To Rabbitoh: Having fishing rods easily available is unlikely to raise the death rate (fishing hook injuries might rise though, and eye injuries!). The problem is not with hunting per se, but with having lethal devices like guns freely available, since they imperil the rest of us. Hunt away to your heart's content, I say, but I'll vote for anyone who wants to take your guns away. Sorry.
But I don't fish either. I'm not really into killing things myself. Doesn't mean I've got anything against you doing it though. If you wanted to use your bare hands that would be great.
To gyro: Au contraire, the fact that guns are easily available in the US does not make a comparison of gun deaths there with gun deaths here and in Japan invalid. It is actually the whole point of the comparison. It's a natural experiment: take three urban societies; fill one with guns; half fill another; put no guns in the last. Mix and stir for one year. Count the number of people killed in each country from guns; divide by the population in each country. Even calculate confidence intervals if you like. Rough measures, I'll grant you, but hardly invalid.
Your point about overall death rates is quite good. Unfortunately I don't have violent death statistics at my fingertips. I may try to look it up. But even just overall death rates are interesting, since out of the three countries I've mentioned, the US has the lowest life expectancy, Japan the highest, and Australia lies somewhere in between.
