On May 18th of 2018, seventeen year old Dimitrios Pagourtzis, a student at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, opened fire in an art classroom at the high school killing 10 and wounding 13. The firearms used in the shooting, a shotgun and .38-caliber revolver, were both legally owned by Pagourtzis’ father. Although Pagourtzis’ choice of firearms is somewhat atypical for mass school shootings, the source is not. As it turns out, it is fairly common for firearms used in such shootings to have been procured from the shooter’s own home or from relatives.
The Wall Street Journal recently conducted a review of school shootings that have occurred since 1990 in which there were 3 or more fatalities. The results of the review were reported in the April 6, 2018 print edition of that publication. (See, Hobbs, Tawnell D. “Guns at Home: A Problem Lost in Debate.” The Wall Street Journal 6 April 2018: A3. Print.) The article can be online found here. A total of 32 shooting instances were reviewed. Of the 20 instances in which the source of the firearms was reported, 17, or 85%, were obtained from the shooter’s own home or from relatives.
Although restricting access to firearms in the home is no guarantee that a school shooter would not procure them elsewhere, it is a simple and noncontroversial step that might help curtail the loss of life.