Abe's killing haunts Japan with questions on handmade guns

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

TOKYO (AP) — The shooting sent shudders through low-crime, orderly Japan: A high-profile politician gets killed by a man emerging from a crowd, wielding a handmade firearm so roughly made it’s wrapped up in tape.

The 40-centimeter-long (16-inch) firearm that was used to kill former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday as he campaigned for his ruling party in Nara, western Japan, looked crude, more like a propellant made of pipes taped together and filled with explosives.

A raid of the suspect’s home, a one-room apartment in Nara, turned up several such guns, police said. Unlike standard weapons, handmade guns are practically impossible to trace, making an investigation difficult.

Such weapons are rarely used in Japan, where most attacks involve stabbings or dousing a place with gasoline and setting it ablaze, or running haywire on the street in a vehicle.

https://apnews.com/article/shinzo-abe-japan-crime-tokyo-gun-politics-6ef3aa271e147bf2426363448ecd9f1b

[PTWB]

1. Rudimentary firearms are easy to manufacture and deadly

The basic physics and function have been with us for a thousand years — bamboo tubes loaded with gunpowder and using spears as projectiles.

Whether using ancient technology such as a tube filled with gunpowder and an object to be projected, or cutting edge technology such as a 3D printer, people are going to make unregulated, untraceable weapons.

That isn’t to say we should deregulate firearms and their manufacture. But we shouldn’t forget the basics of how things are made, either.

I can’t speak to the situation in Japan but if we want to significantly reduce gun violence here in America we must address the root causes of crime and gun violence: poverty, extreme wealth disparity, untreated mental illness, underfunded education, and addiction.