"Shinzo Abe, the former Prime Minister of Japan, was speaking at a political rally near a train station in the city of Nara when the shots rang out. It was an unfamiliar sound; it's essentially illegal for Japanese civilians to own guns, and firearm-related deaths are very rare. The noise was so strange that only some of the rally-goers flinched."
"The man held a large oblong contraption. It consisted of two metal pipes, a wooden board wound in black electrical tape, a bundle of wires, and a plastic handle. It had the shape of a gun but looked homemade, like a high-school science project. The man was tackled and pinned to the ground by members of Abe's security detail. In the scuffle, he blurted out a question: "Did it hit him?""
"Three hundred miles east, in Tokyo, a journalist named Eito Suzuki saw the news break on TV: Abe, the longest-serving Prime Minister in Japanese history, was dead. Suzuki was at home, about to leave for a hotel staycation with his wife and son. Everything about the story was shocking-the fact of the gun, the lapse in security, the surreal death of one of the most powerful men in the country."
Shinzo Abe was shot while speaking at a political rally near a Nara train station, collapsing with blood seeping from his neck. The shooter used a homemade, oblong contraption made of metal pipes, tape, wires, and a plastic handle, and was tackled and pinned by Abe's security detail after asking, 'Did it hit him?' Firearm-related deaths are very rare in Japan, making the attack shocking. Journalist Eito Suzuki, who had spent decades investigating so-called antisocial religions, immediately suspected a possible cult connection and had previously focused on the Unification Church's influence in Japan.
Read at The New Yorker
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