On the gun issue, foreigners just do not get it. They just cannot understand how America let things come to this. They hear the news of the coldblooded murders of German and British tourists in Florida this past summer, and of a Japanese exchange student gunned down by mistake in a Louisiana doorway last year, and they just cannot believe it. How could this happen? What kind of society is America when almost anyone can get a gun and when too many people are all too ready to use them?

Given the United States' soaring rate of gun-related crime, the question deserves to be asked. But let's be clear: It's not that Britain, Germany and Japan, for example, don't have their own problems with violent crime. Crime is rising in those countries too, but it is still very low compared to the incidence of daily mayhem in America's streets and homes. And, in particular, the gun-crime rate is relatively low.

FEWER FIREARMS MEAN LESS GUN-RELATED CRIME

Why such a difference? Certainly a major reason, among others, is that in many European nations, as well as in Japan and Australia, private citizens have no presumptive right to own a gun as they do in the United States. Britons and Germans, as well as other Western Europeans, Australians, Japanese and others, simply are mystified by the long American romance with guns and the bloody tide of death it has caused. Their experiences with guns are quite different from ours. And their experiences are instructive for Americans reeling from daily accounts of gun murders.

The lesson is clear: Those nations that tightly restrict gun ownership are nations where, generally, children can still play outside, adults can stroll at night and families can picnic in parks without fear. They are nations where private security guards are not yet ubiquitous, as they are in the United States. And they are nations where people usually go about their daily lives free of the shadow of drive-by shootings, mass murder-suicides and domestic quarrels that escalate into homicide.

The direction for the United States is also clear: We must enact gun-control laws that work better than current ones. We must do so soon and we must do so nationally. What's required is a near-total ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns and assault weapons, leaving those weapons in the hands of law enforcement officials alone. Individuals should be permitted to own sport guns and rifles only if they have submitted to a background check and passed a course in safe weapons use.