The world reacted with horror and shock at the cold-blooded assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday. In a country that has virtually no gun violence, what made the crime even more unusual was the strange, seemingly homem…
The world reacted with horror and shock at the cold-blooded assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday. In a country that has virtually no gun violence, what made the crime even more unusual was the strange, seemingly homemade double-barreled weapon used by the shooter.
Abe was giving a campaign speech in the city of Nara, in southern Japan, when he was shot in the neck and heart at close range. The alleged gunman—named by local authorities as 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami—was photographed throwing a homemade firearm to the ground before being tackled by security officials.
Videos of the shooting circulating online show the gunman approaching Abe from behind before firing two shots, both producing extremely loud cannon-like booms and plumes of white smoke.
Police later said they found multiple homemade guns and explosives when they searched Yamagami’s house, adding that he had allegedly admitted to shooting Abe with a DIY firearm.
From images of the gun, captured by bystanders including a reporter for Japan’s public broadcaster NHK, experts immediately suspected it was homemade. “The box-like device is wrapped in black tape and smoke can be seen coming from the muzzle. It’s certainly no standard shotgun,” a former detective for the Metropolitan Police Department firearms control division told
While stressing it’s too early to be definitive about the precise design of the weapon used to murder Abe, another authority said the gun appeared to have some highly unusual features.
“I think the first interesting observation is that it’s clearly electrically fired,” said N. R. Jenzen-Jones, an arms and munitions intelligence specialist and Director of the U.K.-based Armament Research Services (ARES). “There’s electrical wire passing through each of those end caps that you can see in one of the images. That indicates to me that it’s an electrically-fired firearm.”
“My hunch is that it’s probably a muzzle-loading design,” Jenzen-Jones added. “..
