Wednesday, 18 April 2007CAIRO ÔÇö Europe's leading dailies on Tuesday, April 17, blamed the killing of 33 students at Virginia Tech university, the worst shooting spree in US history, on the "gun culture" in American society.
"Will this terrible day in Virginia be enough to dent America's love affair with guns?" Britain's Independent asked in a commentary.
The daily said it is high time American legislators amend the constitution, which legalizes gun ownership.
"The passionate feelings of the gun lobby may be traced to the second amendment of the US Constitution, enshrining 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms,'" it noted.
Police and university officials were under heavy pressure Tuesday to explain a two-hour gap between the first shootings, when two people were killed, and the second, when a gunman stalked through the halls of an engineering building across campus, shooting at professors and students in classrooms and hallways, firing dozens of rounds and killing 30.
The gunman, 23-year-old South Korean student Cho Seung-Hui, eventually killed himself in a classroom, leaving the sprawling rural campus reeling with grief and shock.
Police said the gunman appeared to have used chains to lock doors and prevent victims from escaping.
Typical American
In Italy, the Leftist Il Manifesto newspaper said the shooting was "as American as apple pie."
Gerard Baker, a columnist for Britain's The Times, feared worse was yet to come.
"The truth is that only an optimist would imagine Virginia Tech will hold the new record for very long."
This was the deadliest shooting rampage in American history and came nearly eight years to the day after 13 people died at Columbine High School in Colorado at the hands of two disaffected students who then killed themselves.
France's Le Monde daily said such episodes frequently disfigure the "American dream."
"The ... slaughter forces American society to once again examine itself, its violence, the obsession with guns of part of its population, the troubles of its youth, subjected to the double tyranny of abundance and competition."
Guns tend to be more common and more entrenched in the culture of southern, central and mountain states, which tend to vote Republican and where hunting is a popular sport, according to the Independent.
The gun crime is rife in big cities on the east coast too, which are invariably Democratic.
The gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association, is one of the most powerful in the US and gun owners are a constituency no one wants to alienate.
More than 30,000 people die from gunshot wounds in the US annually and there are more guns in private hands than in any other country.
Despite the soaring number of casualties, the Independent ruled out a policy shift in American society.
"It would be vain to hope that even so destructive a crime as this will cool the American ardour for guns."
17 April 2007
Islam Online
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Wednesday, 18 April 2007
America's "Gun Culture"
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