Shinzo Abe shooting: how common is gun crime in Japan?

By way of comparison, the number of guns held by civilians in the US that same year was 393 million, or 120 per 100 people; in the UK it was 3.2 million, or 5 per 100 people.

Japan was “ the first nation to impose gun laws in the whole world”, said Iain Overton, executive director of Action on Armed Violence and the author of Gun Baby Gun, in an interview with the BBC. “I think it laid down a bedrock saying that guns really don’t play a part in civilian society.”

Political violence is very rare

Political violence does happen in Japan. However, it is also extremely rare. Inejirō Asanuma, the then head of the Japan Socialist Party, was murdered in 1960; there was an assassination attempt against former PM Morihiro Hosokawa in 1994; and the mayor of Nagasaki was shot by an alleged gangster in 2007. 

And nearly a century ago, in 1932, prime minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was assassinated, marking the last time a current or former Japanese PM was killed. 

The infrequency of these incidents is “a measure of just how rare and shocking gun violence is in the country, where gun ownership is strictly controlled”, said Bloomberg.

Although Abe “did have a team of security police with him”, it appears that the shooter was able to get within a few metres of him “without any sort of check”, reported Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, the BBC’s Japan correspondent.

“The shooting of such a prominent figure is profoundly shocking in a country that prides itself on being so safe.”

Shooting could ‘change Japan forever’

Speaking to CNN, Nancy Snow, Japan director of the International Security Industry Council, said she thought the shooting would “change Japan, unfortunately, forever”.

Gun violence in Japan is “not only rare, but it’s really culturally unfathomable”, she added. “The Japanese people can’t imagine having a gun culture like we have in the United States.

“What this will do to the national psyche of a people who move about freely and have a social contract with each other, that they will not resort to this type of violence… I am devastated thinking about that.”

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/world-news/asia-pacific/957290/shinzo-abe-shooting-how-common-is-gun-crime-in-japan