How they see it, December 23, 2012
School violence in China and the United States
1. The New York Times
Like other shootings before it, the Newtown tragedy has reawakened America to its fixation with firearms … Experts from the Harvard School of Public Health, using data from 26 developed countries, have shown that wherever there are more firearms, there are more homicides … Other nations have suffered similar rampages, but they have reacted quickly to impose new and stricter gun laws. In Japan, which has very strict laws, only 11 people were killed with guns in 2008, compared with 12,000 deaths by firearms that year in the US. As New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg stressed: "We are the only industrialised country that has this problem. In the whole world, the only one." Americans do not have to settle for that. (New York)
2. The Guardian
This time, maybe something will happen. If oratory ever changed the world, then President Obama's speech in Newtown, Connecticut, hailed as one of his finest, might signal a fresh determination to tackle America's epidemic of gun violence … Two Democratic senators identified with gun rights, Joe Manchin and Mark Warner, have now crossed over to the lobby in favour of reform. Mr Manchin … said the Newtown shootings had changed the dialogue. Let us hope he is right. The clearest way to change the dialogue is for more senators like him to step forward … The argument for action has been made. Apart from mass shootings, there are 30,000 firearms deaths a year. If ever there was a time to act, it is now. (London)
3. China Daily
We feel sad that 22 primary school students in Henan province were wounded by a [mentally ill] villager, on the same day that 20 children and seven adults in the United States were killed by a gunman. While the school shooting in Connecticut has sparked discussion about gun control, the tragedy in China points to the necessity of tightening security in schools. An investigation showed that the culprit entered the rural primary school in Guangshan county without anyone stopping him. It would have been extremely difficult to stop the gunman who shot the students in Connecticut, but it should have been possible to stop the knife-wielding man … We shouldn't wait until another tragedy occurs. (Beijing)
