I was about to go to bed early this morning when I got a text message from a collegue from my Air Force intelligence career: "Shinzo Abe's been shot in the neck, in really bad shape." It has since been reported that Shinzo Abe was pronounced dead after doctors failed to restart his vitals.

Shinzo Abe is 67 years old and has been a prominent figure in Japanese national politics for the past 30 years. First elected to the Japanese House of Representatives in 1993, he rose to prominence in the role and eventually was named the Prime Minister of Japan in 2006. His Liberal Democratic Party was voted out of the majority in 2007, ending his brief but important tenure. Until, that is, when the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan won the 2012 Election and Shinzo Abe was once again named Prime Minister. This time, he held on to the position from December 2012 until September 2020.

It may seem strange for me, a conservative American, to mourn the loss of a "Liberal Democratic" Japanese politician. Simply put, conservative and liberal mean can mean very different things from one country to another. Furthermore, Shinzo Abe was widely known for his brutally direct language about Communist China and the threat it poses to the world. He also led the charge to remilitarize Japan in the face of increased aggression from China. Following Japan's loss in World War II, Japan had a new constitution and in that constitution was Article 9; which prvented Japan from ever having a military again. That worked great in the decades after the war, but with China and North Korea spreading violent anti-Japanese rhetoric, it was increasingly becoming irresponsible. Shinzo Abe wasn't the first Japanese politician to see the problem, but he was the Prime Minister who managed to do something about it.

It should come as no surprise then that Chinese nationalists and leftists around the world are celebrating the assassination of Shinzo Abe with great delight. That alone should tell you to mourn Abe's passing.

Shinzo Abe was on the campaign trail in Nara when the assassin, Yamagami Tetsuya, somehow got behind him while delivering a campaign speech and fired his weapon twice, stiking Shinzo Abe in the neck both times in front of the shocked crowd.

Because gun control laws are so strict in Japan, the assassin resorted to making his own homemade gun; which again should tell us something about the effectiveness of gun control laws when someone really wants to shoot someone else. He has also been cooperating with police, confessed to the assassination, and claimed to have done it because the former Prime Minister was rumored to have been a member of some secret organization. It's a chilling reminder of the danger conspiracy theorists would pose in the United States if they weren't all complete cowards with IQs around 70.

I'm still at a loss that this could happen. Obviously, I'm going to be praying for Shinzo Abe's soul, the family he left behind, and those of us around the world who admired his no-nonsense approach to dealing with the Communist Chinese regime.