So sad...

Many places around the world struggle with racism and prejudice against outsiders, but mass shootings in the U.S., where the Constitution's second amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms, often receive widespread global attention.

"Guns are in their constitution," said Joanna Leung, a 34-year-old Toronto resident. "I'm pretty sure no one else has anything similar. I never understand why they think gun violence is going to solve anything."

In Britain, the attack reinforced the view that America has too many guns and too many racists. The front-page headline of The Independent newspaper said simply, "America's shame."

The newspaper said in an editorial that America seems to have moved backward in racial relations since Obama's election, and that the "obscene proliferation of guns only magnifies tragedies" like the church shooting.

The leftist Mexico City newspaper La Jornada said the U.S. has become 

a "structurally violent state" where force is frequently used 

domestically and internationally to resolve differences.

"In this context, the unchecked and even paranoid citizen armament is no coincidence: Such a phenomenon reflects the feeling of extensive sectors about the supposed legitimacy of violent methods," it said.

In China, the official Xinhua News Agency said the violence in South Carolina "mirrors the U.S. government's inaction on rampant gun violence as well as the growing racial hatred in the country."

"Unless U.S. President Barack Obama's government really reflects on his country's deep-rooted issues like racial discrimination and social inequality and takes concrete actions on gun control, such tragedy will hardly be prevented from happening again," Xinhua said in an editorial.

On China's Twitter-like Weibo microblogging service, some users compared the United States to lawless Somalia and said racial discrimination was fueling violence and high crime rates. Many reflected the official view that gun ownership and violent crime are byproducts of Western-style democratic freedoms that are not only unsuited to China but potentially disastrous.