No, I do not know more than any of you about the shooting in Madison, Wisconsin at the Abundant Life Christian School, but I do know that this school shooting is the 83rd in 2024. (Matthews, 2024) This shooting was rare because the suspect is female. In most mass shootings, the suspect is male. Since 1981 there have only been four shootings like this one in which the shooter has been female. (Smith, 2024) Her gender does not change the facts, there are 2 dead, 2 in critical condition and several more with minor injuries because of a gun nestling in the hands of a child. School shootings have become so common that they barely make us turn our heads. Let’s look at a few of the school shootings that have taken place in recent years.
On April 16, 2007, at 7:15 am a shooter* stood in a
dormitory on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
and fired his gun at a female and male killing both. The police, suspecting domestic violence, pursued
the female victim’s boyfriend. Meanwhile, the shooter visited the post office
and mailed a rambling videotape about wealthy “brats” and photos of himself
wielding a gun to NBC News. After his
visit to the Post Office the shooter returned to campus with a 9-millimeter
handgun, a 22-caliber handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition and
proceeded to lock several doors in a classroom building. Then he went from classroom to classroom
shooting people before taking his own life ten minutes later. In all 27 students and 5 faculty members were
killed in the Virginia Tech massacre. The shooter was a loner with a history of
mental problems.
The victims of the Virginia Tech Shooting were: Ross A. Alameddine, Christopher
James Bishop, Brian R. Bluhm, Ryan
Christopher Clark, Austin
Michelle Cloyd, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, Kevin
P. Granata, Matthew Gregory Gwaltney, Caitlin
Millar Hammaren, Jeremy
Michael Herbstritt, Rachael Elizabeth Hill, Emily
Jane Hilscher, Jarrett Lee Lane, Matthew
Joseph La Porte, Henry J. Lee (Henh Ly), Liviu
Librescu, G.V. Loganathan, Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan, Lauren
Ashley McCain, Daniel Patrick O’Neil, Juan
Ramon Ortiz-Ortiz, Minal
Hiralal Panchal. Daniel
Alejandro Perez Cueva, Erin
Nicole Peterson, Michael
Steven Pohle, Jr., Julia
Kathleen Pryde, Mary Karen Read, Reema
Joseph Samaha, Waleed
Mohamed Shaalan, Leslie
Geraldine Sherman, Maxine
Shelly Turner, Nicole Regina White.**
Thirty-two in total. There were
also 23 injuries sustained. As of early
2024, Virginia Tech still stood as the deadliest school shooting in the United
States.
In Uvalde, Texas, the shooter shot his 66-year-old
Grandmother in the face, injuring her, and fled in his truck. The shooter crashed his truck outside Robb
Elementary School a short distance away.
After leaving the truck he entered the school through a back door. Barricading himself into the fourth-grade
classroom, around 11:30 am he began to shoot his AR-15 style rifle, killing 21
people all but 2 of them fourth grade students. The attack lasted 40 minutes,
finally ending when police managed to break open the door and kill the shooter. A week before, just after his birthday the
shooter had legally purchased two AR-15 style rifles. Just a half hour before the shooter began
sending Facebook messages declaring his intent.
The last, sent 15 minutes before shooting began, stated that he planned
to shoot up an elementary school.
The victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting were: Makenna
Lee Elrod, 10, Layla
Salazar, 11, Maranda
Mathis, 11, Nevaeh
Bravo, 10, Jose
Manuel Flores Jr., 10, Xavier
Lopez, 10, Tess
Marie Mata, 10, Rojelio
Torres, 10, Eliahna
“Ellie” Amyah Garcia, 9, Eliahna
A. Torres, 10, Annabell
Guadalupe Rodriguez, 10, Jackie
Cazares, 9, Uziyah
Garcia, Jayce
Carmelo Luevanos, 10, Maite
Yuleana Rodriguez, 10, Jailah
Nicole Silguero, 10, Irma
Garcia, 48, Eva
Mireles, 44, Amerie
Jo Garza, 10, Alexandria
“Lexi” Aniyah Rubio, 10, Alithia
Ramirez, 10. Twenty-one were killed, 19 fourth grade students and two
teachers.
On February 14, 2018, a shooter, who had been expelled in 2017
for “disciplinary reasons” and had been noted as a potential risk to student
safety entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. In his black duffel bag, he carried a legally
purchased AR-15 and magazines. Spotted
when he reached the school, no one issued a “code red” announcing his
presence. The shooter stopped in a
stairwell to retrieve his weapon. Chris
McKenna, a 15-year-old at the time, saw him.
The shooter told him to leave because “Things are going to start getting
messy.” Outside, Chris found Aaron Feis a school security Monitor. The monitor took
him to a place 500 feet away and returned to the school. Meanwhile, the shooter opened fire on the
first floor, in 2 minutes, 11 people were dead and 13 were injured. On the
second floor, he fired and did not hit anyone.
When he reached the third floor he would shoot his final 6 victims. Reaching the teachers' lounge, he set up a
bipod and began to shoot out a window attempting to snipe at fleeing
people. Fortunately, hurricane proof
glass foiled this plan. Just 7 minutes after entering the building and four
minutes after shooting began 17 lay dead.
The shooter ditched his gun in a stairwell and escaped by blending in with
escaping children. He was caught after
getting a drink at Walmart and heading to McDonald’s.
The names of the victims in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas
shooting are: Jaime
Guttenberg, Gina Montalto, Nicholas Dworet, Meadow Pollack, Aaron Feis, Chris
Hixon, Scott Beigel, Alaina Petty, Peter Wang, Martin Duque, Joaquin Oliver, Alyssa
Alhadeff, Carmen Marie Schentrup, Alex Schachter, Helena Ramsey, Cara Loughran,
Luke Hoyer. Find photos and overviews of the victims here: These
are the victims killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High shooting - WSVN
7News | Miami News, Weather, Sports | Fort Lauderdale. Seventeen students and faculty in total. There were seventeen injuries sustained.
I chose the above school shootings because they are at every
level of education, grade school, high school and college. In the three shootings there are a total of
60 victims dead and another 40 injured.
School shooters do not discriminate by age, socioeconomic status, race or
as we have seen in the most recent shooting religious affiliation. In a study in 2012 showing the numbers of
school shootings by country America had the largest number of school shootings
in the world at 288 in total with the next closest being Mexico with 8 school shootings.
Since 2008 CNN has tracked the number of
school shootings yearly. The anomaly was
2020 during the pandemic where there was a sharp decline in school
shootings. Since 2020 there has been an
increase in school shootings year over year. This year, as of this blog, there
have been 83 school shootings. (Matthews, 2024) That is roughly one shooting every 4 and a half days.
Sarah***, now 22, remembers keenly what it was like just a
few years ago being in school and preparing for active shooter situations. “We were told to run, if we needed to, we had
to remember in each class where we were supposed to meet, far away from the
school so that there was no danger of a big group of kids being in one place
for a shooter to pick off.” Sarah also
states that she remembers her science teacher “explaining the heaviest object
and the sharpest object in the room. She
also taught us how to use the safety shower to make the floor slippery and how
to wedge a chair under the doorknob so that a shooter couldn’t enter.” Another
teacher of Sarah’s had bought an object heavy enough to break one of the
windows facing outside the school so they could escape.
Remembering a situation where an active shooter was near her
school and the school locked down as a result, Sarah recalls the terror of
being separated from her brother who attended the same school. She also remembers her teacher explaining to
them where to step if they had to crawl into the false ceiling to escape.
Sarah also has the perspective of a preschool teacher. When she was teaching preschool, there was an
active shooter nearby and the kids were put in their classrooms. Teachers had to keep very young children as quiet as possible. Plans were made to bring the largest cars
around and pass children out the window to get them away if it became
necessary.
These terrors occur every day for children and teachers in
school today. Active shooter drills are
regular occurrences along with storm and earthquake drills. Bullet proof backpacks are sold in the United
States and go on sale at the beginning of each school year. Children are taught how to use them by
frightened parents. Parents who cannot
homeschool their children hold their breath each day for twelve long years as their
children head to school, some even longer as they drop their students off at
dorm rooms for college.
The stark difference between the numbers in the US and other
countries may seem like a puzzle. Adam
Lankford, an associated professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Alabama,
worked to shed some light on the differences in mass shootings between us and
other countries. In the United State
people are more likely to die of mass shootings at work or at school in other
countries these events usually take place near military installations. In American incidents, the shooter usually
has more than one weapon while across the world, shooters generally have only
one weapon (Christensen, 2017).
One thing that is true is that in the United States police
are better prepared. The average number of deaths in the US from a mass shooting
is 6.87 per incident while the number is 8.8 due in part to a lack of training
and response time by police in other countries (Christensen, 2017). This should
not be viewed as positive, training in the US is necessary, while in other
countries this type of incident is rare.
The United States has more guns than any other country in
the world. One third of Americans say
that someone in their home owns a gun. More
restrictive gun laws do make a difference.
In Australia four mass shootings between 1987 and 1996 prompted parliament
to pass strict gun ownership laws. In the years since, Australia has not had a
single mass shooting incident. (Christensen, 2017) Psychological factors play a role in mass
shootings. Many mass shooters in America
are mentally ill in some way. Bullying
is also a factor. Many of the mass
shooters in the US have been bullied excessively.
Each of these factors comes together to make the United States
continue to have soaring rates of mass shootings. These numbers are chilling. In this series we will look at these effects
in depth. For now, we have a major
problem. It is a problem that is causing
fear and stress for our children. Consider
the children in this latest school shooting.
If they had a chance, what would they tell us about the horror of the
school day on Monday; a school day that was meant to be a fun week of activities
before Christmas break. How many more children are going to die in
America? The answer is up to us.
*To give the victims more visibility than the shooters in
these cases, I will not use any of the shooter’s names in this blog but call
them simply “the shooter.”
**The names of every victim for each school shooting will be
named, except in the most recent as they have not been released.
*** Thanks to Sarah who does not wish to give her full name
for her comments regarding being a student and a preschool teacher and dealing
with gun violence.
A&E Television Networks. (2011, April 13). Virginia
Tech shooting leaves 32 dead | April 16, 2007. History.com.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/massacre-at-virginia-tech-leaves-32-dead
A&E Television Networks. (2019, February 6). Teen
gunman kills 17, injures 17 at Parkland, Florida high school | February 14,
2018. History.com.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/parkland-marjory-stoneman-douglas-school-shooting
Christensen, J. (2017, October 5). Why the US has the
most mass shootings. CNN.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/27/health/u-s-most-mass-shootings/index.html
Matthews, A. (2024, December 10). School shootings in the
US: Fast facts. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/us/school-shootings-fast-facts-dg/index.html
Smith, P. (2024, December 17). Girl accused of Wisconsin
school deaths one of few female mass shooting suspects. MSN.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/public-safety-and-emergencies/health-and-safety-alerts/girl-accused-of-wisconsin-school-deaths-one-of-few-female-mass-shooting-suspects/ar-AA1w1UWy?ocid=BingNewsSerp
Spagat, E., Vertuno, J., & Bleiberg, J. (2022, June 3). Onlookers
urged police to charge into Texas School. AP News.
https://apnews.com/article/uvalde-texas-school-shooting-44a7cfb990feaa6ffe482483df6e4683
No comments:
Post a Comment