Shinzo Abe was Assassinated

That's just the way they do it. You see politicians, from rural town mayors on up, speaking on the street or an the back of trucks etc. Here we have politicians out jogging with no security. He was not the active Prime Minister and in a country with a disproportionately low violent crime rate. Murder cases are rare and all over the news and followed in great detail

I wouldn’t like to be his security team, utterly hopeless. Several shots fired from where he is statistically most vulnerable.

the uniform cop to the right standing like a mannequin several shots have been fired… looks like he should be stood in the window of a primark.

I know very little about the ins and outs of Japanese politics but from the outside it seems to be a nation going through a bit of an identity crisis at the moment. Its heyday is definitely behind it, at one stage in the 80s many were predicting that Japan would be the next superpower, not China. But they've had about 30 years of slow growth and stagnation since their bubble burst in the early 90s, and couple that with the rise of China in their own neck of the woods in the meantime. Their population is also falling rapidly from its peak about 20 years ago.

Abe seems to have been a stable force in their political system (Japanese PMs don't seem to have much staying power) but also showcased a lot of that residual nationalism, especially towards their imperial history in China and elsewhere.

Again it's a gross oversimplification but I wonder if this tragedy together with the serious aggression coming out of China at the moment will have a major effect on Japanese self-confidence. Or how that will play out politically.

Surely the Yazuka (sp?) crime syndicate use guns?

Also to poster above who said a gun wasn't involved, think you may be a little confused. A gun produced by an amateur gunsmith in his garden shed is still a gun, if it works properly and can shoot.

there will always be nutters and people with grudge so keeping the guns out of easy reach, just like the dishwasher tabs out of the babies mouth makes sense also

Guns dont kill people, rappers do!!!

Looks like pipes duct-taped to a plank, there's not really much you can do to stop people making stuff like this. The most interesting improvised firearm I've ever seen was made in a prison in the US and used a box stapler as a trigger/striker mechanism. If someone is determined enough they'll be able to put something together.

I have a classmate living here who is from Japan. It would not surprise me if he was shocked and dismayed after he heard about this dreadful news this morning. He used to work in a Japanese restaurant in Dublin before he had suffered a medical condition.

If the motive of this shooting was by someone who just didn't like him. There is a huge failing here somewhere in how the security arrangements were not up to scratch in protecting a former PM of an extremely important Asian country.

Strange the security detail didn't draw their weapons and shoot the assassin.

It wasn't political apparently, looking like a Hinckley Jr. type character.

For **** sake. Do some research before posting this shite.

Those photos are of world famous video game designer Hideo Kojima, not the assassin.

This is how fake news spreads....

I’m not suggesting he’d have stopped the first shot, but the second maybe….and if there had have been other targets the mannequin was still there motionless…