Prague Mayor Laments Mass Shootings "Cannot Be Solved Preventively" After Sniper Kills At Least 15

Typically after a school shooting or any mass killing incident in the United States, the smoke is not so much as cleared before there are shrill calls from activists and politicians for banning all firearms, or especially assault-style rifles. Within hours, American mainstream media turns such tragedies into an abstract debate over the ability of citizens to keep and bear arms (to quote the second amendment). But Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda had a very different, and more realistic or reasoned response to Thursday's Prague University shooting, which took the lives of 15, including the killer.

"The thing is, of course, a tragedy, it is a tragedy that occurs in the modern world. We know very well that for a number of years we have been hearing from the United States that there has been an excess of some shooter shooting in a school or on the street or somewhere," Svoboda said in a press briefing.

"We have always thought that this is a matter that does not concern Europe and us, that this is a matter that is also a given in the United States due to the fact that everyone there is armed, etc."

"Now, unfortunately, it turns out that our world is also changing and we have the problem of the individual shooter whose reasons for what he does are not entirely clear. And the worst thing about it is that these are things that cannot be solved preventively,” he emphasized.