Gun Control Misfires in Europe

Wall Street Journal ^ | April 30, 2002 | John Lott

[Washingtonian]

By JOHN R. LOTT JR.

Sixteen people were killed during Friday's school shooting in Germany. This follows the killing of 14 regional legislators in Zug, a Swiss canton, last September, and the massacre of eight city council members in a Paris suburb last month. The three worst public shootings in the Western world during the past year all occurred in Europe, whose gun laws are exactly what gun-control advocates want the U.S. to adopt. Indeed, all three occurred in gun-free "safe zones."

[Tribune7]

bump

[DUMBGRUNT]

"making it a crime to use a gun defensively"

That will help.

[drq]

bang

[Jolly Green]

Have you noticed that our elite national media have dropped this story like a hot potato? It doesn't fit into their template of what constitutes a gun control story.

[marktwain]

Exactly right. Everything they ever asked for , and more in German gun control, and it still did not stop a horrible school shooting. Gee.. how are they going to spin that to call for gun control like the Germans have?

[muawiyah]

Europeans have a really bad track record when it comes to guns. They should not be allowed to own them, or even have them around - most assuredly guns should never be issued to their armies!

Americans seem to have a knack, natural born I am sure, for figuring out how to use guns in the least injurious manner.

This may well be an example of "evolution in our time", worked in tandem with major technological advances.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Australia also passed severe gun restrictions in 1996, banning most guns and making it a crime to use a gun defensively.

Shovels are cheap and the outback is large and hardly populated at all.