A national epidemic of mass shootings, with a particular focus on schools as targets, shows no signs of abating anytime soon as the volatile mix of guns and mental health continues to go unaddressed legislatively. It’s time to redefine what’s happening here: Monday’s school shooting in St. Louis wasn’t just a crazed act of a lone gunman. This was terrorism.
What’s the difference if the scenes are screaming, panicked people running from the collapsing World Trade Center buildings or screaming, panicked people fleeing a public school? All experienced terror inflicted by deranged people who had, in their twisted minds, found a rationale for committing mass violence. Whether it was the al-Qaida hijackers behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks or shooters like Orlando Harris on Monday, the common motive is to inflict mass bloodshed and maximum casualties.
Harris punched or shot his way into the Central Visual and Performing Arts high school on Monday, then was quoted by a survivor as telling his would-be victims: “You are all going to (expletive) die.”
