Former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe shot

[Suvorov]

How bulky is it really, though? Clunky, for sure, but look at the shoe behind it. Just doesn’t look that big.

OK Clunky. Still, do you think someone could get that close to the POTUS with it? It's a whole lot harder to conceal than a handgun.

Again I admit to being pretty much clueless to the realities of protective details so that is why I'm asking questions.

[HCM]

From a Facebook page I follow. Supposedly the homemade shotgun used.

Attachment 91254

Side view.

[TGS]

I’m having a hard time with my limited knowledge of protective services understanding how a guy got so close to Abe San with such a bulky weapon (it’s certainly no LCP) to deliver the fatal blow? I can’t imagine a western protective detail of such a high profile individual allowing such proximity. Is it because handguns are so rare in Japan that it just isn’t considered as big a threat?

I don't believe the Japanese employ protective details for a former PM with enough manpower to maintain 360 awareness and prevention of a determined attacker intent on killing the protectee. My personal opinion from working with them is that they're not competent or capable enough to deal with such, anyway.

The vast majority of protective details in the world do not maintain anywhere near the protective posture that most people imagine, especially compared to POTUS.

[awp_101]

Gun used to Assassinate Former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe





You can't stop the signal Mal

[camel]

I don't believe the Japanese employ protective details for a former PM with enough manpower to maintain 360 awareness and prevention of a determined attacker intent on killing the protectee. My personal opinion from working with them is that they're not competent or capable enough to deal with such, anyway.

The vast majority of protective details in the world do not maintain anywhere near the protective posture that most people imagine, especially compared to POTUS.

I was told once. Our ambassador’s have a better protective detail than most world leaders.

[OlongJohnson]

[*]The weapon appears to be a homemade or black-market improvised gun - pipes fitted to a board, wrapped in layers of tape, and fitted with some sort of firing mechanism

Pics seem to show batteries on the underside of the board, suggesting electrical ignition. I could see something like home made black powder and model rocket ignitors.

This is very primitive, something one could whip together in a half hour using materials from Home Depot. Pellets could be nuts (hardware) or ball bearings. But there are mud huts in the Middle East where reasonably serviceable firearms are made. I and several of my coworkers all likely have the capacity to build a reasonable firearm from basic, unformed materials. It's basic technology, and taking away the ability of moderately technically capable people to make firearms means moving your entire society to a pre-industrial revolution status. Nobody wants to do that.

Their vanishingly small amount of homicides committed with firearms is indisputable.

But their suicide rate even without guns is still high. Until the murder rates skyrocketed in the "defund era" starting 2020, suicides were steady around ~2/3 of firearm-related deaths in the U.S.

[Aisin Gioro]

I don't believe the Japanese employ protective details for a former PM with enough manpower to maintain 360 awareness and prevention of a determined attacker intent on killing the protectee. My personal opinion from working with them is that they're not competent or capable enough to deal with such, anyway.

The vast majority of protective details in the world do not maintain anywhere near the protective posture that most people imagine, especially compared to POTUS.

My personal opinion from working with them is that they're not competent or capable enough to deal with such, anyway.

The vast majority of protective details in the world do not maintain anywhere near the protective posture that most people imagine, especially compared to POTUS.

I greatly appreciate your perspective on this. While I'm certainly not remotely qualified to assess the quality of PSDs myself, in talking with Japanese over the past day who are at least somewhat well-informed about this specific situation, I've heard some fairly unimpressed commentary, such as "Japan doesn't spend that (necessary) kind of money", "Komuro (the former Princess Mako, now Mrs. Komuro and living in NYC) has better security", and that "Nara Prefectural police 'ponkotsu' (incompetent, unreliable)" were handling a lot of the area security. The last comment about Nara Prefectural police wasn't necessarily meant to scorn them specifically, but more to imply that they were out of their league in a society where threats are so unexpected and underestimated that stolen bicycle reports are practically Detective Inspector-level duties.

In the clearest video I've seen of the incident itself, it appears to take almost 3 seconds between the first and second shot. Perimeter security aside, Abe remains standing on the platform and physically unshielded for most of that time. Even when his security moves between the shooter and their principal, the only one who seems to really try blocking the shot doesn't deploy a 3 or 4 panel ballistic briefcase, instead holding it up as a single panel in front of their own face.

Front-right quartering view of the incident:

https://twitter.com/ksg881/status/15...46JARdjo7hq0bw

[TGS]

I greatly appreciate your perspective on this. While I'm certainly not remotely qualified to assess the quality of PSDs myself, in talking with Japanese over the past day who are at least somewhat well-informed about this specific situation, I've heard some fairly unimpressed commentary, such as "Japan doesn't spend that (necessary) kind of money", "Komuro (the former Princess Mako, now Mrs. Komuro and living in NYC) has better security", and that "Nara Prefectural police 'ponkotsu' (incompetent, unreliable)" were handling a lot of the area security. The last comment about Nara Prefectural police wasn't necessarily meant to scorn them specifically, but more to imply that they were out of their league in a society where threats are so unexpected and underestimated that stolen bicycle reports are practically Detective Inspector-level duties.

In the clearest video I've seen of the incident itself, it appears to take almost 3 seconds between the first and second shot. Perimeter security aside, Abe remains standing on the platform and physically unshielded for most of that time. Even when his security moves between the shooter and their principal, the only one who seems to really try blocking the shot doesn't deploy a 3 or 4 panel ballistic briefcase, instead holding it up as a single panel in front of their own face.

Excellent job on ID'ing some key issues. Further commentary forthcoming in a private message.

[jh9]

But their suicide rate even without guns is still high. Until the murder rates skyrocketed in the "defund era" starting 2020, suicides were steady around ~2/3 of firearm-related deaths in the U.S.

Right. That wasn't really the point I was making, though. If you're discussing the matter of gun control with anyone smarter than a rock they're potentially going to point out Japan has strict gun control and low gun violence. It's one of the more common arguments. Pretending they don't isn't going to convince anyone. They're just going to look at you like a reality-denying nutter. That doesn't mean there isn't a good counterpoint. When people are making the argument for More Gun Control in the US they lump all gun-related deaths together because it creates a bigger, more compelling number. Once you start to dissect that number like you did, it becomes a lot less compelling.

538 has a good piece on gun violence that visualizes that rather well. Or had, I don't see it now. Would have been from 2019 or so. But suicides were almost exactly 2/3'rds and represented the vast majority. Leaving around 10k homicides (pre-2020).

Of the 10k or so homicides actual "gunned down by a stranger in the supermarket" were a very small minority. There's another thread here on this forum where this JAMA article is discussed. The purpose was to establish that "bigger bullets are more lethal so we should focus on banning those" but an interesting piece of data also collected was that 80% of the population in question (gunshot victims in Baltimore) were shot while involved with either illegal narcotics or general gang violence. If you apply that to the population at large you wind up with 80% of those 10k homicides were drug/gang related. Baltimore is a spicy place so it's probably not that high nationwide, but absent data to prove otherwise I think it's reasonable to say it's probably close. But err on the side of caution and say it's only 50%. So you wind up with roughly 5,000 homicides that fit the "gunned down in the supermarket" narrative for people not involved with gangs or illegal drugs. Out of a population of 330 million.

Even if you stick with the original 10k number, the flu and hypertension killed 40k each in 2021 (for perspective). Heart disease killed 690,000. If 5k or 10k homicides are enough to make sweeping changes to federal law is the 690,000 killed by heart disease enough to limit people to 10 calories per snack? 10 ounces per soda? People who pass a background check and prove they can responsibly keep a healthy BMI can still have their 20 ounce sodas? I mean if 10k means we have to Do Something Now! then surely 690k should be treated like an extinction level event. (But of course not, because they want to enjoy their unhealthy food and drink regardless of how much it costs society. They don't particularly care about guns and are tired of seeing Mass Shootings on the news so do whatever. Which is the ultimate conclusion of the argument.)

If you're talking to someone who isn't screaming to ban everything deadlier than a musket, it's important to be specific. Every time someone sneezes near a gun you have wall-to-wall coverage for a week. The actual, measurable harm caused by gun violence isn't commiserate with how much air time it gets. That isn't difficult to prove, but you have to do it otherwise all anyone sees is "gun violence epidemic" that compared to other preventable deaths is almost entirely media-driven-panic.

But they're still not wrong about Japan.

[OlongJohnson]

Of the 10k or so homicides actual "gunned down by a stranger in the supermarket" were a very small minority. There's another thread here on this forum where this JAMA article is discussed. The purpose was to establish that "bigger bullets are more lethal so we should focus on banning those" but an interesting piece of data also collected was that 80% of the population in question (gunshot victims in Baltimore) were shot while involved with either illegal narcotics or general gang violence. If you apply that to the population at large you wind up with 80% of those 10k homicides were drug/gang related. Baltimore is a spicy place so it's probably not that high nationwide, but absent data to prove otherwise I think it's reasonable to say it's probably close. But err on the side of caution and say it's only 50%. So you wind up with roughly 5,000 homicides that fit the "gunned down in the supermarket" narrative for people not involved with gangs or illegal drugs. Out of a population of 330 million.

I can't cite data off the top of my head, but it's my understanding that the vast majority of non-gang/drug homicides arise out of interpersonal conflict, often between family members. It turns out that most homicides are committed by people already known to be violent felons (~90 percent), and the most at-risk people for being the victim of a violent felon are his or her associates, friends and family.

So the random violence that most of us carry our guns out into the world as a defense against is an even smaller percentage of the violence that's out there than you suggest it might be. Tom Givens' analysis still suggests quite powerfully that it's out there and it's coming for you. There's just a lot of violence in the world, and we're really good at saving people who would have for sure died not that long ago.

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On the topic of suicides, when I looked into firearms ownership rates versus firearms-related deaths in countries for which data is available, Switzerland stood out as another high-suicide-rate country. Widely considered to be one of the most prosperous, pleasant places in which a person might be blessed to live.

In the "shithole countries" where your chances of being murdered are dramatically higher than in the U.S. (and firearm ownership rates are very, very low), suicide is almost unheard of (or at least goes almost unreported).

Speculate when ready.