Virginia Tech shooting

[xiphias]

When I first saw this, it said, "21 dead." I went to find the link to post it, and the link text was "25 dead." The headline now says "29 dead."

God grant that the number is no higher when you read the article.

It is the deadliest school shooting in United States history.

Comments

[ron_newman]

The first thing that came to my mind was the Montreal massacre in 1989 -- but this sounds even worse.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

In pure numbers, yes, this is more. But I don't think you can really quantify and rank massacres.

Is Columbine worse because it was high school? Is the Polytechnique worse because women engineers were specifically targeted? Is the 1966 Univeristy of Texas worse because Charles Whitman knew he was insane and was doing it anyway? Was Kent State worse because it was done by officials of the United States Government? Or the Enoch Brown massacre in 1764, because it was Indian warriors deliberately killing and scalping children? Or the 1927 Bath School massacre, because 45 people were killed in an attack which included one of the first suicide car bombings in US history?

I don't think we can, or should, rank them.

[ron_newman]

by "worse" I was indeed referring strictly to numbers.