Apparently there was a mob hit on the Mayor of Nagasaki, in Japan:
The shooting was rare in a country where handguns are strictly banned and only four politicians are known to have been killed since the Second World War.
Mayor Iccho Ito, 61, was shot twice in the back at point-blank range outside a train station Tuesday evening, Nagasaki police official Rumi Tsujimoto said.One of the bullets struck the mayor’s heart and he went into cardiac arrest, according to Nagasaki University Hospital spokesman Kenzo Kusano. Kyodo News agency and national broadcaster NHK said Ito died of his wounds early Wednesday.
Firearms are effectively are illegal in Japan, with few exceptions. Yet we can see that criminals are still able to obtain them. Japan’s violent crime rate is very low, but that is more a reflection of Japanese culture than of Japanese law. One can find cultures with more ubiquitous ownership of small arms that have similar rates of violent crime. This example would seem to indicate, that criminals in Japan who desire guns can still get them.
Be sure to check out Dave Kopel’s article on gun control in Japan.
Not only are firearms illegal, but the US occupation at the end of WWII virtually searched the country house by house to completely disarm it.
The Japanese Government has kept up the pressure ever since.
It’s a textbook perfect implementation of gun control.
Banning guns is not only wrong, it’s futile.
There was the Osaka School massacre in Japan in 2001. A deranged person went on a stabbing spree in which eight children were killed. However, the perpetrator was captured and executed.
That isnt true. Guns were confiscated long before the modern era in Japan. The only disarmament was of the military.