Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated while campaigning in the nation’s electoral process. I don’t follow the country’s politics that much, but it seems the assassin wanted Abe dead because of his reportedly close ties with the Unification Church, which the killer says bankrupted his family due to his mother’s membership. It seems a bad reason for anyone to kill a former prime minister to me.
But someone did and did for just that reason, and the killer did so despite the nation’s super strict gun control laws.
These are, of course, the same gun control laws many hold up as evidence that we should embrace anti-gun regulations anyway.
On Tuesday, the killer entered his plea in court.
The man accused of assassinating former prime minister Shinzo Abe of Japan in 2022 pleaded guilty to the killing on Tuesday, according to Japan’s public broadcaster NHK.
Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, is accused of killing Mr. Abe, the longest serving leader in Japan’s history, by shooting him in the street with a homemade gun during an election rally. Tuesday was the first day of his trial in a district court in the city of Nara, according to NHK.
He faces charges including murder and violating Japan’s gun control laws. The murder charge carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment or the death penalty.
“Everything is true. There is no doubt that I did this,” Mr. Yamagami said when asked by the judge how he responded to the charges, NHK reported.
Mr. Abe was gunned down in July 2022 in the city of Nara while stumping on behalf of a junior politician from his party during that year’s parliamentary election campaign. The attack stunned the nation, particularly as it involved a gun, in a country with strict gun laws. Mr. Yamagami was arrested at the scene and admitted to the shooting.
This is one of the most interesting assassinations in recent history, at least in my mind, but especially in light of the assassination of Charlie Kirk on September 10th.
After Kirk’s murder, many people started talking about needing gun control in rather vague terms. No one expressed a particular policy to speak of, mostly because the killing shattered so many gun control shibboleths.
But Abe’s assassination shattered even more.
The killer cobbled together a gun out of hardware store parts. What he built was something that wasn’t akin to literally anything commonly available. He didn’t use a 3D printer to manufacture a Glock-clone “ghost gun” or even Defense Distributed’s Liberator design. He built something that looks more like a pipe bomb than a firearm.
And he killed Shinzo Abe in the streets with it.
For all the hysteria that flows around various kinds of firearms in the country, Abe’s assassination proves that people with nefarious intent can and will find a way to carry out their intentions. No amount of regulation will really stop it, either.
Japan’s strict weapon control laws touch on what we might think of as an insane degree. Yet the reason they lack the violent crime rate we have isn’t because of it, but because of a thousand other things they have as an incredibly high-trust society.
But when someone wants to kill another, they find a way.
That’s never going to change.
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