Tennessee School Shooting

Tennessee School Shooting

There's been another school shooting . It was widely reported by the media today.

A teenager shot and killed an assistant principal and seriously wounded two other administrators at a high school, officials said. The student was arrested, after he was shot with his own gun, a .22-caliber handgun, in a struggle with law enforcement officers. Other than the suspect, Ken Bartley Jr., 15, no other students were hurt in the shooting.

In an overview, the Canada's National spread the news: "Principal Ken Bruce was shot in the chest just after 2 p.m. Tuesday and died soon after at a hospital....Principal Gary Seale was shot in the lower abdomen, and Assistant Principal Jim Pierce was shot in the chest. Seale was in serious condition and Pierce in critical condition at University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville."

Principal Seale, after being hit, raced to an intercom, called for a lockdown. The sealing of the school apparently saved more lives, students told the media.

Intriguingly, earlier this fall, there was a nonfatal school shooting in Saginaw, Michigan. Probable gang-member (translate this from the media as "African-American") Clarence Russell III, 15, was accused of shooting fellow sophomore Daniel Foster, 15, just after noon, Thursday, October 20 near a stairwell inside Saginaw High School. Foster did not die of his injuries, and some speculation occurred that it was a gang-related shooting. This seemed especially true when on Monday, October 24, in a drive-by shooting, three teens were targeted, with two hit. The one teen who was not shot was the 17-year-old half brother of Clarence Russell III.

Recent news articles about the Saginaw incidents, as the shooting moves to trial, however, have discussed the matter as a "school shooting.," harking back to the waves of school shootings that hit the country, beginning in the late 1990s.

It is an exercise in awareness of the copycat effect to see what past school schoolings the nonAmerica media, such as the British Broadcasting Corporation views as "significant," as per this listing:


Timeline: US school shootings .
March 2005: Minnesota schoolboy kills nine, then shoots himself
May 2004: Four people injured in shooting at a school in Maryland
April 2003: Teenager shoots dead head-teacher at a Pennsylvania school, then kills himself
March 2001: Pupil opens fire at a school in California, killing two students
February 2000: Six-year-old girl shot dead by classmate in Michigan
November 1999: Thirteen-year-old girl shot dead by a classmate in New Mexico
May 1999: Student injures six pupils in shoot-out in Georgia
April 1999: Two teenagers shoot dead 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves at Columbine School in Colorado
June 1998: Two adults hurt in shooting by teenage student at high school in Virginia
May 1998: Fifteen-year-old boy shoots himself in the head after taking a girl hostage
May 1998: Fifteen-year-old shoots dead two students in school cafeteria in Oregon
April 1998: Fourteen-year-old shoots dead a teacher and wounds two students in Pennsylvania
March 1998: Two boys, 11 and 13, kill four girls and a teacher in Arkansas
December 1997: Fourteen-year-old boy kills three students in Kentucky
October 1997: Sixteen-year-old boy stabs mother, then shoots dead two students at school in Mississippi, injuring several others

The list is, in reality, much longer, as you can see from The Copycat Effect (2004), but it is noting the ones that are highlighted that is enlightening. As anyone can see, the post-9/11 gap appears to have been caused by the media not reporting on school shootings.