Gun Violence: in America and Our Schools

According to Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times online article entitled Kristof: “Lessons from the Virginia Shooting”, he talked about the on-air murder (by an ex-colleague) of two journalists while they were on assignment in Roanoke, Virginia. He went on to make this startling statement: “More Americans have died from guns in the United States since 1968 than on battlefields of all the wars in American history”. If you follow-up on these figures which were originally stated by PBS commentator Mark Shields ,and verified by journalist Louis Jacobson, there were almost 213,000 more civilian deaths from guns in the USA than the massive casualties of American wars, from the Revolutionary War through the Iraq War. Again, this is startling when you consider that this encompasses twelve wars including the following wars: 1812, Mexican, Civil, Spanish-American, WWI, WWII, Korean, Viet-Nam, Persian Gulf, and Afghanistan. (The number of casualties in these wars totaled 1,171,177, while the number citizens killed by guns in America are 1,384,171. A simple subtraction yields a difference of 212,994. Statistics came from the CDC, FBI, and Congressional Research Service).

With the recent school shootings at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and the Santa Fe High School shootings in Santa Fe, Texas, a question might naturally arise. How many American students (and others) have been killed by guns while primarily on campus, or while engaging in school related activities, near campus or off campus, since 1968? According to “Tribune Review Research (Trib Live-Jason Cato)”, the K-12 figures for 252 schools total 285 killed, 589 wounded. The College/University totals for 76 schools are 157 killed and 187 wounded. Thus the totals for K-12 and Colleges/Universities totals 442 killed and 776 wounded, and the “total killed and wounded “equals 1218.  Again, these figures primarily represent students, but some are faculty or others.

Are school shootings a fairly recent phenomenon in American history? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

Wikipedia has cited many instances of gun deaths in America going back to the 1800’s. I’m just going to discuss some of them for this article in order to provide a reasonable representation of these horrific occurrences.

According to Wikipedia, in 1840, a law professor at the University of Virginia named John Davis was shot by a student. He died three days later.

In 1940, a fired disgruntled 38 year old staffer at South Pasadena High School, shot and killed 5 men and one woman. The superintendent of the area’s schools, the principal, the business manager, a female art teacher, and a mechanical arts teacher, were all killed by a man named Verlin Spencer.

In August, 1996, Charles Whitman, a 25 year old engineering student mounted an observation deck at the University of Texas from where he shot and killed 17 people and wounded 31 others. Prior to that, he killed both his mother and his wife off-campus.

There were also campus shootings by the police and national guardsmen.

In February, 1968, a group of predominantly student civil rights workers convened on the campus of South Carolina State University to protest the continued segregation of a bowling alley which was outlawed by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. When the police tried to put out a bonfire set by the students, it was reported that an officer was hit and injured by an object.  This led the officers to believe they were under attack and they fired into the crowd killing 3 students aged between 17 and 19, and wounding 27 others.

In May of 1970, four students were killed, and nine were wounded when national guardsmen fired onto students protesting the Viet-Nam war at Kent State University in Ohio. Anti-war protests were common on college campuses during this period in American History.

In May of 1970, two students were killed and twelve others were wounded when police opened fire on protestors at Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi. The students were protesting the U.S. presence in Cambodia.

In January of 1989, a young man of 24, named Patrick Purdy, with a history of alcohol abuse, drug abuse, violence, and criminality, descended on  Cleveland Elementary School, in Stockton, California shooting and killing five children and himself. The killings seemed doubly sad as these kids were the children of refugees from Southeast Asia. They sought a “safe haven” here, but they were murdered instead.

At the University of Iowa in November, 1991, Mr. Gang Lu, a 28 year old former graduate student, killed four faculty members and a student. He also wounded a student (causing paralysis), then shot and killed himself.

At Westside Middle School in Craighead County, Arkansas, In March, 1998, Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden aged 13 and 11 respectively, set off a fire alarm and fatally shot a teacher and four students as they attempted to exit the school. Ten other students were wounded.

At this point, we can see that the perpetrators do not fit a particular mold. They are K-12 students, college students, graduate students, young adults, approaching middle age, etc.

Many of us will remember the Columbine School shootings of April 1999, in Littleton, Colorado. There Eric Harris, aged 18 and Dylan Kiebold, age 17 (both Columbine students) killed twelve students, one teacher, and wounded 21 people. They both committed suicide.

In March of 2005 in Red Lake Minnesota at Red Lake Senior High School, Jeffrey Wiese shot and killed five students, one teacher and a security guard. This is after he killed his grandfather and his companion, at the grandfather’s home at the Red Lake Indian Reservation. Wiese also resided there. Wiese took his own life.

In April, 2007 at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty members before killing himself. He left behind 23 wounded.

A very sad shooting incident occurred in December 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut,  where twenty first graders were literally massacred along with six adults. Two people were injured. This atrocity was committed by 20 year old Adam Lanza, who murdered his mother before coming to the school armed with four guns. Like other shooters, Lanza killed himself too.

In October, 2015, at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, a 26 year old student named Christopher Harper-Mercer shot and killed eight students and one teacher before killing himself. He left nine people wounded.

In February of 2018, Nikolas Cruz, a 19 year old former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School set off a fire alarm and executed 17 students and faculty as they sought to exit the building. In the past, Cruz had been expelled from school due his behavior. Fourteen students were wounded. Cruz was arrested and charged with murder as well as attempted murder. Marjory Stoneman Douglas students have become known for their avid activism against guns and gun violence.

Just a few days ago, on May 18, 2018, 17 year old student Demitrios Pagourtzis set off a fire alarm at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe Texas. He then shot and killed nine students and one teacher as they sought to exit the building. He left nine people wounded. According to CNN, Pagourtzis was careful not to shoot the people he liked, but targeted those he didn’t like.

In this article I’ve cited 15 school shootings out of a total of 328, occurring over the last 50 years. That’s less than 5 percent, but it gives us a glimpse of what has occurred during this period as it pertains to school shootings.  As I said earlier, the number of deaths for this period totals 442, and the number of wounded totals 776. We don’t know the extent of the injuries of all of the wounded. Some may have fully recovered. Some may have not. What we do know is that when we go to school to learn or to teach, we don’t expect to be wounded or killed in the process. We do have a history of gun violence in the schools of America. That is a problem. What will we do about it? I will be writing again on this subject.