In what will likely be a pattern of misstatements, new Secretary of State John Kerry told CNN foreign affairs correspondent Jill Dougherty in Tokyo, that students don’t want to come here because of gun violence.  In reference to Japan specifically, he said that he heard in a couple of “quiet conversations” how “safe it is here where people are not running around with guns”.  And that, students, particularly from Japan, aren’t going to the U.S., “because they think they aren’t safe in the United States so they don’t come”.  The first point to be made to the Secretary is you don’t make blanket statements based on conversations of a few people. And second, you don’t state statistics, without factual evidence.  It would be the same as saying yesterday as I was walking through Manhattan, and saw a huge group of Japanese tourists, so Japanese tourism must be booming.  The way for the secretary to push his agenda on gun control is not to ridicule or give credence to what a few people overseas may be telling him in conversations.  Furthermore, as fourth in line to the Presidency and as our highest level foreign diplomat you don’t knock your own country to make a point.  Kerry’s response should have been, based on the number of people in our great nation, gun violence is not in fact out of control and people aren’t roaming the streets looking to shoot someone.  But therein lies one very important difference between liberals and conservatives.  Loyalty and devotion to country, especially when outside her borders, comes before all else.  Yes Kerry was just passing on what he had heard, but he was clearly taking the gun control debate to a country where the government doesn’t allow any private gun ownership.  Shame on him doing it on foreign soil, albeit an ally.  What Kerry failed to mention while in Japan, is that he was in a country that prostituted their women in the war effort.  That the importance of the individual is negligible when weighed against the importance of the group.  That some of the most cruelty inflicted by men on other men was perpetrated by the Japanese.  So before condemning his own country and bringing an important, internal debate to foreign shores, he should think before speaking.