U.S mass shootings continue to haunt us
Daryn Mason
Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, Majory Stoneman Douglas; these are sites of some of the deadliest mass shootings in history.
In the last five years, between 2015-2020, 231 innocent lives were lost to mass shootings. Shootings have happened throughout history, but mass shootings started in 1949 when a man killed 13 people.
The first high school mass shooting was at Columbine High School in Colorado and the first college mass shooting was at Virginia Tech in Virginia.
The first mass shooting ever in U.S. history was in Camden, New Jersey in 1949. Howard Unruh, a 28-year-old WWII veteran killed 13 people as he walked down Camdens 32nd Street. He was found insane and committed to a state mental institution. He died at 88.
In 1966, the first mass school shooting and mass college shooting happened at the University of Texas at Austin, where 16 people were killed and 30 were wounded.
Charles Whitman, a former U.S. marine, killed his mother and wife earlier in the day and killed the other 16 from a tower at the university.
Columbine High School was the first mass shooting at a high school, where 13 people died and 23 others were injured.
On April 20, 1999, at about 11:20 a.m., Dylan Klebold, 17, and Eric Harris, 18, started the day of tyranny that will forever be remembered as a terrible day, but also as a reason Americans need to do everything in their power to help keep deadly mass shootings from happening.
On April 16, 2007, 23-year-old student Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 people in a killing spree at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. He killed people in two locations, Johnston Hall, a coed dormitory, and at Norris Hall, the engineering, science and mechanics building.
The first mass shooting at an elementary school happened on Dec. 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Adam Lanza, 20, murdered 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7. They were innocent first graders. He also killed six adults and also his mother.
The biggest mass shooting in America was the Las Vegas shooting on Oct. 1, 2017, where 58 people died.
Stephen Paddock, 64, from Mesquite, Nevada, unleashed around 15 minutes of hell as he unleashed gun fire on the crowd of 22,000 concertgoers from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. Another 700 were injured.
School shootings hit all of America hard on Feb. 14, 2018, when Nikolas Cruz, 19, murdered 17 students and faculty at Marjory Stomeman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
He was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder and went to court to decide whether he would serve life in prison or receive the death sentence. This caused an uproar of debate on how to handle school shootings, mental health and gun control.
