In the most shocking perhaps news of at least the past few months,
the former leader of Japan Shinzo Abe was successfully assassinated.
Devastating that late last night, the news came out that he had been shot,
which is shocking, not only because he's a former world leader,
that he is in Japan country that has very significant gun control laws.
But that eventually the news broke hours later that he had passed as
a result of it.
He was most recently in office from December 2012 to September of 2020,
was Japan's longest serving prime minister and resigned in 2020 for
health reasons but remained influential in politics.
And in fact, he was shot at a sort of campaign speech, he had been appearing in
public and giving a speech when he was attacked outside a train station.
Security officials were seen tackling a man in a gray T-shirt And beige trousers.
He has since been identified as an unemployed 41 year old.
He admitted to do again and
we are still trying to figure out what the motivation was.
They say at this point that he believed Abe was part of a specific organization
which the individual had a grudge against.
But we don't know what organization that's supposed to be a part of,
the other of course important question is how exactly he managed to do this when,
as we said, Japan has very severe gun control laws.
Well, apparently police have confiscated several homemade weapons,
from a search of his house described the weapon that he used as being 40 cm long,
20 cm high, but also implied that they were treated with caution due to
the possibility of a detonation.
And in fact when we go to this picture, you'll see that it is in fact apparently
something that was cobbled together a homemade weapon you can see in the shot,
and we have a few actually of the weapon I believe we have that, okay, we'll go to,
if we do.
Anyway, police said that the firearm consists of two metal barrels attached
to a wooden board more than a foot long.
And why would someone go to the trouble of making their own weapon?
Well, Japan's-gun ownership restrictions do not allow private citizens to have
handguns and licensed hunters may own only rifles.
Now we definitely have to get into that angle of it, But
Brett like having a former world leader,
even successfully being assassinated is not something that happens often.
It's a tragedy, I know for a lot of people in that country and
internationally we're gonna give some of the reactions, but what do you think?
>> It's just shocking cuz gun violence in Japan is so insanely rare.
Like if you watch the video that has surfaced, there's multiple videos of
the actual event from different ones from a bird's eye view, but
there's another one from street level.
It's a giant explosion is the sound, it's more of like a combination of a gunshot
and then like the bursting of a trash bag, like a lot of air exploding at once.
And no one there thinks it's gunshots, because you live in a country,
everyone's just kinda looking around, and
then they realize what happens with the second one and then he falls.
But it's tough in these situations like Shinzo Abe,
someone who has, when you look at the, I read the New York Times
obituary by no means an expert on Shinzo and Abenomics.
But he called himself, the party is a more right, it's more nationalist,
but he invested in a lot of public works essentially like a bunch
of investment from the government spending essentially to kinda help
the economy, which was not in good shape when he took over.
But like it's just one of those things where whoever is going, you can't just
assassinate a politician, especially not in a country like Japan, this guy did it,
he just said, yeah, I did it and and it's just the situation following it.
When you're learning specifics about his admission and
you don't really know exactly why he did it, you just know that he did it and
then he owed up to it and then Abe's gone.
>> Yeah, and I get like I'm seeing, super chats that are coming in about,
things that people disagree with him on.
I get that, he was just assassinated, that's what I say,
you can't assassinate, we are against political violence.
In every single case we are very clear about that is not an opportunity,
opportunistic thing for us, it's unacceptable.
It's very rare obviously, especially there as Brett was talking about and
in fact I wanna give people stat.
There were 10 shootings in Japan in 2021, I would bet every dollar that I have that
there have been 10 shootings in America during this episode of the damage report,
they had 10 in a year.
One person was killed, four people were injured.
And the majority of the shootings each year are linked to
Japanese organized crime.
And even that, that means six or seven I guess even for organized crime there,
that is how rare it is and and we've gone over how strenuous their gun control is,
people are talking about the chat as well.
You have to literally explain why it is that you want a firearm, you have to,
as people are saying, describe where it is held and all of that and
as a result of that, you don't have shootings like this very often at all.
Now I have no doubt the right wing is using the fact that someone was able to
effectively make an explosive device that could propel a projectile,
that is a thing that you will never be able to stop people from doing,
thus why bother, what's the point?
The fact that Japan has probably thanks to their gun control laws saved,
what thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of their own
citizens over decades, will be ignored because of this tragedy.
But yeah, it's devastating.
We can give some comments for President Biden sent out a message saying,
I'm stunned, outraged and deeply saddened, he was shot and killed,
he was a champion of the friendship between our people.
The United States stands with Japan this moment of grief by the way, even
Donald Trump put out a statement on true social about it was the normal deranged
trump talk, but it was positive towards Abe and it was sad that it happened.
Barack Obama tweeted I am shocked and
saddened by the assassination of my friend and longtime partner Shinzo Abe and Japan,
former Prime Minister Abe was devoted to both the country served in
the extraordinary alliance between the United States and Japan.
And the Secretary general of the United Nations put out basically a similar
comment as well.
It's the sort of thing that you just do, this does not happen every year.
This doesn't happen every five years, it is shocking and whether we agree with his
individual politics or his ideology overall, it's a tragedy.
[MUSIC]