As the AP would note, those officers “had never trained for what they found: No hostages. It took 45 minutes for a SWAT team to go in. One of the first recorded American school shootings took place in 1840.īut the first high-school shooting that truly lodged itself in our consciousness was Columbine, in 1999, when two students wearing trench coats fatally shot 13 of their classmates.
It’s stunning to think that these shootings - these attacks on children - aren’t being talked about constantly. In which at least 75 other shootings in schools barely made the news and then slipped right out of it (which often happens when victims are people of color).
The same year in which a former student murdered 17 of his classmates in Parkland, Florida - and another student killed ten in Texas. Since being shot five times, Parkland survivor Anthony Borges has worn a colostomy bag.Īmericans have short memories.