What is it with the USA and the number of shootings at schools there? They are overtaking post offices as venues for mass murders.

Today’s execution of 5 schoolgirls in Pennsylvania follows hot on the heels of 2 other killings in schools in the last week. I can’t find a reference on line but on Sky News today, they said that there had been 25 school shooting incidents in the US since the middle of August.

The deeds of Charles Roberts in Paradise today are said to be related to some grudge he had held since he was a child. He took out his problems with his life and the world by seizing a school room and then tying up the girls and shooting several of them in the head - killing 5. The motive will probably never be known, as Roberts killed himself as well.

Clearly his grudge was with girls, as he shot only the girls in the school, having released the boys and some adults earlier.

This follows the shootings in Colorado last week where a man took 2 girls hostage, killed one and then himself. Also last week, a 15 year old student at Weston School in Wisconsin shot dead his school’s principal.

The shootings in Colorado and Pennsylvania in particular seem disturbing, in that they did not involve a fellow student gone crazy but strangers who have deliberately chosen schools as the place to take out their psychotic grudges against the world, and have specifically targeted young girls.

How often do these things happen in other countries? And whats the distinction between them and America? The ready availability of high powered weapons to any psycho that wants them. Just think, the damage that could have been done today would have been a lot less had Roberts not had access to the veritable armoury he had.

The response - of course its not to place gun control on the political agenda, thats too hard given the National Rifle Association seems to have the American political system by the balls. No, the response is to hold a conference on school violence and what can be done to prevent it. The action taken will of course be to beef up security screening at schools and things like that. Why not go back a few steps and reduce the availability of guns generally, and particularly limit the ability of nutcases to get hold of them.

Something I found interesting and disturbing on the news today is that there are people in the education bureaucracy in the US who have job titles such as “Director, Safety and Security, Chicago Schools” and similar. Not only that but there is enough business to support a specialist consulting firm, National School Safety and Security Services. Amazing!!!!!

According to this firm, since Columbine in 1999, the number of fatal school shootings in a school year has ranged from three (2002-03) to 24 (2004-05). There have also been 17 nonfatal school shootings so far this school year, beginning Aug. 1. There were 85 the previous school year and 52 in the 2004-2005 school year. Just business as usual I suppose!!!

PS - I suppose despite all the shootings in American schools, Beslan in Russia was far worse so we shouldn’t forget that. We shouldn’t forget Dunblane either. Even so, these were isolated though still terrible tragedies … they just don’t happen anywhere else with the same frequency as America, and its the gun culture which plays a huge part in this.

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