May 28, 2022
GUN Tragedies
by Michael Knight
Editor
North Star Newsletter
Following the tragic event that occurred in Uvalde, Texas, in which yet another deranged teenager used a rifle to kill innocent people - in this case 19 children and two adults - the question that should be asked, and above all answered, is What causes these individuals to commit such terrible deeds?
To answer that question is the purpose of this series of articles, starting with a brief summary of the sad history of such mass shootings, not only in America, but in other countries as well.
We will also look at the striking (word for word) similarities between at least two of the manifestos posted by one who killed 51 people in New Zealand, and another who shot at least 10 in Buffalo New York.
Mass shootings USA
March 2005. Red Lake High School, Minnesota. Jeff Weise, 16, killed his grandfather and the man’s companion at their Minnesota home, then went to nearby Red Lake High School, where he killed five students, a teacher and a security guard before shooting himself.
December, 2012. Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut. Adam Lanza, 19, killed his mother at their home in Newtown, Connecticut, then went to the nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed 20 first graders and six educators. He then took his own life. A woman who befriended him online said he was “singularly focused and obsessed with mass murders and spree killings” and regarded school shooters “with respect and understanding,”
2015 - San Bernardino California. Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people.
October, 2015. Umpqua Community College, Oregon. A man killed nine people at the school in Roseburg, Oregon, and wounded nine others, before dying in a shootout with the police.
February 15, 2018. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Florida, An attack left 14 students and three staff members dead. Then President Donald Trump has tweeted that there were “many signs the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed.”
August 3, 2019, El Paso, Texas. 20 killed, 26 injured at a Walmart by Patrick Crusius, 21-year-old white male. Investigators obtained a manifesto. AP reported that "The scene was a 10-hour drive and a world away from the life he lived growing up in a leafy, upper-middle-class suburb of Dallas."
November 30, 2021. Four students were killed and seven others were wounded after a teenager (Ethan Crumbley, 15,) opened fire at a high school in Oxford, Michigan. (Further, his parents had been called to the school hours before the shooting after one of his teachers found an alarming note he had drawn, scrawled with images of a gun, a person who had been shot and a laughing emoji, and the words, “Blood everywhere,” and, “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me”, New York Times reported.)
May 14, 2022. " A white 18-year-old (Payton Gendron, of Conklin, New York ) wearing military gear and live-streaming with a helmet camera opened fire with a rifle at a supermarket in Buffalo, killing 10 people and wounding three others in what authorities described as “racially motivated violent extremism.” (Gendron had written a 1500-page manifesto
May 24, 2022. Salvador Ramos, 18, killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde before he was shot dead by a Border Patrol agent.
Those mass shootings resulted in 172 people being killed or wounded. The ones at schools left 92 students and adults dead. However, there are many other school shootings that do not make the national media.
According to Education Week, "There have been 27 school shootings this year. There have been 119 school shootings since 2018, when Education Week began tracking such incidents. 2021 saw 34 shooting incidents at educational institutions (the highest since the organization started its database). In 2020, there were 10 shootings. Both 2019 and 2018 recorded 24 shootings."
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/24/1101050970/2022-school-shootings-so-far
Mass Shootings - Outside America
Britain, August 1987."In a shooting spree that changed Britain’s gun laws, 27-year-old Michael Ryan went on a rampage that started with shooting a mother of two and ended with his suicide after he had shot a further 15 people. Britain amended its firearms laws, prohibiting the ownership of semi-automatic rifles, and high capacity shotguns."
Canada, December 6, 1989. 25-year-old Marc Lepine stalked the campus of the École Polytechnique in Montreal, and killed 14 women, wounding 13 others.
New Zealand, November 13, 1990. David Gray murdered 13 people, including numerous children and a police officer, before being shot by police.
France, September, 1995. After killing his family French teenager Eric Borel went on a killing spree in the town of Cuers, shooting 12 others before killing himself.
Tasmania, Australia, 1996."Port Arthur prison colony is a historic district in Tasmania, and in April of 1996, 28-year-old Martin Bryant used the area as a staging ground to murder 35 people and wound a further 23. For his crimes Michael Bryant was given 35 life sentences in prison, with no chance of parole."
South Korea - date unknown. South Korean police officer Woo Bum-kon made his way through five separate villages where he killed 56 people and wounded a further 35. He committed suicide by strapping two grenades to his chest, and blew himself up along with two hostages.
Azerbaijan 2009. 28-year-old Farda Gadirov entered the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy armed with a Makarov pistol and began shooting students and faculty at the school in Baku. All told, 12 students and faculty members were shot dead, and a further 13 wounded, before Gadirov put a bullet in his head.
England, June 2, 2010. 52-year-old taxi driver Derrick Bird killed 12 and wounded 11 others before fleeing into woods where he committed suicide.
Norway, July 2011. "Anders Breivik targeted the Norwegian government in Oslo, by blowing up a car bomb in front of the Prime Minister’s office, where he killed eight people and injured another 209. Breivik’ then travelled to the island of Utoya where dressed as a police officer and armed with a rifle, a semi-automatic carbine and a pistol, he killed 69 people, many of them teenagers. Breivik, described as a Right Wing Extremist, surrendered, was tried, and sentenced to 21 years in prison - with 5-year renewals as long as he is considered a public threat.
Source for the above reports :-
https://www.therichest.com/most-shocking/10-of-the-worst-mass-shootings-outside-the-u-s/
New Zealand, March 15, 2019. Australian Brenton Tarrant killed 51 people in an attack on two mosques in the South Island city of Christchurch. He had written a 15-page manifesto prior to live-streaming his rampage. Tarrant pleaded guilty to 51 counts of murder and 40 counts of attempted murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Summary:-
Those incidents outside America resulted in a total of 296 killings of men women and children.
Unlike America, none of them involved mass shootings at schools.
Knowing this, at some point we must ask, and answer, a very significant question: WHY? What is so unique about America that it is the only country where mass killings occur at schools?
