Va. Tech shootings spawn criticism of U.S. gun control

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.\nSouth 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.”\nWhile 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.\n“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.\nThe 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.\nHandguns 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.\nStill, 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.\nEditorials were less diplomatic.\n“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?”\nThe French daily Le Monde said the regularity of mass shootings across the Atlantic was a blotch on America’s image.\n“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.’”\nPolice started identifying the victims Tuesday. One was a Peruvian student identified as Daniel Prez Cueva, 21, according to his mother Betty Cuevas, who said her son was studying international relations.\nTwo professors from India and Israel were also killed.\nLiviu Librescu, 76, an engineering science and mathematics lecturer, tried to stop the gunman from entering his classroom by blocking the door before he was fatally shot, his son said Tuesday from Tel Aviv.