Minnesota School Massacre Latest Example of the Human Toll of America's Love Affair with Guns

Shooter's Willingness to Commit Suicide Demonstrates Futility of Deterrence, Restricting Access to Firearms is the Only Way to Prevent Future Tragedies

Washington, D.C.—Yesterday's mass shooting at a Minnesota high school in which a lone shooter killed nine and wounded more than a dozen before taking his own life was the worst school shooting since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, where two students killed 13 and wounded another 23 before taking their own lives.

In the wake of this most recent shooting, Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Violence Policy Center (VPC) states, "America must face the fact that we have a love affair with guns that exacts a tremendous and unacceptable cost in human lives lost. Mass shootings like that at Red Lake High School are the future for America's children until policymakers decide it's time to enact real gun control. Other countries have found the solution to mass shootings, and it consists of severe restrictions on the availability of specific classes of firearms, such as handguns and assault weapons."

Noting that, as was the case at Columbine, the Minnesota high school shooter was prepared to die in order to perpetrate the shooting, Rand adds, "There is simply no way the criminal justice system or a series of security measures—such as the guard and metal detectors present at Red Lake High School—can prevent a shooter determined to kill and willing to die."

The shooting at Red Lake High School is the latest mass murder-suicide to occur in the United States and follows, by less than two weeks, a murder-suicide at a Wisconsin hotel that resulted in eight dead. Like the vast majority of murder-suicides these incidents were perpetrated with a gun. A study conducted by the VPC in 2002 found that guns were used in 95 percent of all murder-suicides and estimated that at least 1,300 lives are lost each year to murder-suicide. (For a copy of the study, American Roulette: The Untold Story of Murder-Suicide in the United States, as well as gun violence information for Minnesota, please see www.vpc.org).

The Violence Policy Center is a national non-profit educational foundation that conducts research on violence in America and works to develop violence-reduction policies and proposals. The Center examines the role of firearms in America, conducts research on firearms violence, and explores new ways to decrease firearm-related death and injury.