Here is an interesting article!

U.S. Gun Laws Draw Criticism After Massacre
Australian Leader Decries American 'Gun Culture'
By PAISLEY DODDS
AP
SYDNEY, Australia (April 18) - 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.


View From Abroad

Musadeq Sadeq, AP
Australian Prime Minister John Howard praised his own country's gun control laws.

More Coverage: The Latest on Virginia Tech Shootings




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.

Professors from India, Israel and Canada also were 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.

Canadian Jocelyn Couture-Nowak, a French instructor, also died in the shootings, said her husband Jerzy Nowak, head of the university's horticulture department. "We're mourning," Nowak said.

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.


Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

2007-04-17 11:09:18

__________________
X5 4.4
E46 M3 Vert

Okay, here's some over-all stats relating to deaths in general according to JAMA for 2005:

Tobacco (435,000 deaths; 18.1% of total US deaths)
Poor diet and physical inactivity (400,000 deaths; 16.6%)
Alcohol consumption (85,000 deaths; 3.5%)
Microbial agents (75,000)
Toxic agents (55,000)
Motor vehicle crashes (43,000)(including drunk drivers)
Incidents involving firearms (29,000)
Sexual behaviors (STDs, hepatitis B and C, and cervical cancer) (20,000)
Illicit use of drugs (17,000)

So let's ban alcohol and tobacco too...together they make up almost 1/5th of the total deaths in the United states Far more than the <1-2% that firearms and cars cause. According to the FBI, in 2005 75% of gun deaths were by illegally obtained guns...so banning guns would get rid of 25% of the deaths, of which most of those are likely accidents and suicide...the suicides would still kill themselves anyway and accidents can be lessened by education, but they will always happen.

__________________
Annoying people is easier than fishing with dynamite

Now, Head, we have to stop having common sense backed up with facts. That only confuses the issue of politics.

__________________
2010 528Xi
I demand justice.
Or, if there must be injustice, let it be in my favor.

Reynold's Wrap: it's not just for hats anymore.

In the spirit of some....

__________________

An unwavering defender of those I see worth protecting.

"promote the general welfare, not provide the general welfare"

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

You're making a wild assumption that most firearm related are caused by accidents or end in suicide. The insane murder rates lend a different conclusion.

Second, deaths as a result of tobacco and alchahol are self-inflicted. Fireams are used to kill someone ELSE. The two forms of death don't have any similarity other than the very end-result.

Nice edit.

__________________
2010 528Xi
I demand justice.
Or, if there must be injustice, let it be in my favor.

Reynold's Wrap: it's not just for hats anymore.

Quit whining..it's the same as what you quoted. I forgot to quote thehead so deleted and quoted him.

Whining?

Don't think so.

You're the one that changed what you said. If it's the same, why change it?

Either way, you're wrong.

__________________
2010 528Xi
I demand justice.
Or, if there must be injustice, let it be in my favor.

Reynold's Wrap: it's not just for hats anymore.

Mayor of Nagasaki, Japan gunned down by Yakuza - 04-18-2007 , 01:53 AM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



NAGASAKI — Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito was shot in front of JR Nagasaki Station on Tuesday evening, according to news reports.

Ito was taken to a local hospital, however details of his condition have not yet been made available. He did not respond to questions asked by paramedics.The man who shot Ito was subdued on the spot before police apprehended him.Ito is running for the mayoral election slated for April 22 to seek his 4th term. (Mainichi)

snip

Mayor Iccho Ito was shot on a street near his office, just in front of Nagasaki train station, according to local police official Isao Teramoto.A man with links to organized crime was quickly detained, according to Kyodo News agency. NHK footage from Nagasaki showed several officers escorting a man into a police car, and an ambulance leaving the scene.

It was the second shooting in recent years of 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, former Nagasaki mayor Hitoshi Motoshima was shot and seriously wounded in 1990 after saying Japan’s emperor, beloved by rightists, bore some responsibility for World War II.

Yakuza are the Japanese mafia .

Link

Gun control in Japan is the most stringent in the democratic world. The weapons law begins by stating 'No-one shall possess a fire-arm or fire-arms or a sword or swords', and very few exceptions are allowed. Gun ownership is minuscule, and so is gun crime. As gun crime in other nations increases, many advocates of gun control urge that Japan's gun control policy be imitated.

Link

And yet, the MAYOR of Nagasaki is gunned down in front of a train station. Looks like criminals will find ways to get what they want, regardless of laws. That's why they're called CRIMINALS.

__________________
2010 528Xi
I demand justice.
Or, if there must be injustice, let it be in my favor.

Reynold's Wrap: it's not just for hats anymore.