Here Comes The Rest of The World

[CGT]

Now everybody's weighing in on our gun laws and "gun culture".

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18149774/?GT1=9246

 

[GnL]

Screw them all. They aren't US and we aren't them. They don't have our Constitution.

 

[Boats]

We do seem to have successfully addressed fatal soccer rioting, wholesale ethnic cleansing, and trampling our countrymen with main battle tanks.

We'll work on our victim disarmament zone problem.

 

[Beau93]

And, of course, the murderer wasn't an American.

 

[cbsbyte]

And, of course, the murderer wasn't an American.

He lived in the US for fourteen years, and was a legal resident. Which means he had the right to buy firearms, get a drivers license, go to public school and work here. He might not be an American but he had just as many rights as we do.

 

[trbon8r]

I wonder what the America haters would have to say about the Mayor of Nagasaki getting shot today, despite Japan's strict gun laws?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070417/wl_nm/japan_shooting_repeat_dc

The rest of the world can go pound sand. There are plenty of good reasons why we don't want to be like them.

 

[cbsbyte]

I wonder what the America haters would have to say about the Mayor of Nagasaki getting shot today, despite Japan's strict gun laws?

That is still a very rare occurence to have a shooting in Japan.

 

[longeyes]

The Brits, who are inches away from de facto slavery, think our liberties are undermining us. That's rich.

 

[El Tejon]

The rest of world wants to badmouth all Koreans?

Well, O.K., good luck, they are smart, tough and called the "Irish of Asia" for a reason.

 

[30 cal slob]

The rest of world wants to badmouth all Koreans?

Well, O.K., good luck, they are smart, tough and called the "Irish of Asia" for a reason.

And stubborn and hard-drinking too.

 

[SWMAN]

Yeah, let's take lessons from the rest of the world, especisally China and ban guns along with allowing Government censorship of the press. We can't have a press running around printing rumors and unfounded stories not subjected to the Government's approval.

 

[obxned]

Dear World:

We have had to bail all your sorry butts out of various jambs for more than 100 years. The relative peace and prosperity you are now enjoying is courtesy of the USA.

If you want to tell us how we ought to do things here, first spend the next hundred years earning that privilege.

For now, y’all shut the hell up!

 

[mbt2001]

No private arms in China
The shooting drew intense coverage by media in China, in part because the school has a relatively large Chinese student body and because U.S. reports said the gunman may have been Chinese or Asian.

Private citizens are forbidden from owning guns in China.

“Why are there were so many shooting incidents in American schools and universities?” said a comment posted on the popular Internet portal Sohu.com. “People should think why an American-educated student would take revenge against America?”

Yuan Peng, an American studies expert, was quoted by state-run China Daily as saying the shooting illustrated America’s problems with gun control and a lack of security at American universities.

“This incident reflects the problem of gun control in America,” said Yuan, from the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, a Beijing-based think tank.

Yeah China is who we should emulate... Student gunmen have a heard time getting a shot off because the tanks are running them over...

I don't like other countries being critical of us, when they have problems of their own that are JUST AS BAD in their own way. There is no perfect system, and I will take ours over anyone elses any day.

 

[Outlaw Man]

Gun crime is extremely rare in Britain, and handguns are completely illegal. The ban is so strictly enforced that Britain’s Olympic pistol shooting team is barred from practicing in its own country.

Britain’s 46 homicides involving firearms was the lowest total since the late 1980s. New York City, with 8 million people compared to 53 million in England and Wales, recorded at least 579 homicides last year.

Where do I begin on this one?

 

[jr81452]

"but it won’t change the culture of a country that has the notion of self-defense imprinted on its DNA and which considers the right of having guns inalienable,”

am i missing something? wanting to be able to defend yourself is bad now? wow what the hell is in the water over there?

 

[K-Romulus]

similar, but longer, article in WashPost

http://financial.washingtonpost.com/custom/wpost/html-story.asp?dispnav=business&mwpage=story&symb=&guid={C2FFD68D-B383-44C6-85A0-41271F4D52E2}

U.S. Gun Control Laws Criticized Abroad

LONDON, Apr 17, 2007 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- 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.'"

Police started identifying the victims Tuesday. One was a Peruvian student identified as Daniel Perez Cueva, 21, according to his mother Betty Cuevas, who said her son was studying international relations.

Two professors from India and Israel were also killed.

Liviu 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.

"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu said. His father, a Holocaust survivor, immigrated to Israel from Romania, and was on sabbatical in Virginia.

Indian-born G.V. Loganathan, 51, a lecturer at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was also among the dead, his brother G.V. Palanivel told Indian media.

"We all feel like we have had an electric shock. We do not know what to do," Palanivel said of his brother.

The killings also hit a nerve for Virginia Tech alumni abroad.

"I think if this does prompt a serious and reflective debate on gun issues and gun law in the States, then some good may come from this woeful tragedy," said British Home Office Minister Tony McNulty, who graduated in 1982.

Britain's 46 homicides involving firearms last year was the lowest since the late 1980s. New York City, with 8 million people compared to 53 million in England and Wales, recorded 590 homicides last year.

"If the guns are harder to get a hold of, fewer people will do it," said Michael Dent, a 65-year-old construction worker in London. "You can't walk up to a supermarket or shop and buy a gun like in the States."

But even in Germany, where gun-control laws are strict, a teenager in 2002 shot and killed 12 teachers, a secretary, two students and a police officer at a high school. The shooter was a gun club member licensed to own weapons. The attack led Germany to raise the age for owning recreational firearms from 18 to 21.

"The instant I saw the pictures and heard the commentary, it immediately brought back our own experience," Gutenberg high school director Christiane Alt said of the Virginia Tech killings.

The Swedish daily Goteborgs-Posten said without access to weapons, the killings at Virginia Tech may have been prevented.

"What exactly triggered the massacre in Virginia is unclear, but the fundamental reason is often the perpetrator's psychological problems in combination with access to weapons," it wrote.

The shootings drew intense media coverage in China, in part because the school has a large Chinese student body.

"This incident reflects the problem of gun control in America," Yuan Peng, an American studies expert in China, was quoted as saying by state-run China Daily.

Only 7 percent of the more than 26,000 students at Virginia Tech are foreign, according to the school Web site. But Chinese make up nearly a third of that.

In Italy, there are three types of licenses for gun ownership: for personal safety, target practice and skeet shooting, and hunting. Authorization is granted by the police. To obtain a gun for personal safety, the owner must be an adult and have a "valid" reason.

Italy's leading daily Corriere della Sera's main story on the shootings was an opinion piece entitled "Guns at the Supermarket" - a critical view of the U.S. gun lobby and the ease with which guns can be purchased. State-run RAI radio also discussed at length what it said were lax standards for gun ownership in the United States.

"The latest attack on a U.S. campus will shake up America, maybe it will provoke more vigorous reactions than in the past, but it won't change the culture of a country that has the notion of self-defense imprinted on its DNA and which considers the right of having guns inalienable," Corriere wrote in its front-page story.

Several Italian graduate students at Virginia Tech recounted how they barricaded themselves inside a geology department building not far from the scene of the shooting.

In Mexico, radio commentators criticized the availability of firearms in the U.S. Others renewed Mexico's complaint that most guns in Mexico are smuggled in from the United States.

The killings led newspapers' front pages, with Mexico City's Dario Monitor reporting: "Terror returns to the U.S.: 32 assassinated on university campus." The tabloid Metro compared Mexico's death toll Monday from drug violence to the number of people killed at Virginia Tech, in a front-page headline that read: "U.S. 33, Mexico 20."

---

Associated Press Writers Charles Hutzler, Alexandru Alexe, Raphael Satter, Robert Barr, Karl Ritter, Nicole Winfield, Gavin Rabinowitz, Alex Braun, Courtney French and Traci Carl contributed to this report.

All hands, brace for impact! IANSA, et al., smell blood in the water.

 

[Beatnik]

Well, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense.
There's no reason to consider self defense as an option. They are simply applying nation-level issues to the individual.
If the nation doesn't need to defend itself - ie, there are other people to do that job for you - then individuals should rely on other people to defend them as well.

Except for the part where we're the ones defending their nations, so that whole line of thinking kind of falls apart with me.

 

[nonquixote]

It takes a whole lot of school shootings to equal 1 Tiananmen square. Not to mention the dissidents who just... disappear. China having anything to say about this is rich.

 

[Geno]

Any foreign countries who would bad-mouth the USA need merely offer their own citizens over 300,000,000 firearms openly, and then wait to see how long their own government even stands, let alone face a societal melt-down!

This is what we show daily in America...millions of firearms owned legally, yet seldom (compared to the numbers) do we experience violence. Yes, we have a "gun culture"! Praise the Lord we do...it is our God-given, Constitutional right! In closing, as the Bible says, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!"

Proud to be an American...where at least I know I'm free!

 

[romma]

President John Howard is a Wuss!

 

[K-Romulus]

meanwhile, in "gun free" Japan

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070417/ap_on_re_as/japan_mayor_shooting

Japanese mayor killed by mobster

By HIROKO TABUCHI, Associated Press Writer 20 minutes ago

TOKYO - The mayor of the Japanese city of Nagasaki was shot to death in a brazen attack Tuesday by an organized crime chief apparently enraged that the city refused to compensate him after his car was damaged at a public works construction site, police said.

The shooting was rare in a country where handguns are strictly banned and only five politicians are known to have been killed since World War II.

Mayor Iccho Ito, 61, was shot twice in the back at point-blank range outside a train station Tuesday evening, Nagasaki police official Rumi Tsujimoto said.

One of the bullets struck the mayor's heart and he went into cardiac arrest, according to Nagasaki University Hospital spokesman Kenzo Kusano. Ito died after emergency surgery, said Nagasaki prefectural police official Hirofumi Ito.

Tetsuya Shiroo, a senior member of Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest organized crime syndicate, was wrestled to the ground by officers after the attack and arrested for attempted murder, police said.

He later admitted to shooting Ito with a handgun with the intent to kill, Nagasaki chief investigator Kazuki Umebayashi said at a news conference.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called for a "rigorous investigation."

It was the second attack in the last 20 years against a mayor of Nagasaki, which was destroyed by a U.S. atomic bomb in 1945 and whose leaders have actively campaigned against militarism.

In 1990, Mayor Hitoshi Motoshima was shot and seriously wounded after saying that Japan's emperor, beloved by rightists, bore some responsibility for World War II.

Tuesday's attack appeared to involve a more trivial matter, however.

Shiroo reportedly clashed with Nagasaki city officials in 2003 after his car was damaged when he drove into a hole at a public works site. He tried unsuccessfully to get compensation from the city after his insurance company refused to pay up, according to Japanese broadcaster NHK.

Shiroo also sent a letter to broadcaster TV Asahi to protest recent money scandals linked to Ito, including hidden accounts and public works contracts, Kyodo reported.

Backed by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Ito was campaigning for his fourth term in office before Sunday's elections. He was an active figure in the movement against nuclear proliferation, heading a coalition of Japanese cities calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

"Mayor Ito had a strong and boundless passion for peace," said Sunao Tsuboi, leader of a survivors' group based in Hiroshima, a city also flattened by a U.S. atomic bomb in 1945.

Commonly known as yakuza, Japan's organized crime groups are typically involved in real estate and construction kickback schemes, extortion, gambling, the sex industry, gunrunning and drug trafficking.

The yakuza also have had a long-standing political alliance with right-wing nationalists in Japan, although authorities did not indicate that Tuesday's attack was politically motivated.

Organized crime groups are behind most shootings in Japan, with two-thirds of the country's 53 known shootings last year being gang-related, according to the National Police Agency. Police estimate there are about 84,500 gangsters across Japan.

Attacks on politicians in post-war Japan are extremely rare.

In 1960, Socialist leader Inejiro Asanuma was killed in an attack by a sword-wielding 17-year-old that riveted the nation.

In 2002, a ruling party politician was fatally stabbed in a dispute over political funds. In the 1990s, a Liberal Democrat lawmaker was killed at his home by his daughter and an opposition lawmaker was stabbed to death by a mental patient.

Last year, a right-wing extremist burned down the house of ruling party lawmaker Koichi Kato after the politician criticized then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's pilgrimage to a controversial Tokyo war shrine. No one was home at the time.

 

[loach369]

Just for the record:

The media here in the UK ( I am so disillusioned I don't call my homeland Great Britian anymore) are highly anti gun. They accurately reflect the Government and Police view that private citizens should not have access to firearms. We cannot be trusted they believe. That's probably why we are the most monitored nation on the planet, there are CCTV cameras EVERYWHERE.

The BBC has reported all day that you can buy Uzi submachine guns over the counter in Virginia for $600. Now correct me if I'm wrong but I thought a pre 86 transferable full auto Uzi currently ran at $7000 plus, required a $200 transfer tax and an LEO signoff? But they aren't interested in the facts are they????

Handguns aren't entirely banned in the UK, you can have black powder pistols and revolvers on licence no problem, a 9mm (or similar calibre) for humane destruction if you are a deerstalker, handguns that are of historic interest (Lugers, Mauser C96's etc) if you are a collector and , get this, any revolver you like as long as it has a minimum 12 inch barrel and an over all length of 24 inches if you are a member of a gun club.

With the recent tragic events at Virginia Tech, which no legislation would have prevented (but allowing concealed carry on campus may have reduced), I very much fear that law abiding firearms owners in the US face troubled times ahead.

 

[MikePGS]

Welcome to the forums Loach.


If anything this case proves that you can't rely on the police, even if they are ON CAMPUS to help you. They can't teleport, nor are they omnipotent and thus capable of knowing where to be and when. Ultimately you are responsible for your own safety... if the rest of the world wants to put that responsibility in their own hands, there more than welcome to do so. I however have infinitely more trust in myself and my own capabilities than I do in my government.

 

[MechAg94]

You are pretty much right about the full auto Uzi. The sales price may be higher though. I think even the few semi-auto versions are rare as they are not imported.

There are a few clones like the Tech 9, but it is only semi-auto and no more dangerous than any other 9 mm handgun.

IMHO, if he had a full auto Uzi, he probably would have hurt fewer people.

 

[MechAg94]

The main thing that many Americans have learned over the years is that even though things like this can happen, gun control wouldn't have accomplished anything and never really does accomplish anything. It is just a knee jerk reaction/solution by people who don't think.