While the shootings in Tucson continue to inflame the debate over violent rhetoric in American politics, the international media’s reaction to the tragedy is largely focused on alleged killer Jared Lee Loughner’s weapon of choice: a gun.
In doing so, it's gotten to the debate over gun laws faster than a U.S. media hung up on the politics.
"This guy was a nutjob. What he did was sick and evil," a Tucson gunshop owner told Agence France-Press in a piece entitled, “Shooting Tests U.S. West Love Affair with Guns.” "But the congresswoman he shot owns the same gun."
"This is America," he added. “People love to shoot.”
“As [Gabrielle Giffords] lies in critical condition,” AFP's Shaun Tandon wrote, “some are publicly questioning the gun-slinging culture of the American West where weapons at restaurants do not cause a second glance and opposition to guns is considered political suicide.”
Region-by-region highlights from the international media’s coverage:
EUROPE
“What is it with guns and America,” Ed Pilkington asked in London’s Guardian. “Why does the most advanced democracy, which prides itself on being a bastion of reason and civilization in a brutal and ugly world, put up with this carnage in its own back yard? Why does it tolerate the sea of blood that flows from gun incidents, with about 100,000 people killed or injured every year? Why does it accept an annual murder rate by guns that is 13 times that of Germany and 44 times that of England and Wales? ...
"Every time a gun massacre happens in America, the pattern seems to be the same: initial bewilderment is followed by outrage, calls are made for a renewed look at the country's almost uniquely loose gun laws, and then ... nothing.”
The Guardian noted that the gun Loughner used was the same one "that Seung-Hui Cho deployed when he went on his rampage through Virginia Tech on in April 2007, massacring 32 people."
“The gun that 22-year-old Loughner reportedly used in his killing spree was a Glock 19 -- a semiautomatic handgun that is incredibly easy to fire several times quickly,” Heather Maher reported on Radio Free Europe. “Loughner purchased the gun legally in November after passing a background check. Guns like Glocks were illegal a few years ago under an assault-weapons ban signed into law by former President Bill Clinton.”
As for Clinton, he spoke to the BBC about the tragedy but warned international media not to “demonize” U.S. political discourse over the shootings. "No one intends to do anything that encourages this sort of behavior, and I think it is wrong for anyone to suggest that," Clinton told the BBC, though he failed to actually address the gun issue.
The Economist focused on the debate over words rather than guns but eventually came to why the U.S. media debate largely hasn’t shifted: the gun lobby: "It is testimony to the strength of America’s gun lobby (and another constitutional safeguard) that there has been little talk of any measures to curb gun ownership as a result of the incident."
