Image from boston.com
Ever since the deadly shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007 that left 32 dead, shootings in the United States have been occuring more frequently than we would have ever thought. We all know that the world is not safe, but when a parent becomes terrified to send their child off to school or to the movies, something has got to give. On July 25 2012, a 19-year-old sophomore at Kent State University in Ohio sent out a “tweet” that said “I’m shooting up your school ASAP”. While he may have very well been joking, Kent State president Lester Lefton, and the authorities found the “tweet” anything but funny, and has arrested and charged 19-year-old William Koberna with inducing panic and aggravated menacing. Along with these charges, Koberna is facing possible suspension or expulsion from Kent State.
Following the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado where 12 people were shot dead and 58 others injured when James Holmes, 24, walked into the screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” with 6,000 rounds of ammunition and just began shooting, I do not believe anybody found this threat amusing. James Holmes has been charged with 24 counts of first-degree murder and 116 counts of attempted murder. Unfortunately, the Colorado massacre and the Virginia Tech slaying are not the only shootings to have occured in the last five years.
Nearly a year after the mass shooting at Virginia Tech which left 32 dead, a former graduate student at Northern Illinois killed five students and then himself. While only six months ago in February, a student at a highschool in Chardon, Ohio walked into the cafeteria where he shot and killed three students, leaving three others to seek medical attention at a nearby hospital.
The Kent State University spokesman Eric Mansfield referred to these acts of violence when he told interviewers, “It’s very upsetting to the entire community to see a threat like this online in light of what has happened in Colorado, Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois and locally in Chardon, Ohio,”.
