But Marsh, an advocate of basic gun controls, says making it harder to walk into a shop and walk out with a gun could make a difference.

Tough laws, however, haven’t been foolproof.

Britain’s gun homicides have gone up and down in recent years despite its tougher laws.

In 1998, when the Dunblane-inspired handgun ban took effect, there were 49 gun homicides, Britain’s Home Office says. Firearm homicides spiked at 95 in 2001, dropped to 68 in 2003, rose again the next year to 77, and have declined steadily since. Last year, there were 46.

Canada overhauled its laws after gunman Marc Lepine killed 14 women and himself at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique college in 1989. It’s now illegal to possess an unregistered handgun or any kind of rapid-fire weapon.

Canada also requires training, a personal risk assessment, two references, spousal notification and criminal record checks. Government figures suggest the measures have been at least a partial success: Canada’s gun homicides have plunged more than 50 percent since 1991, when the changes took effect, dropping from 240 that year to 138 in 2003.

Mixed results
Yet Kimveer Gill still managed to obtain a Beretta semiautomatic rifle and two other weapons he used in last September’s shooting at Montreal’s Dawson College. Gill killed a young woman and himself and wounded 19 people.

Although Japan restricts handguns to police officers and others who can prove they need weapons for their jobs, it has suffered a recent spate of gangland shootings. That violence, including last week’s murder of the mayor of Nagasaki, prompted Japan this week to adopt even stricter controls aimed at stemming the inflow of foreign guns.

Germany has also had mixed results since toughening its gun laws in 2002, the year an alienated former pupil killed a dozen teachers and four others at a high school in Erfurt.

Authorities raised the legal age for owning recreational firearms from 18 to 21, outlawed pump-action shotguns and required buyers to undergo psychological screening. Yet in 2003, the number of gun homicides jumped to 252 from 243 the previous year. It has declined since, to 228 in 2004 and 212 in 2005, the last year for which figures are available.

Germany’s crackdown didn’t stop a teenager last November from opening fire with a pistol, a longer-barreled gun and a small-caliber rifle at his former school in Emsdetten, wounding five people before killing himself.

In Erfurt, the Virginia Tech massacre has reopened old wounds and revived a sense of resignation.

“There’s no way to rid the world of such horrors,” said Wolfgang Miltner, a psychologist helping survivors cope in the German town. “Not even if you toughen the gun laws as much as possible.”

———

On the Net:
Small Arms Survey:
http://www.smallarmssurvey.org

International Action Network on Small Arms:
http://www.iansa.org

University of Sydney gun law study:
http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/12/6/365

Small Arms/Firearms Education and Research Network:
http://www.ryerson.ca/SAFER-Net/index.html

Impact of gun violence:
http://www.prio.no/page/preview/preview/9429/47012.html

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