KEY POINTS:
After a day to reflect on events, newspapers around the world are reacting strongly to the implications of the Virginia Tech mass shooting in the United States.
Banning guns is a salve, not a solution
Banning the use or possession of weapons may seem the
obvious way out, writes Magnus Linklater, but it is not the solution. Although it could probably have prevented tragedies such as this, gun controls do not reduce crime. A shift in national culture to end the glorification of guns is what's needed.
>>Times Online
Campus Shootings and Status Anxiety
Jason Hahn of the Korean Oh My News says a sense of academic and career failure has been the common thread in many mass killings. Coming to terms with our own faults and not placing our self worth in the hands of others will enable healing.
>>Oh My News
A mass shooting at school, yet again
The Globe and Mail in Canada says it's time government and society answer for the epidemic of school shootings. "If the frequency of mass shootings is uniquely American, it's also uniquely American to label 220 school shootings in six years as rare."
>>The Globe and Mail
American Tragedy
The French editorial in Le Monde said such episodes disfigure the "American dream" and condemned their ideology on weapons.
>>Le Monde
Feelings of rejection tie killers together
Mark Coultan says acts like these are never rational and we may never fully understand what motivated the Virginia Tech rampage.
>>Sydney Morning Herald
Tragedy will not decide gun control debate
According to Bronwen Maddox at Times Online, a new round of the debate is probably inevitable, even if it is inconclusive. American commentators have argued that if students had been allowed to take their own arms into classrooms, they could have fought back. But now that rural areas - not just southern states - are experiencing a sharp increase in gun-related attacks, it's harder to defend gun rights.
>>Times Online
Eight years after Columbine
"Sympathy was not enough at the time of Columbine, and eight years later it is not enough." The International Herald Tribune calls for an urgent reform of gun controls.
>>International Herald Tribune
Column: the culture of violence
Brett Morris believes America's violent history of slavery and genocide, and "literally non stop war" with other countries, is at fault. Coming to terms with the effects of violence would be the first step.
>>Collegiate Times
Column: Focus on the victims, not the recriminations
Tim Edson says the only real villain is the mass murderer responsible. There will be plenty of time for reasoned debates concerning gun rights and gun control, but that time simply is not now.
>>Collegiate Times
