Shinzo Abe Shot In Nara – Burning Issues

Table of Contents

What has happened?

Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been shot while delivering a campaign speech in the western city of Nara, according to officials.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters on Friday that he did not know Abe’s condition,
But the NHK public broadcaster, citing the local fire department, said the 67-year-old “is showing no vital signs”.

Matsuno said Abe had been shot at about 11:30am (02:30 GMT), and said that “such an act of barbarity cannot be tolerated”.
NHK, citing Japanese police, said Abe appeared to have been shot from behind with a shotgun and said its reporter on the scene heard “what sounded like a gun going off twice”.
The broadcaster aired footage showing Abe collapsed on the street, with several security guards running towards him.
Abe was holding his chest when he collapsed, with his shirt smeared with blood.

The agency said the former prime minister, who was in Nara campaigning ahead of Sunday’s election for the parliament’s upper house, was attacked on a street near the Yamatosaidaiji Station in Nara.
A 41-year-old male suspect has been taken into custody on suspicion of attempted murder, NHK said.
The suspect, who was identified as Yamagami Tetsuya, was holding a gun, which police confiscated, it added.

Some countries in the world have taken steps that can provide a window into what successful gun control looks like.
Japan, a country of 127 million people and yearly gun deaths rarely totaling higher than 10, is one such country.
“Ever since guns entered the country, Japan has always had strict gun laws,” Iain Overton.
“They are the first nation to impose gun laws in the whole world, and I think it laid down a bedrock saying that guns really don’t play a part in civilian society.”

Japan’s success in curbing gun deaths is intimately linked with its history. Following World War II, pacifism emerged as one of the dominant philosophies in the country.
Police only started carrying firearms after American troops made them, in 1946, for the sake of security.
It’s also written into Japanese law, as of 1958, that “no person shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords.“
Government has since loosened the law, but the fact Japan enacted gun control from the stance of prohibition is important.
If Japanese people want to own a gun, they must attend an all-day class, pass a written test, and achieve at least 95% accuracy during a shooting-range test.
Then they have to pass a mental-health evaluation, which takes place at a hospital, and pass a background check, in which the government digs into their criminal record and interviews friends and They can only buy shotguns and air rifles – no handguns – and every three years they must retake the class and initial exam.
Japan has also embraced the idea that fewer guns in circulation will result in fewer deaths.
In 2014, there were just six incidents of gun deaths in Japan, as compared to 33,599 in the US.

Mr Abe, who was Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, held office in 2006 for a year and then again from 2012 to 2020, before stepping down citing health reasons.
He later revealed that he had suffered a relapse of ulcerative colitis, an intestinal disease.
While he was in office, he was known for his hawkish policies on defence and foreign policy, and has long sought to amend Japan’s pacifist post-war constitution.
He also pushed for an economic policy that came to be known as “Abenomics” – built on monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and structural reforms.
He was succeeded by his close party ally Yoshihide Suga, who was later replaced by Fumio Kishida.