One might as well also take notice of what the rest of the world thinks about this.
Crazy American haters
U.S. gun laws draw heat after massacre
By PAISLEY DODDS
LONDON - The Virginia Tech shootings sparked criticism of U.S. gun control laws around the world Tuesday. Editorials lashed out at the availability of weapons, and the leader of Australia — one of America's closest allies — declared that America's gun culture was costing lives.
South Korea's Foreign Ministry said the government hoped Monday's shootings, allegedly carried out by a 23-year-old South Korean native, would not "stir up racial prejudice or confrontation."
While some focused blame only on the gunman, world opinion over U.S. gun laws was almost unanimous: Access to weapons increases the probability of shootings. There was no sympathy for the view that more guns would have saved lives by enabling students to shoot the assailant.
"We took action to limit the availability of guns and we showed a national resolve that the gun culture that is such a negative in the United States would never become a negative in our country," said Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who staked his political career on promoting tough gun laws after a gunman went on one of the world's deadliest killing sprees 11 years ago.
The tragedy in a Tasmanian tourist resort left 35 people dead. Afterward, Australia's gun laws were changed to prohibit automatic weapons and handguns and toughen licensing and storage restrictions.
Handguns are also banned in Britain — a prohibition that forces even the country's Olympic pistol shooting team from practicing on its own soil. In Sweden, civilians can acquire firearm permits only if they have a hunting license or are members of a shooting club and have no criminal record. In Italy, people must have a valid reason for wanting one. Firearms are forbidden for private Chinese citizens.
Still, leaders from Britain, Germany, Mexico, China, Afghanistan and France stopped short of criticizing President Bush or U.S. gun laws when they offered sympathies to the families of Monday's victims.
Editorials were less diplomatic.
"Only the names change — And the numbers," read a headline in the Times of London. "Why, we ask, do Americans continue to tolerate gun laws and a culture that seems to condemn thousands of innocents to death every year, when presumably, tougher restrictions, such as those in force in European countries, could at least reduce the number?"
The French daily Le Monde said the regularity of mass shootings across the Atlantic was a blotch on America's image. "It would be unjust and especially false to reduce the United States to the image created, in a recurrent way, from the bursts of murderous fury that some isolated individuals succumb to. But acts like this are rare elsewhere, and tend to often disfigure the 'American dream.'"
Shock, Sympathy And Denunciation Of U.S. Gun Laws
British Newspaper Asks, 'What Price the Right to Bear Arms?'By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 17, 2007; Page A11
LONDON, April 16 -- The Virginia Tech shootings received extensive news coverage around the world Monday, leading many to question how such violence could keep happening in the United States.
In Britain, there was shock at the scale of the killings, but many people said they were not surprised, seeing the United States as a nation obsessed with guns, where firearms are easy to obtain.
"I think the reason it happens in America is there's access to weapons -- you can go into a supermarket and get powerful automatic weapons," Keith Ashcroft, a psychologist, told the Press Association. Ashcroft said he believed such access, along with a culture that makes gun ownership seem normal, increases the likelihood of such attacks in the United States.
"When you look at these cases, someone is depressed and they have access to weapons, they're going to be using that method to kill," Ashcroft said. "It's just simple opportunity."
Early editions of Tuesday's London papers were dominated by huge headlines and photos of police hauling the wounded out of a building at Virginia Tech. "Executed at Uni," said the Daily Mirror, using British slang for university. The Daily Mail's headline, meanwhile, asked, "What price the right to bear arms?" Gun ownership is strictly regulated in Britain. The Home Office, which is in charge of public safety, said gun crime accounts for less than half a percent of all crime recorded by police, according to the Press Association.
In a special report on BBC 24 Monday evening, a commentator, Gavin Hewitt, said mass murder on school campuses had become "part of the American landscape." The network showed video footage of Columbine High School in Colorado and the Amish shooting in Pennsylvania, and noted that the powerful U.S. gun lobby had blocked gun restrictions that Europeans regard as simple common sense. "Even after today's horrific tragedy, laws are unlikely to change," Hewitt said.
Queen Elizabeth II, who is scheduled to visit Virginia next month, was "shocked and saddened" by the killings, according to a spokesman at Buckingham Palace.
The story led Canadian news reports throughout the day. But while Canada, which has strict gun controls, has long looked askance at the proliferation of guns in the United States, no sense of superiority was expressed. Canada has had five school shootings since 1975, the latest last year when a young man shot 20 students at a junior college in Montreal, killing one.
In France, news of the shootings dominated the Web pages of every major French newspaper. Bloggers responding to the reports overwhelmingly blamed the tragedy on what they called lax American rules on gun ownership.
"In France, it is incomprehensible for us to understand what could prompt someone to own a handgun," a blogger identified as Aliosha wrote on the Web site of the daily newspaper Liberation, adding that it is "the right (almost the duty) for each American to be able to obtain a weapon without much trouble."