The world reacted with outrage, mystification and advice as news of two more mass shootings rocked the U.S. over the weekend, with the nation’s gun laws, culture of violence and President Trump all coming in for criticism and comment.

Some saw it as a reflection of the tensions of the era, where even countries such as New Zealand can be the victim of mass violence at the hands of a single shooter. Others saw a particular pathology in the American political and cultural environment.

“We must return to the sources of this terrorism, which is thriving because it enjoys a favorable breeding ground and a tool,” France’s Le Monde wrote in an editorial. “The breeding ground is Trumpism; the tool, the legislation on weapons.”

The U.S., according to the French newspaper, “is sick of its Second Amendment and the National Rifle Association, the arms lobby.”

An editorial in the German Sueddeutsche Zeitung warned that “America’s nightmare may have just begun.”

“This starts with the extremely easy availability of weapons in a country where rifles can still be bought in the supermarket because the Republicans, who are obedient to the arms lobby, consistently block stricter gun laws,” wrote Alan Cassidy, the U.S. correspondent for the newspaper.

In a commentary for the German publication, Simon Hurtz wrote the internet fed the El Paso shooter’s racism and hatred, but that Mr. Trump and his rhetoric bore some of the blame. Mr. Hurtz said proposals to police and curb the online market for racist ideas are “not a solution, but only fight the symptom.”

“In the U.S., right wing-motivated murders and terrorist attacks pose a much greater threat than the threat posed by Islamists,” he said. “On Sunday, the U.S. president said that hatred has no place in American society. He’s lying.”

In China, commentator Yu Jincui argued in the state-controlled Global Times that the challenge to Western economic dominance by China and the developing world was only feeding the violent frustrations of those in the U.S. and elsewhere who feel they are falling behind.

“So far, it seems that Western countries can’t find a way to solve their problems,” Mr. Yu wrote. “They are not able to make themselves great again in an expansionist and aggressive way as they have done before, nor can they stop the flow of immigrants caused by globalization.”

He added, “The living standards of low-class whites have been declining in recent years, which is the fault of improper domestic policies in dealing with new economic situations.” Mr. Yu goes on to write, “However, some Westerners simply blame globalization and waves of immigrants.”

The El Paso shooting was particularly resonant in Mexico, with eight of the 22 fatalities believed to be Mexican nationals who had been shopping across the border and the shooter believed to have been motivated by fear of rising immigration rates.

The newspaper El Universal identified what it said were three elements contributing to a surge in hate crimes in recent years — Mr. Trump’s “hostile discourse” on immigration; the flourishing of extremist ideologies online; and, third, the “ease of access to high-power weapons.”

Writing in the same newspaper, Ricardo Monreal Avila, a politician from Mexico’s governing Morena party, said the violence proved the U.S. constitutional guarantees on gun ownership had long outlived their usefulness.

Other Latin American governments took official action against the U.S., as Uruguay and Venezuela issued travel advisories warning against travel to the U.S. because of the shootings.

Uruguay’s Foreign Ministry urged citizens who travel to the U.S. to take “extreme precautions” while Venezuela suggested its citizens “postpone travel” to the U.S. in light of “violence and indiscriminate hate crimes.”

“Undoubtedly, [the Second Amendment] may have been necessary in 1791, when it was proclaimed ” Mr. Avila wrote. “And, without a doubt, that facility to acquire weapons in the U.S., mostly backed by conservative groups, such as the National Rifle Association, helps to understand the constant number of mass shootings in that country.”

Australia took radical steps to reduce the number of guns in private hands after a deadly Port Arthur shooting of April 1996 in which a lone gunman killed 35 people. Yet Australia was also the home of the white supremacist gunman who traveled to New Zealand in March and gunned down 51 people at two Christchurch mosques.

Michael Knott, a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald, commented that “the smugness Australians can exhibit on gun policy — ‘We banned them so why can’t you?’ — overlooks the profound constitutional, cultural and political barriers to action in the United States.”

“Mass shootings have become so common, and meaningful responses to them so rare, that Americans have become desensitized to the issue,” he wrote. “A nation that prides itself on its exceptionalism is indeed a world leader when it comes to the number of innocent people it guns down annually.”

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