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September 29, 2007
SCHOOL SHOOTINGS IN THE USA
By Jack Lee
If there is one thing we have learned from mass shootings or attempted mass shootings is that it triggers similar actions soon thereafter. We've seen sporatic clusters of post office shootings, work place shootings and back to intermittent school shootings, the later now seems to dominate the headlines.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR - "An FBI threat-assessment report prepared in 2000 dubbed the phenomenon "leakage" — the signaling of a possible impending violent act, whether it be conscious our
unconscious actions that reveal plans, fantasies or thoughts of violence. A preoccupation with destruction in a student's writings and artwork, especially those focused around themes of hatred, weapons, prejudice and other destructive fascinations, may be harmless, or it may be a clue to an unhealthy obsessive behavior. The FBI's report cites a case in which a student soon to become violent was asked to bake something for a home economics class. He made a cake shaped like a gun.
Aside from announcement of a plan, the American Psychological Association's list of immediate warning signs includes a recurring loss of temper, frequent physical fighting, vandalism or property damage, use of drugs or alcohol, an increase in risk-taking behavior, animal abuse, and weapons possession.
Indeed, school shootings tend to be followed by intense debates over the prevalence of guns in the United States. A Surgeon General report on youth violence prepared in 2001 found that "from 1990 to 1995, the U.S. had the highest rate of firearm-related deaths among youths in the industrialized world."
Below is a timeline for US school shootings. There were also a handful of school shootings in Scotland, Germany, Bosnia and Canada. However, for the purposes of the article I focused only on the shootings in the USA.
August 1, 1966, Austin, Tx., Charles Joseph Whitman a student at the University of Texas at Austin shot and killed 14 people and wounded 31 others from the observation deck of the University's Main Building of The University of Texas. He was killed by Austin police.
July 12, 1976, Cal State Fullerton, Edward Charles Allaway, a custodian, shot nine people in the basement and first floor of the library with a .22-caliber rifle. Seven of the nine wounded victims died.
January 29, 1979, San Diego, Brenda Ann Spencer wounded eight children and one police officer and killed principal Burton Wragg and custodian Mike Suchar in a shooting spree at Cleveland Elementary School.
January 20, 1983 Parkway South Junior High School shooting - Saint Louis, Missouri, United States; David F. Lawler shot two of his classmates then turned the gun on himself and committed suicide. Randall Kroger, 15, was shot in the chest and died at 12:28 p.m. and 15-year-old Greg Saffo (Palmer) was injured in the shooting and sent to a local hospital.
January 17, 1989, Stockton Patricki Purdy, a transient armed with a semi-automatic AK 47 began shooting children on a playground for not apparent reason. He killed five children and wounded twenty-nine others and a teacher.
On May 1, 1992, Lindhurst High School in Olivehurst, 20 year old Eric Houston went to his former high school with a shotgun and a rifle. Houston held 80 students hostage until he turned himself in. He killed three students and a teacher and wounded 10 others.
Feb. 2, 1996 Moses Lake, Wash. Two students and one teacher killed, one other wounded when 14-year-old Barry Loukaitis opened fire on his algebra class.
Feb. 19, 1997 Bethel, Alaska, Principal and one student killed, two others wounded by Evan Ramsey, 16.
Oct. 1, 1997, Pearl, Miss.
Dec. 1, 1997, West Paducah, Ky. Three students killed, five wounded by Michael Carneal, 14, as they participated in a prayer circle at Heath High School.
Dec. 15, 1997, Stamps, Ark. Two students wounded. Colt Todd, 14, was hiding in the woods when he shot the students as they stood in the parking lot.
March 24, 1998, Jonesboro, Ark. Four students and one teacher killed, ten others wounded outside as Westside Middle School emptied during a false fire alarm. Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, shot at their classmates and teachers from the woods.
April 24, 1998, Edinboro, Pa. One teacher, John Gillette, killed, two students wounded at a dance at James W. Parker Middle School. Andrew Wurst, 14, was charged.
May 19, 1998, Fayetteville, Tenn. One student killed in the parking lot at Lincoln County High School three days before he was to graduate. The victim was dating the ex-girlfriend of his killer, 18-year-old honor student Jacob Davis.
May 21, 1998, Springfield, Two students killed, 22 others wounded in the cafeteria at Thurston High School by 15-year-old Kip Kinkel. Kinkel had been arrested and released a day earlier for bringing a gun to school. His parents were later found murdered at home.
June 15, 1998, Richmond, Va. One teacher and one guidance counselor wounded by a 14-year-old boy in the school hallway.
April 20, 1999, Littleton, Colo. 14 students (including killers) and one teacher killed, 23 others wounded at Columbine High School in the nation's deadliest school shooting. Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, had plotted for a year to kill at least 500 and blow up their school. At the end of their hour-long rampage, they turned their guns on themselves.
May 20, 1999, Conyers, Ga. Six students injured at Heritage High School by Thomas Solomon, 15, who was reportedly depressed after breaking up with his girlfriend.
Nov. 19, 1999, Deming, N.M. Victor Cordova Jr., 12, shot and killed Araceli Tena, 13, in the lobby of Deming Middle School.
Dec. 6, 1999, Fort Gibson, Okla. Four students wounded as Seth Trickey, 13, opened fire with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun at Fort Gibson Middle School.
Feb. 29, 2000, Mount Morris Township, Mich. Six-year-old Kayla Rolland shot dead at Buell Elementary School near Flint, Mich. The assailant was identified as a six-year-old boy with a .32-caliber handgun.
March 10, 2000, Svannah, Ga. Two students killed by Darrell Ingram, 19, while leaving a dance sponsored by Beach High School.
May 26, 2000, Lake Worth, Fla. One teacher, Barry Grunow, shot and killed at Lake Worth Middle School by Nate Brazill, 13, with .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol on the last day of classes.
Sept. 26, 2000, New Orleans, La. Two students wounded with the same gun during a fight at Woodson Middle School.
Jan. 17, 2001, Baltimore, Md. One student shot and killed in front of Lake Clifton Eastern High School.
March 5, 2001, Santee, Calif. Two killed and 13 wounded by Charles Andrew Williams, 15, firing from a bathroom at Santana High School.
March 7, 2001, Williamsport, Pa. Elizabeth Catherine Bush, 14, wounded student Kimberly Marchese in the cafeteria of Bishop Neumann High School; she was depressed and frequently teased.
March 22, 2001, Granite Hills, Calif. One teacher and three students wounded by Jason Hoffman, 18, at Granite Hills High School. A policeman shot and wounded Hoffman.
March 30, 2001, Gary, Ind. One student killed by Donald R. Burt, Jr., a 17-year-old student who had been expelled from Lew Wallace High School.
Nov. 12, 2001, Caro, Mich. Chris Buschbacher, 17, took two hostages at the Caro Learning Center before killing himself.
Jan. 15, 2002, New York, N.Y. A teenager wounded two students at Martin Luther King Jr. High School.
October 28, 2002, Tucson, Ariz. Robert S. Flores Jr., 41, a student at the nursing school at the University of Arizona, shot and killed three female professors and then himself.
April 14, 2003, New Orleans, La. One 15-year-old killed, and three students wounded at John McDonogh High School by gunfire from four teenagers (none were students at the school). The motive was gang-related.
April 24, 2003, Red Lion, Pa. James Sheets, 14, killed principal Eugene Segro of Red Lion Area Junior High School before killing himself.
Sept. 24, 2003, Cold Spring, Minn. Two students are killed at Rocori High School by John Jason McLaughlin, 15.
March 21, 2005, Red Lake, Minn. Jeff Weise, 16, killed grandfather and companion, then arrived at school where he killed a teacher, a security guard, 5 students, and finally himself, leaving a total of 10 dead.
Nov. 8, 2005, Jacksboro, Tenn One 15-year-old shot and killed an assistant principal at Campbell County High School and seriously wounded two other administrators.
Aug. 24, 2006, Essex, Vt. Christopher Williams, 27, looking for his ex-girlfriend at Essex Elementary School, shot two teachers, killing one and wounding another. Before going to the school, he had killed the ex-girlfriend's mother.
Sept. 26, 2006, Bailey, Colo. Adult male held six students hostage at Platte Canyon High School and then shot and killed Emily Keyes, 16, and himself.
Oct. 3, 2006, Nickel Mines, Pa. 32-year-old Carl Charles Roberts IV entered the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School and shot 10 schoolgirls, ranging in age from 6 to 13 years old, and then himself. Five of the girls and Roberts died.
Jan. 3, 2007, Tacoma, Wash. Douglas Chanthabouly, 18, shot fellow student Samnang Kok, 17, in the hallway of Henry Foss High School.
April 16, 2007 Blacksburg, Va. A 23-year-old Virginia Tech student, Cho Seung-Hui, killed two in a dorm, then killed 30 more 2 hours later in a classroom building. His suicide brought the death toll to 33, making the shooting rampage the most deadly in U.S. history. Fifteen others were wounded.
Aug. 10 2007 Stockton, Ca, A deranged women with a knife held a classroom of disabled students hostage before being captured by a police
officer.
Sept. 18, 2007 Columbia, SC Two 15-year-old Blythewood High School students were arrested Monday, accused of bringing an unloaded pistol to school. A school resource officer found the pistol in the waistband of a 15-year-old boy at about 11 a.m.
Sept. 28, 2007 Oroville, Ca., A 17-year-old student took nearly 24 classmates and a teacher hostage at gunpoint today. He has been charged with the intent to shoot another student.
Posted by Post Scripts at September 29, 2007 11:48 AM
Comments
...school shootings tend to be followed by intense debates over the prevalence of guns in the United States. A Surgeon General report on youth violence prepared in 2001 found that "from 1990 to 1995, the U.S. had the highest rate of firearm-related deaths among youths in the industrialized world."
I wonder if anyone has ever studied the correlation between youth violence, including violence with guns, and the following:
1. Abortion on demand and the defense of it.
2. The break up of the family.
3. Treating men with disdain and disparaging the important roll they paly in our childrens lives.
4. Violence in movies, particularly violence that is celebrated and/or violence where the "bad" guy" is portrayed as the "good guy".
5. The anything goes attitude in society regarding drug use, sex, and art.
All of these things have contributed to a societal breakdown regarding the way we value life. Too many of our kids have an underlying sense that their own lives and the lives of others are as "throw away" as the papers that wrap their tacos.
Guns are a tool. People become heartless machines unless they are nurtured to acknowledge and value life. Our society is reaping consequences from the terrible choices we have made; choices that may have appeared harmless at the time, but are now revealed as the rotting roots of our societal destruction. Blaming a "tool" for this is immature and will not reverse the trend...it will encourage its continuance and increase.
Posted by: Tina at September 29, 2007 01:06 PM
Maybe it's time to take matters into our own hands? Let me be real clear: I think we should use the extreme lobbying tactics that have served the left so well over the past 30 years!
I'm sick of the abuses on the first ammendment in the name of free speech. We've put up with cursing our nation, burning our flag, mocking every tradition we've ever had and slandering our fallen heroes. They are spitting on our soldiers and undermining our peace efforts to bring democracy to those around the world crushed by despots and its all done by cowardly liberals hiding safely behind our police and military! What a crock...this needs to end in a serious confrontation of values.
You know, it was absolutely inconceivable at the time of our founding fathers that a statue of Jesus in a jar of urine would be considered art! What a shocking disgrace and yet here we are with the left defending it and worse defending it on a million different levels to the disgrace and degradation of a civil American society.
All the guns in the world could not do as much damage as has been wrought by the ACLU or the morons on the left that hate America! They are a force far more destructive than any enemy that took us on in battle.
Look how far we've come. A person doing something so vile as to put a statue of Jesus in urine in the 1700's would have been beaten, shunned and friendless. He would have been forced out the civilized world to go live amongst the animals.
Try that sort of stunt today with a picture of the Prophet Mohammed depicted in a jar of urine and it would get the art museum destroyed and the persons responsible for it's display slaughtered.
While that sort of retribution might seem quite appealing to many of us, I think I would settle for a stern scolding and boycotting.
Oh, ok, let me be really honest on this one...if somebody wanted to bust up that so-called kind of art display I sure wouldn't stand in your way.
Posted by: Jack at September 29, 2007 05:35 PM
Yahoo Jack, well said!
I just came off of looking at Megan Dixon's site, Iconoclastic. She has an article with some photos taken near a freeway somewhere, listing the number of casualties in the war and a rock with the statement, "Who would Jesus Bomb?" These are usually done by the same people who pee in their pants if someone wants to print a cartoon depicting the profit Mohammed. This of course is done, like the crucifix in the jar of Urine, because Christians don't, as a rule, murder people who simply talk sh** about their beliefs.
I wrote two responses to her post, which she hasn't had a chance to review yet. In the second one, I asked, "how come no one ever asks who would Mohammed bomb?" I guess it is because all we have to do is look at one of the many conflicts going on in our world today, and we can see the answer to that.
I know this is going off topic, but it is all part and parcel to the same mind set. A kid (and I won't pontificate about the reasons) goes haywire, takes a gun to school and puts the lives of his classmates, teachers, law enforcement, emergency personnel and himself in danger, and the answer to this, ban guns. What about the morality of the act.
But hey, how can we expect this kid to behave correctly, when he is bombarded daily with the kind of behavior Jack has listed, and it’s reinforced by the fact that the ACLU and every other liberal bent group defends the violator but attacks the gun, or the SUV, or the cops, or the Boy Scouts or the Christians.
How did such a bunch of cowards become Iconic?
Posted by: John Freitas at September 29, 2007 06:18 PM
I think we should use the extreme lobbying tactics that have served the left so well over the past 30 years!
That and "peer pressure" out in the public will get er done...I'm all for it!
...how can we expect this kid to behave correctly, when he is bombarded daily with the kind of behavior Jack has listed, and it’s reinforced by the fact that the ACLU and every other liberal bent group defends the violator but attacks the gun, or the SUV, or the cops, or the Boy Scouts or the Christians.
Exactly! The kid has been "trained" by the "open society" types who become hand wringers when a kid does his own thing...expressing himself and sharing his feelings. It's just like reality TV, the celebrated "art form" of the new age.
Posted by: Tina at October 1, 2007 08:21 PM
People kill. Most of it is fun for them. They get a little jail time and they get out and do it again to anybody. We all pay for their mistakes of killing. I support the death pently.
These man do not deserve life in prison. Really
my feelings are they should be shot by firing squads in public within two weeks after the trail. It is my opinon! Free Speech in the USA!
Posted by: Warren at December 17, 2007 07:58 PM