USA - 2 Die, Including Gunman, in Shooting at Washington State High School

In the New York Times Article, written by Kirk Johnson, Ian Lovett and Michael Paulson, “2 Die, Including Gunman, in Shooting at Washington State High School“, the tragedy of a State High School located in Marysville, Washington is reported. It includes interviews of friends and family members who knew the 14-year-old gunman.

Schools in the US know, that shootings aren’t impossible, as the past has shown, and are likely to happen anywhere. Because of this many schools are prepared for a lockdown in the case of an emergency. In order to perform such a lockdown the schools have to train for a worst-case scenario. This had the result that many students and even teachers didn’t take the alarm seriously on Friday 24th October 14 as the gunman opened fire at 10:39 a.m., which resulted in one death and four serious head injuries. The motive of the shooter isn’t clear yet.

As already mentioned the shooter was 14 years old and was called Jaylen Fryberg. He was a very popular freshman and even played in the high school football team. Eyewitnesses described Jaylen as a funny person and everybody loved him, but close friends reported, that they had seen a change in his behavior. The days before the shooting he was really quiet, which wasn’t normal.  Others told the reporters about how scary it was and how extremely shocked they were.

After the tragedy, candles were lit and a lot of the people attended the church ceremony wearing school colors. After a minute of silence the local pastor spoke out the wise words, that the most important thing to do in cases like these, is to love and support each other.

Every now and then, US schools are affected by shootings. This is partly the reason why more and more citizens are against the current gun laws, which allow everyone in Washington at the age of 21 to buy a gun if they receive a license from the city police chief.  There are many motives for these shootings. often the students who tend to use this kind of violence have some connection to guns. In Jaylen’s case, he was an avid hunter and gun enthusiast.

Normally the trigger for these kinds of actions are often social and mental issues. But in this case here, the shooter didn’t just aimlessly shoot at people. It was a planned killing of the four victims, which he invited via SMS to the cafeteria. This distinguishes this situation from other school shootings. In an article published on People.com, it is mentioned that Jaylen had lived in a block on the Tulalip Indian Reservation since he was born. The book “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” shows, with what social matters a Native American living in a reservation is confronted with. It is also known that Jaylen had a fight over a girl, which might also have been a reason for his dreadful act.

But has something ever happened in Switzerland? In the Swiss history there has never been a school shooting. An article published in the Swiss newspaper “Tagesanzeiger”  lists all rampages in Switzerland, but nowhere a school shooting is mentioned.

One reason for this is the much smaller population a fact that explains why people here get more support and why the standard of living is higher. Another reason is, that in Switzerland you are not allowed to have a gun of any kind in your house, with exception to soldiers, who don’t have ammunition. The criminal rate is much lower here. The reason for this is, as already mentioned, the much higher standard of  living.

But still there is a chance for such terrible events to occur in Switzerland. Like in many countries, this topic is getting more and more attention. The reason for this is partly the rise of social media, which makes it easier for young people to bully someone, because you don’t have to be directly confronted with the victim. It is even possible to do this anonymously.

The good thing in Switzerland is that it’s almost impossible for the offender to get his hands on a firearm, especially if he’s still under aged.

We believe that cases of amok, such as the one that in Marysville, are terrible and should be prevented by trying to stop cyber-bullying, which is very difficult though, because children tend to have bullied the weaker ones for hundreds of years. We also think that the gun laws in America should be stricter so that it’s not so easy to get one’s hands on a gun, which, as we have observed, can lead to the death of innocent human beings.