Japan, whose strict gun controls have long helped its image as the safest industrialized nation, has recently seen its reputation slip in the wake of headline-making shootings.
Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito was gunned down by a yakuza during his re-election campaign on April 17; a mobster holed himself up April 20 in an apartment in Machida, western Tokyo, after fatally shooting a fellow yakuza; a former gangster in Nagakute, Aichi Prefecture, shot and wounded his two children and a police officer May 17 and fatally shot an assault squad officer the next day.
These incidents have fueled concerns that gun crimes, previously considered mainly to be in the realm of the underworld, may pose a more widespread threat to the general public. Here are some questions and answers about the issue: