THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
November 9, 2022 at 19:00 JST
NARA--A legal loophole has prefectural police scrambling in their efforts to pile on an additional charge of illegal use of a weapon in the slaying here of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in early July.
Although Japan tightly regulates making and possessing firearms, the swords and firearms control law has no provisions for the use of a homemade gun in a murder.
The suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, 42, was apprehended at the scene with a homemade gun immediately after Abe was shot July 8 while giving a campaign speech.
Yamagami made the gun by taping two metal tubes to a strip of wood. It was designed to simultaneously fire six 1-centimeter diameter slugs.
Tests conducted on the gun at the National Research Institute of Police Science attested to the deadly velocity of the weapon as the bullets pierced wooden targets, investigative sources said.
Although Yamagami has been indicted for murder, police are also looking into whether he should face an additional charge of violating the firearms law by discharging a gun in public.
The law prohibits the possession of seven types of firearms. It also has a provision banning the use of four types of firearms in public. The penalty for firing the weapon is heavier than for simple possession.
But until July, there had never been a case in Japan of a homemade gun being used in public and killing someone, the investigative sources said.
While homemade guns are not defined as firearms under the categories of possession and use, experts said the weapon fashioned by Yamagami could be considered as either a pistol or a gun, both of which are covered under the firing provision.
However, Mitsuru Fukuda, a professor of risk management at Nihon University who is knowledgeable about crimes involving the use of firearms, took issue with this view.
Based on the structure and function of Yamagami’s weapon, he asserted it could only be considered in the category of “other loaded guns” not covered under the firing provision.
Fukuda called for discussions to begin on making legal changes to cover homemade guns.
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