Originally Posted by CDSmith

If we're going to start in about school shootings (which this clearly wasn't), here's an interesting true story.... The first time I ever heard of this happening was in the late 70's. The term "school shooting" hadn't even been invented yet. The older brother of a girl I was in Jr high with took his dad's shotgun to school one day. When challenged by his art/drafting teacher he told him he was intending to draw the gun. A short time later he blasted one of his classmates with it, after which the gun jammed. Since he was bullied by more than just the one guy people have wondered (including myself) just how many kids would have gotten killed that day.

It's a long read but worth it.... When school shootings were unthinkable - Winnipeg Free Press
Mostly written from the perspective of a teacher who was actually there that day.

Btw, Vaughan Pollen, the student who killed fellow student Ken Maitland with one blast from a shotgun, was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

This went down a good 20-odd years before "Columbine" and all those high-profile ones covered by CNN in the 90's.

I got curious one day a few years back and looked up the history of school shootings around the world and was quite surprised at the stats. To see countries like Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Australia, etc on the list was quite surprising to me. The US may have the most of any other country but more happen outside of America than you might think.

School shooting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some of the earliest ones listed happened as far back as the 1880's. Banning of guns doesn't seem to determine which countries will or won't have school shootings.