ABE’S KILLING HAUNTS JAPAN WITH QUESTIONS ON HANDMADE GUNS

Security officials could have done better, experts say

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 constructed it was wrapped up in tape.

The 16-inch weapon used to kill former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday as he campaigned for his 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, an apartment in Nara, turned up several such guns, police said. Unlike standard weapons, handmade guns are practically impossible to trace, making an investigation difficult.

Firearms 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.

Strict gun control laws likely forced the attacker to make his own weapon. Tetsuya Yamagami, who was arrested on the spot, was a former member of Japan’s navy and knew how to handle and assemble weapons.

Crime experts say instructions on how to make guns are floating around on the Internet, and guns can be made with a 3D printer.

Some analysts characterized the attack on Abe as “lone-wolf terrorism.” In such cases, the perpetrator acts alone, often in sympathy with certain political views, making the crime difficult to detect in advance.

The motive for Abe’s assassination remains unclear. Police said Yamagami told investigators he acted because of Abe’s rumored connection to an organization he resented but had no problem with the former leader’s political views. Media reports said it was a religious organization.

Japan has seen attacks on politicians in the past. In 1960, Abe’s grandfather, then-Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, was stabbed but survived. In 1975, when then-Prime Minister Takeo Miki was assaulted at the funeral for former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, Abe’s great-uncle, Japan set up a security team modeled after the American Secret Service.

Hideto Ted Osanai, chief executive at the International Bodyguard Association in Japan, and other experts believe that the Japanese may have merely learned superficial things like escort formation rather than the prevention mindset critical to security.

“Japanese are so used to leading peaceful lives, the security guards were caught asleep,” said Yasuhiro Sasaki, president of SafetyPro, a Tokyo-based security company.

Sasaki said he couldn’t believe that no one moved to protect Abe in the seconds between the first and the second shot.

Guards should have acted by physically pulling Abe away from danger, Sasaki said. More critically, he wondered why weren’t they aware of a suspicious person approaching, drawing what could be a weapon from a bag?

Isao Itabashi, chief of the research division at the Council for Public Policy, which oversees such risks, said that providing security during an election campaign was challenging when the whole point is for politicians to get close to people.

Unlike the U.S., the use of bulletproof glass is scant in Japan, and security officials rarely resort to shooting potential attackers.

“The presumption here is that people are not armed,” Itabashi said.