Monitor

All the News of the World: US press comment on the shooting of Jewish children by a gunman in Los Angeles

THERE IS one thing that links this man to all the killers who were motivated not by prejudice but by different demons - the student shooters at Columbine High who felt picked upon, the day trader in Atlanta depressed by stock-market reversals, the worker in Pelham, Ala, who nursed a grudge against his employers. None of these people seemed to have any trouble getting the weapons they needed to settle their private scores, indulge their crackpot fantasies or further their twisted ideologies.

The New York Times

IT GETS tiresome saying it, particularly to a Congress that seems to be owned by the gun lobby. Nevertheless, it must be said: wackos and weirdos and bigots we shall always have with us; they are part of the human condition. Armed wackos and weirdos and bigots are not. But to get the arms out of their hands, we must have effective gun control. When will Congress give it to us?

The Chicago Tribune

AS LONG as worsening acts of violence - now, horribly, against children - don't numb the public's sense of revulsion, a healthy outrage can be the first step to healing. Outrage can also lead to solutions. By condemning bigotry and refusing to give it power, even as we protect repellent speech under our Constitution, Americans prove that a free society can also be a just society.

The Los Angeles Times

THE REAL wake-up message is not in this anti-Semitic garbage but in the relentless series of multiple murders and woundings by deranged men speaking with firearms. Americans are awake these days to the alarming prevalence of gunfire and the outlandish availability of the most efficient tools of violence. Too many members of Congress are unawakened - still looking the other way and coming up with excuses for leaving America's mammoth arsenal largely intact. They talk about hate and violenc, but not about more controls on guns or the banning of concealable weapons. They could learn from the children of Los Angeles.

The Washington Post