What others are saying:
"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.
"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."
[Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Tuesday decried the "gun culture" in America and advocated tough gun laws, Reuters news agency reported. Howard introduced strict gun ownership laws after a massacre of 35 people in 1996.]
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 Iraq, major television networks broadcast news of the shootings in brief bulletins at the top of each hour Monday, but devoted most of their airtime to stories closer to home -- the resignations of cabinet ministers loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the crisis in Darfur and recent bombings in Algeria. In Colombia, a close U.S. ally notorious for its political violence, the Web site of the country's biggest newspaper, El Tiempo, had by midafternoon posted six stories on the shootings. In Lima, Peru, El Comercio ran the banner headline, "Authorities Confirm 33 Dead in Virginia Killings."
Source: Washington Post, Kevin Sullivan
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