Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been assassinated in Japan, Satoshi Sugiyama and Chang-Ran Kim report at Reuters:
NARA, Japan, July 8 (Reuters) – Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving leader, died on Friday hours after he was shot while campaigning for a parliamentary election, shocking a country in which political violence is rare and guns are tightly controlled.
and
It was the first assassination of a sitting or former Japanese premier since the days of prewar militarism in 1936.
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Airo Hino, political science professor at Waseda University, said such a shooting was unprecedented in Japan. “There has never been anything like this,” he said.
Senior Japanese politicians are accompanied by armed security agents but often get close to the public, especially during political campaigns when they make roadside speeches and shake hands with passersby.
but this is a key point:
A man opened fire on Abe, 67, from behind with an apparently homemade gun as he spoke at a drab traffic island in the western city of Nara, Japanese media reported.
It’s very sad and I’m sure it will rock Japan, much as JFK’s assassination rocked the United States.
I think there are several takeaways from this story. First, no country is completely safe from political violence. There is no practical way to prevent it completely, particularly in a democratic country.
Japan has among the highest degrees of social cohesion in the world. No level of social cohesion can prevent such actions completely.
Trying to prevent gun violence by controlling guns is futile because the cause of gun violence isn’t guns but, ultimately, personal empowerment and curtailing that is impractical in a free society.
The media is presenting the assassination as a story about gun violence. It most certainly is not. The gun violence part is irrelevant to what happened.
Japan is currently undergoing a drift to the nationalist right, complete with revanchist schemes against Russia and its claim to the Kuril Islands. The real issues are whether the nationalist right is once again using political assassination to control the Japanese government, and, most importantly, whether there is any Army involvement.
If we are back to Japan 1936, we are in for a very rough ride. 1937 saw the Japanese invasion of China and the start of WW II.
Yup, its just coincidental that guns are what people use to kill.
Steve
You’re missing the point. Guns are tightly controlled in Japan. The killer made his own. What is your plan for preventing that? Your comment implies you have one.
Its a bad idea I think to generate policy for once every 70 year events (unless catastrophic). My point is that it makes no sense to that guns are not part of the cause for gun violence. Few things work as well, easily or cheaply as guns for killing.
Steve
Why is it that 90% of mass shootings occur in gun-free zones?
Japan has one of the world’s strictest gun control laws.
Chicago, having one of the most severe control laws, has one of the highest numbers for gun violence.
Just because “guns work well, easily, and cheaply†does not make them the core reason people kill each other. It also seems that tightly controlling them only seems to incentivize predators, not discourage them, as there is less likelihood of pushback by an unarmed public.
Also, the sicker and most undisciplined a society becomes the more likelihood there is to be violence by all means.
Because 90% dont occur in gun free zones. If you restrict your definitions so that you exclude 90% of mass shootings you can come up with such a number.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/05/10/do-98-percent-of-mass-public-shootings-happen-in-gun-free-zones/
Top 10 US cities for homicide in 2019
1 St Louis
2 Baltimore
3 Birmingham, Alabama
4 Detroit
5 Dayton, Ohio
6 BatonRouge
7 New Orleans
8 Kansas City, Mo
9 Memphis, TN
10 Cleveland
Chicago was 28, well behind Peoria.
For 2022?
1 St Louis
2 Baltimore
3 New Orleans
4 Detroit
5 Cleveland
6 Las Vegas
7 Kansas City
8 Memphis
9 Newark
10 Chicago
So Chicago which had trouble making the top 25 finally made it into the top 10. Interesting that you dont seem concerned about St Louis,, Baltimore or New Orleans. Even Kansas City or Memphis which live in the top 10. And when you do it by state, it is the red states that lead by far.
Steve
Jesus, steve. That’s tortured logic beyond all belief. Slack-jawed.
Definitional games just don’t cut it outside of the July 4 barbeque. Gun violence is defined as Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans……..
Jan made a point you simply cannot come to grips with. Gun violence occurs where criminality runs rampant, gun laws notwithstanding. And crazies are going to be crazy.
Its the people, not the machined and molded inanimate objects.
As a society we really need to rethink the lefts push to put mentally unhealthy people on the streets.
And you’re still dodging the issue, steve. How do you plan to prevent people from making their own guns or people going into the business of making illegal guns?
Japan has the highest level of social cohesion of any country in the world as well as very strict gun laws. The former prime minister was still assassinated using a gun. What should we expect in the country with probably the lowest social cohesion in the world? Mass shooting are pretty frequent. What would we expect if we had strict laws on possession of guns? I would expect a black market in illegally produced guns. In other words the effect of strict gun control in the U. S. would be to create a black market. Does that sound like a good policy to you?
In the past I’ve said that I don’t oppose banning “assault weapons”, presuming they can define what is meant by the category. But I’m realistic about what it would achieve. I believe the main effect of such a ban would be to reduce the number of impulsive mass shootings. I think those are actually pretty rare. The recent mass shootings seem to have been planned over a considerable period. They weren’t impulsive. The benefits of banning assault weapons would be quite limited.
As I noted in the post, we have entered an era of personal empowerment. It cannot be uninvented easily.
Drew- We can at least start with actual facts. jan, who represents well conventional thought, believes that Chicago is the height of gun violence and homicides and it has nothing to do with guns. Yet when we look at actual killings the highest incidence is in states that have pretty free access to guns. So this whole right wing idea that we will reduce gun violence by making guns more accessible is whacked. Guns really are a nearly ideal killing tool. Yes, you can stab someone to death but you need to get close and personal and that puts you at risk. With a gun you can stand many yards away and kill someone.
The left? It is the right that goes to extremes to make sure everyone can have a gun, including the mentally ill.
Dave- Japan had one death by a gun last year. One for the entire country. As far as anyone can tell Abe is the first death by gun this year in Japan. Japan doesnt need to do anything different. Why are we even talking about Japan?
More broadly I have made it pretty clear that I think we already have so many guns the best we can do is make some changes at the margins. Maybe we can reduce gun killings a little bit. However, as you point out places dont enforce the laws. The left too their reasons and the right for theirs and mostly because it is overwhelming. I am dead serious that I think the best we can really do is put up memorials. We need to change the culture and maybe if we develop some actual shame about all of the killings we might be willing to do something serious.
Steve