Austria Mourns Victims Of Worst School Shooting Since World War Two

By Stefan J. Bos, Worthy News Europe Bureau Chief

VIENNA/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Austria has declared three days of mourning after its worst shooting since World War II left at least 11 people dead Tuesday at a secondary school in Graz, the nation’s second largest city.

Officials confirmed that the shooter was believed to be a 21-year-old Austrian man, a former student at the school who had not completed his studies there.

Armed with two legally owned weapons—a pistol and a hunting rifle—he opened fire in two separate classrooms of Graz’s large Dreierschützengasse secondary school, according to authorities.

Austria’s Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said nine victims, including six females and three males, died at the scene. After the attack, the young man reportedly took his own life. His body was found in a school bathroom.

Karner confirmed that the presumed shooter “acted alone and was among the dead.”

While most of the victims were students, the mayor of Graz, Elke Kahr, had earlier said that an adult, thought to be a teacher at the school, was also among the fatalities.

RUSHED TO HOSPITAL

Authorities confirmed that 12 others were injured and rushed to the hospital. The Red Cross charity said “nine of them are in serious condition,” with two critically injured. One of the wounded has since died, officials said without elaborating.

While no official motive was given for the tragedy, local media reported that the alleged shooter “had been bullied during his school years.” A farewell letter was found at his home, according to the Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung.

Visibly moved, Austria’s Chancellor Christian Stocker announced a minute’s silence for 10 a.m. local time on Wednesday to start three days of mourning for the victims of Austria’s deadliest postwar mass shooting.

The attack on Tuesday morning in the southern city of Graz was “a dark day in the history of our country”, an act of “unimaginable violence” and “a national tragedy that has shocked us all”, he told reporters.

The European Commission, the European Union’s executive, also expressed its shock over the bloodshed in Austria, an EU member state.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, “Schools stand for youth, hope, and the future. It is unbearable when they become places of death and violence.”

The tragedy was expected to fuel debate on Austria having some of the most liberal firearm regulations in Europe.

PERMITTED FIREARM

Residents aged 18 or older are permitted to own a firearm, with some exceptions allowing 16-year-olds to acquire guns for hunting purposes.

The law states that all such weapons must be registered within six weeks of acquisition.

Austria ranks among the highest in Europe for civilian gun ownership, with about 30 guns per 100 residents, according to the 2017 Small Arms Survey, a Geneva research group.

While countries such as Cyprus, Finland, and Iceland report slightly higher rates, experts say Austria remains an outlier on the European continent.

Globally, Austria ranks 12th in the world for gun ownership, though significantly lagging behind the country with the highest rate: the United States.

While Tuesday’s shooting was the worst in decades, the alpine nation of 9 million has recorded two public mass shootings in the period between 2000 and 2022, according to research by the Rockefeller Institute of Government.

The most recent incident occurred in November 2020, when a gunman killed four people and wounded 23 others. Last year, authorities said they thwarted a planned attack targeting a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna.

US SHOOTINGS

Yet there were more than 500 “mass shootings” recorded in the United States last year, reports the Gun Violence Archive (GVA).

The GVA defines such incidents as those involving four or more people shot, either injured or killed, excluding the perpetrator.

Tuesday’s incident in Austria came on the day that fellow EU member state France was shocked by the deadly stabbing of a 31-year-old school assistant by a teenager.

The attack occurred while pupils’ bags were being checked outside the school gates in the French municipality of Nogent, according to the National Gendarmerie, France’s law enforcement service.

French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou called the tragedy part of “a breakdown of the society in which we live.”

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