Rampages at schools

Rampages don’t happen often in Germany. Germany’s 10 cases in 24 years isn’t even close to the 690 cases only last year in the USA, but there was one detrimental Rampage on April 26^th 2002 in Erfurt. A young person entered the Gutenberg Gymnasium during an oral exam. It was 10:45 a.m. His weapons were in his bag. After entering the men’s toilet, he changed his clothes and put on a black face mask. He stepped into the Secretariat and shot the secretary and the representative principal. After leaving the office, he was on the way to the first floor. He shot a teacher in the back multiple times, then he entered room 105 and shot a teacher. After leaving the room, he also shot the teacher on the hallway, who had heard the shots and wanted to check the situation. After several shots and a gunfight with a policeman, he finally entered room 101 and met a teacher. The teacher told him to shoot him now, but the rampant student lowered his gun and said, that it was enough for today. After a request to follow him for a conservation, the teacher pushed he gunman into a room and locked the door. The gunman killed himself. If you count the killer himself, 17 people died that day.

Now, I want to get to the definition of rampages. The word means, to be precisely, an attack and murder in blind fury.

Sometimes the gunman wants to get attention or suppress mental sufferings. The motive is not always clear. Sometimes caused by, as already mentioned, mental suffering, triggered by traumatizing experiences like difficult family circumstances. The whole act is connected to hate and revenge fantasies. Rampages are usually precisely planned. Often in an accurate way, the act of killing is thought-out in the gunman’s head. To put it in a nutshell, rampages are multiple kills often by (former) students in public educational buildings.

School shooting happen so often in the USA because of the easy access to guns. The students have to do an “Active Shooter drill” to train how to behave during an actual attack. The three ground rules are “Run, Hide, Fight”. Run as long as you can and if you can’t anymore, hide, often behind the doors on the walls that the Shooter can’t see. And if that doesn’t work you have to fight. You have to hold up the gunman as much as possible, to ensure the survival of as much children as possible. This is advice that is told to kids as young as 6, because Rampages also happen in Elementary and Middle schools.

In 88% of all school shootings firearms were used. Some of the gunmen collected weapons or even entire arsenals. The offender might also use explosives or petrol.

Now, at last, when do rampages happen? If you have a closer look at all school shootings, you will find out that they happen mostly between March and April and between October and December. There were less rampages between June and September. Most likely because of the holidays in the USA. In 1993-2001 a study about 143 school shootings reported, that 44% of all school shootings happen after another killing spree was reported in the media.

https://de.statista.com/infografik/18928/mass-shootings-in-den-usa/

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/usa-schulen-massaker-uebungen-1.5592035