The "Blame America and Guns First" Crowd

The world has seized upon the Virginia Tech tragedy as an opportunity to criticize the U.S.

The American lib media are using the biting editorials from across the globe and the snide remarks from world leaders as ammunition to advance their agenda to infringe on the Constitutional rights of citizens.

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.

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."

This backlash crap really pisses me off.
Just the suggestion that racial prejudice and confrontation against Koreans might result because the murderer of 32 innocents was South Korean is an insult to all Americans.

Dozens are dead and South Korea's Foreign Ministry responds in a completely selfish and irrational manner.

I don't blame South Koreans for the slaughter. I blame Cho Seung-Hui.

Gee, do you think English departments on campuses across the country are putting out statements of concern that the Virginia Tech incident might stir up prejudice and confrontation against English majors?

It's ridiculous!

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....

...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.

It's so clear that an effort is being made by those in the lib media to depict the U.S. as backward.

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.'"

I don't know where to begin.

That editorial from London's Times is despicable.

And it's laughable that the French have the gall to cite blotches on our image.

...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.

That's a callous remark.

"Hey, too bad 32 people were murdered but now maybe the U.S. will pass tougher gun laws."

What a jerk!

..."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."

Americans can walk up and buy a gun at a supermarket? Really?

Are guns for sale at Piggly Wiggly?

I hadn't noticed.

Are they out on the supermarket shelves or are they kept behind the deli counter next to the potato salad?

...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.

...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.

Blah, blah, blah.

I don't have a gun. But if I did, there is no way that I would commit such a heinous act as Cho did. Never.

Obviously, someone like Cho, someone with the capacity to slaughter 32 innocents, isn't going to follow laws.

...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."

If America is such a dangerous place, maybe the Mexican exodus will stop. They should reconsider coming into this violent country illegally.

Why risk getting shot?