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Former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe Assassinated With ‘Improvised Firearm’

Posted on | July 9, 2022 | Comments Off on Former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe Assassinated With ‘Improvised Firearm’

The suspect’s motive is not yet known:

Police on Friday raided the home of the man suspected of using an improvised firearm to assassinate former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and said they seized multiple weapons that also appeared to be homemade.
The discovery followed the arrest of the suspect — identified by officials as Tetsuya Yamagami, 41 — in the western Japanese city of Nara, where Abe had been delivering a campaign speech outdoors ahead of parliamentary elections this weekend.
Local media captured video and photos of the bulky weapon that police said was used to kill Abe. They confirmed that the firearm consists of two metal barrels attached to a wooden board and is more than a foot long.
“We are conducting forensics, but clearly it looks homemade,” a Nara police chief said at a news conference.
Police said several weapons were also found at Yamagami’s residence and were similar to the firearm believed to be used to shoot Abe. They added that it was unclear whether the suspect had the proper licenses for the weapons.
The shooting death of Abe, Japan’s longest-serving leader before resigning in 2020 because of health issues, has stunned a nation where gun violence is extremely rare.

The assassination of a leading politician in America would also be stunning, despite the prevalence of “gun violence,” for the simple reason that most “gun violence” is connected to drug gangs and other criminal activity involving what are politely called “inner city youth.” Americans are a well-armed people, but it is only a small fraction of the population that commits most of the violent crime, yet our media doesn’t want to provide the public an accurate understanding of crime, because that would not advance the desired political narrative. However, this NBC News story raises a question that it does not answer: If “gun violence” is so common in America, why aren’t our politicians getting gunned down on a regular basis? The main reason is that they aren’t hanging around drug dealers in downtown Baltimore or Detroit or other crime-plagued inner cities. Being safe from “gun violence” is mainly a matter of geography; if you avoid certain areas, you’re unlikely to get shot.

The other reason our politicians don’t worry about “gun violence” is because the most prominent of them are guarded by armed security. You cannot enter any federal building without going through a checkpoint with a metal detector, and similar security precautions are in place at most statehouses, etc. Whether these precautions are necessary or effective is seldom questioned. It’s not as if would-be assassins are so numerous that we must be eternally vigilant, but as the shooting of Shinzo Abe illustrates, it is difficult to prevent a truly determined killer: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. You outlaw gun ownership, and some murderous kook will manufacture a homemade weapon.




 

Category: Japan

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