Gun Control: The Shameful International Track Record - Brief Article

Guns Magazine, Nov, 1999 by Massad Ayoob

Opponents of gun owners' civil rights say that mass shootings of innocent people in public places would cease if we just adopted strict "gun control" like some other countries. It's an old American saying that, "The grass is always greener in the other fellow's yard." Well, in this case it's not greener it's just bloodier.

Japan is often cited as a model of "gun control," since only cops and members of organized crime families have handguns, and only the rich can own rifles or shotguns. Yet the suicide rate in Japan is far higher than ours, and psychopaths unleash poison Sarin gas in subways when they wish to commit mass murder.

Canada is also on the anti-gunners' list of "we should be like them" countries. In 1989, Marc Lepine fatally shot 14 helpless victims at the University of Montreal before he committed suicide.

The Australian Commonwealth has for decades been held up as an example of "sane" gun policy. Yet the single highest mass muder death toll occurred in Tasmania when a psycho opened fire with automatic rifles it wasn't legal to own. The government's solution? To enact even more draconian gun confiscation upon their population of law-abiding firearms owners.

Colombia is not a place where it's particularly easy for law abiding citizens to get hold of guns. Yet in Bogota in 1986, Campo Delgado shot and killed 29 people, including his mother and a little girl, before police shot him down.

South Korea has strict and rigid laws on firearms ownership, yet in 1982, a 27-year-old policeman named Woo Bom-Kon went on a rampage with an M-2 .30 caliber machine gun and hand grenades stolen from a local government armory. He murdered 53 people before blowing himself up with his last grenade.