Photo/Illutration Students discuss U.S. gun control at Asahigaoka High School in Nagoya’s Higashi Ward on Dec. 17. (Shuhei Takei)

NAGOYA--Japanese and foreign high school students discussed U.S. gun culture on Dec. 17 at an annual event held here to commemorate a Japanese teenager who was fatally shot in Louisiana in 1992.

Asahigaoka High School in Nagoya’s Higashi Ward held the exchange with four students from the United States, Finland, India and Malaysia. The high school’s student council has hosted the event since 2007.

Hinata Shimizu, a second-year student of the high school, agreed that U.S. society would be better off without guns, but she acknowledged the difficulties in reaching that goal.

“When I think of U.S. culture and the belief that guns provide safety, it seems it will not be easy to suddenly get rid of guns,” the 16-year-old said.

Another participant was Abigail Dalisay, 17, from California, who has been studying at a high school in Tokyo since spring.

“Everyone here was seriously thinking about how to deal with guns,” she said. “As I had never had in-depth discussions about gun control in the United States, I was able to learn a lot.”

She is supported by the Yoshi Foundation, which was set up in 1993 by Masaichi Hattori, 72, and his wife, Mieko, 71, who both attended the Dec. 17 discussion.

Their 16-year-old son, Yoshihiro, had attended Asahigaoka High School.

When Yoshihiro was studying in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as an exchange student, he headed to a Halloween party but went to the wrong house on Oct. 17, 1992.

The male resident mistook Hattori for a trespasser, raised his gun and yelled, “Freeze.”

Hattori was shot when he approached the man. A jury found the shooter not guilty at his criminal trial in 1993.

Since their son’s death, the parents have been pressing for tighter gun control in the United States. They established the Yoshi Foundation using accidental death benefits.