns will only make things less safe and worse.
there is also lots to dig in to these stats, do they include jails? or just prisons? people in jail are short term or awaiting trial etc.. and slowdowns in courts cause these numbers to go up. drug related crimes are way high, almost half of it. big pharma dont want you using drugs they dont sell, etc.
big problems and lots of it.. much of it not related to guns. guns are a tool, and as you said, there are plenty of other ways to be violent. many reasons to need a gun, such as, protecting your self from wild animals, or hunting. as america is full of wilderness and farms. it would be impossible and makes no sense to take away guns, and then only criminals would have them.
I suspect it's mostly because American prison sentences tend to be draconian, so each person stays in longer. And because you incarcerate people for things they'd get a fine, therapy, or probation for, elsewhere.
Japan is full of Japanese people. They have a low incarceration rate, everywhere they emigrate to.
That one is really easy to explain.
