vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #566 / Vladivostok by Braille / Reading article...

The all too familiar sound of gunfire and police sirens rang out April 16, 2007 on the campus of Virginia Tech in the United States, realizing one of the most brutal massacres on a school campus in the world’s history. Residents of Vladivostok respond with shock, confusion and pointed fingers at lax American gun laws.

The perpetrator, 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui, gunned down a total of 32 students and faculty before finally shooting himself, news reports said. This most recent incident is one of many school shootings not only in America, but across the world.

Asked about their perception of frequent shootings in American schools and universities, Vladivostok residents responded that it may simply be the difference in the nature of campus life and educational institutions in the two countries. Most students shared that they do not believe that the kind of mass-shooting seen on April 16 is likely to occur on a Russian campus. The greatest reason given is the perception of and response to America’s comparatively lenient gun laws.

Russia’s view of American gun culture and what is widely seen as its subsequent effects is often highly negative. In a report by RIA Novosti on April 17 Sergei Oznobishchev, the director of the Russian Institute for strategic evaluation and analysis, was quoted as saying that "American civilization is so ubiquitous and overwhelming that it simply depresses ordinary people. When combined with the constitutional right to bear arms conceived by the Founding Fathers of the American Constitution," the results can be disastrous.

In opposition to prevailing Russian sentiment Viktor Kremenyuk, a deputy director of the Institute of U.S./Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences stated that "it is a myth, which is popular among us [in Russia]. It is nonsense that one can just walk into a shop and buy a gun. The procedure is fairly complicated," in America, RIA Novosti reported the director as saying.

As of 1996 in Moscow alone some 470,000 weapons were registered for personal use. In Russia licenses must be obtained from the Interior Ministry and proof must be given by psychiatric and narcotics agencies proving that the purchaser is not in their records. Beyond this certain medical documents are required as are several minuscule taxes, after which a request is filed with the local police department and the license generally granted within a month window, according to a special report by RIA Novosti political analyst Vladimir Simonov.

Despite changing gun laws in Russia, and while the number of legal gun owners in the country has increased by over 10 times since the Soviet era, the crime rate has not decreased. Such hope that increased private gun ownership may deter crime is a common argument for Russian firearms advocates, Vladimir Simonov reports.

Many Russian advocates use U.S. Justice Department Statistics as evidence of the usefulness of citizen ownership, which states that in America “34 percent of all criminals were wounded or detained by armed civilians, and 40 percent have altogether given up the idea of an attack for fear of reciprocal fire. In those states that allow citizens to carry concealed arms, the level of murders is lower by 33 percent, and of robberies by 37 percent.”

Russian citizens are not the only ones to see it this way. This most recent incident has stirred the debate amongst American’s themselves. Many Democrats are hoping, in the words of Senator Dianne Feinstein, California that “this [incident] will reignite the dormant effort to pass commonsense gun regulations in this nation,” the Washington Post reported her as saying.

On the opposite side of this debate is the widely held assertion that stricter gun laws do not necessarily correlate with a lessening of violence on American campuses. American Senator Larry E. Craig, a Republican from Idaho, stated that he doubted that any gun law could be passed that would protect “any of us when somebody who is mentally deranged decides to do this,” the Washington Press also reported.

Last year Kimveer Gill, a student at Dawson College in Montreal, Quebec opened fire on September 13 wounding 20 and killing one. In Europe, in Erfurt, Eastern Germany a student opened fire in retaliation for being expelled, killing 17 students and himself on April 26, 2002. Further west in Dunblane Scotland an armed assailant murdered 16 schoolchildren and their teacher before killing himself in March, 1996, CNN’s timeline reported.

The debate of private gun ownership is ongoing, and it cannot be denied that gun laws in America are notably more lax then in most countries worldwide due to its Constitutional nature. Yet, whether or not gun ownership is the cause or encouraging factor of such massacres as the one seen on April 16 is still, and will remain, a global point of inquiry and disagreement.