I scanned the above from the April 17 edition of The Daily Breeze, a newspaper in Southern California's South Bay. It summarizes school shootings over the past 40+ years.
Something about it strikes me as more than coincidental. It's as if all of these random acts in different locales spanning decades had some common thread, some shared factor, but I can't quite put my finger on it.
What could shootings at the University of Texas and Kent State University and Cal State Fullerton and the University of Iowa and San Diego State and the University of Arkansas and the Appalachian School of Law* and the University of Arizona and Shepherd University and Virginia Tech possibly have in common?
I feel like the answer is staring me in the face, like it's something obvious. Give me some time. It may come to me.
* I couldn't find a weapons policy for the Appalachian School of Law, but note that those reports which admitted students with firearms subdued the killer (most simply said they tackled him) said they had to run to their cars to retrieve them.
6 comments:
Are you sure that those policies were in place when the shootings occurred, or could it be that they were put in place after the shooting?
A valid question Nathaniel, and no I'm not--the one that I'd have the most question about would be Austin in '66. As for KSU in '70, I know if you wanted to go hunting you needed to turn your rifle over to the campus cops and pick it up from them--I know because I went there during the early 70s. I believe gun prohibitions on CA campuses were pretty well established by the time of the Fullerton shootings, and the rest are "modern era," so the assumption is pretty safe. Point being, the prohibitions are in place NOW...
Oh, your asterisk ruined the effect. :)
David, perhaps we should look at pending gun control legislation at the time of the massacres. Although, there always seems to be some pending gun control legislation sitting in committee just waiting for a tragedy to occur.
Jeff in Wisconsin
I just came across this article about the Appalachian school incident. Guy who stopped him says guns weren't a factor. Any other info. available?
AP:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/
V/VIRGINIA_TECH_GINGRICH?SITE=AZMES
&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
The two guys with the guns dispute that account, so who knows. I note all of them are/were cops.
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