Japan: Even in a nation with fewer gun deaths per year than some major U.S. cities see in a weekend, killers can be determined enough to devise a home-made weapon, as the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe demonstrates. Abe's death sparked debates in the US about whether even the strictest gun control measures cannot prevent gun violence before he was memorialised. The shooter killed Abe with a homemade shotgun, but less rudimentary and even deadlier firearms are flooding the American gun market.

The weapon used to kill Abe appears to be a zip gun, which is a class of simple, frequently unreliable, untraceable, and one-shot weapons. They are similar to go-karts constructed from discarded lawn mower and car components.  

Zip-guns are not brand-new. For instance, police claimed that in the 1950s, young people were constructing numerous small calibre zip guns out of materials like rusted-out car antennas and flimsy door bolts. Even a toy cap gun can be modified to create a crude pistol that uses actual ammunition. It is almost inevitable that the assassination will prompt claims from gun rights groups that the killing is evidence that gun control does not work and that killers will find a way to kill. Gun rights groups will use Abe's shocking death as an example of how Japan's gun laws are successful in curbing nearly all gun violence. The prime minister's death was being used as a talking point by candidates for various offices within a day of the murder.  

Zip guns like the one used in Japan tend to be less lethal than weapons that can be purchased at a store when shooters must tape together pipes and gunpowder charges.

Despite having strict arms laws, making domestic weapons in a peaceful country like Japan is a very shocking incident and it emphasizes that there is some deficiency in these laws. Therefore, there is a need to make the arms law more stringent and more strict.

Compare this attack to the recent mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where the shooter killed 19 children and two teachers using a high-capacity, quick-firing AR-15-style rifle. In a grocery store in Buffalo, another assailant quickly killed 10 people using a similar rifle. Seven people were killed at a parade in Highland Park, Illinois, last week by another still.

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