Shinzo Abe assassination shocks Japan, which had one of the world's lowest rates of gun crime

• Japan's former prime minister was shot dead on Friday.
• The assassination has shocked Japan, which has strict gun laws that make it hard to procure firearms.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe died after he was shot while giving a campaign speech on Friday.

The assassination — which appeared to be with a homemade gun — has shocked Japan, a country with one of the world's lowest rates of gun crime and strict laws around procuring firearms.

This graph shows firearm homicide rates in Japan compared to the US between 1990 and 2019:

And this graph shows homicide rates from firearms for the same time period in Japan, the US, Canada, Europe:

Japan makes it difficult to procure firearms

People can't buy handguns in Japan, only shotguns and air rifles, as Insider previously reported.

Procuring those weapons also requires a number of steps, including:

• Attending an all-day class
• Passing a written test
• Passing a mental-health evaluation
• Passing a background check, which includes interviews with friends and family
• Getting at least 95% accuracy during a shooting-range test

People also have to resit the class and re-take the test every three years as their gun license expires.

The low gun-violence rate in Japan is also partly due to cultural factors.

Nancy Snow, Japan director of the International Security Industrial Council, told Insider that the shooting had shocked the country, given its low gun crime rate. Snow is also a former Fulbright Professor, an Abe Fellows and Visiting Research Professor in Japan.

She said that Japan will be "forever changed" by Abe's assassination, adding that it would change the "sense of safety Japan lives and breathes."

"When I talk about Japan changing forever — the Japanese people, it's hard to even have a conversation with them about the gun culture in the United States, without people getting viscerally upset thinking about it because they say, we're not that country."

Snow noted that she regularly stays in Tokyo, and often walks there in the middle of the night. "I can't imagine any other city where I might do that. I certainly wouldn't do it outside my home right now in New York."