Anti-gun zealots exploit German school shooting. (Correction, Please!).

ITEM: A 19-year-old shot and killed 16 people in a high school in Erfurt, Germany, then killed himself Whereupon "Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Greens coalition partner Cem Oezdemir," reported Deutsche Presse-Agentur on April 29th, was among those officials who "said the massacre showed tougher gun laws were urgently needed."

CORRECTION: Even though anti-gun groups blamed "the flood of illegal weapons" for this shooting, it turns out that the guns carried by the teenager -- a pistol and an (unused) shotgun -- were in fact legally obtained and the man who used them was duly licensed. This is no small matter in Germany. As explained by John R. Lott Jr., author of More Guns, Less Crime: "Germans who wish to get hold of a hunting rifle must undergo checks that can last a year, while those wanting a gun for sport must be a member of a club and obtain a license from the police."

Australian gun-control lobbyists demanded a ban on semi-automatic handguns there after the massacre in Germany. But banning guns does not solve the problem. Britain, recall, outlawed handguns some five years ago after a killing rampage in a school in Scotland, and some 160,000 handguns were surrendered. Since then, there has been a jump in handgun crime of 40 percent.

Disarming law-abiders, not surprisingly, doesn't foil law-breakers. Indeed, the U.S. experience shows that it is making guns more available that drives down crime. There has been an increase in right-to-carry states, to 33, in recent years. The number of deaths and injuries "from multiple-victim public shootings," as noted by John Lott, "fell on average by 78% in states that passed such laws."