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International Reaction To Virginia Massacre

World Leaders Express Sympathy, Call For Gun Control

The worst peacetime gun massacre in American history has moved leaders in Europe and elsewhere to share their sympathy -- and their advice about gun control.

Monday's massacre at Virginia Tech university that left 33 people dead has drawn expressions of alarm and sympathy from leaders around the world, including Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, who rarely comments on current affairs.

A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said late Monday evening that the Queen was "shocked and saddened" at the slaughter, which ranks as the worst school shooting in US history. German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave her formal sympathies to US President George W. Bush, and a statement from French President Jacques Chirac's office in Paris relayed his "horror and consternation" and "his most saddened condolence and his complete solidarity" with the American people.

The leaders of two major German political parties, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), also expressed horror.

Edmund Stoiber, head of the CSU, which is the Bavarian sister party of Merkel's Christian Democrats, said the massacre "was beyond human comprehension," while Kurt Beck, head of the SPD, said he'd absorbed the news "with deep sadness." Beck added that while no one could wholly prevent such a thing from happening, greater gun control could "limit ... the level of armament" in US society.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard also gave his sympathies to the families of the dead on Tuesday. He went on to suggest that the "gun culture" in America had to change. He referred to an Australian massacre in 1996 by a man with a semi-automatic rifle who killed 35 people in Port Arthur on the island of Tasmania. At the time, Howard confronted Australia's gun lobby and banned almost all types of semi-automatic weapons.

"Eleven years ago we took action to limit the availability of guns," he said. "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."

The massacre at Virginia Tech occurred in spite of a campus-wide ban on firearms. The British newspaper The Times pointed out that a recent spate of London gun and knife violence had occurred in spite of "draconian" anti-weapons laws in the UK, a view echoed by other observers. A spokewoman for the White House said on Monday, "The President believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed."

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