School shootings are awful. From Columbine to Annunciation Catholic School, they've all been horrific events that have both galvanized us in mourning the losses and divided us in how to address them.
After all, we've been told, this is a uniquely American problem...but is it?
There have, of course, been school shootings in other countries. Most of them have a much smaller population than the United States, which means that they're going to have fewer than we do, even at the same rate per capita.
Turkey, though, is smaller. It also has some pretty strict gun control laws on the books, the kind of laws we're told are essential if we want to stop school shootings here.
Unfortunately, the country saw the second school shooting this week on Wednesday.
A 14-year-old boy is dead after allegedly killing at least nine people and wounding 13 more at a Turkish middle school Wednesday, according to media and official reports.
The boy reportedly carried out the violent attack, the second of its kind in as many days in Turkey, with guns belonging to his father, a former police officer, according to Regional Governor Mukerrem Unluer.
"A student came to school with guns that we believe belonged to his father in his backpack. He entered two classrooms and opened fire randomly, causing injuries and deaths," Unluer told reporters, according to multiple media reports.
Eight of the deaths were students, while the other was a teacher, Turkey's Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci told reporters, per Reuters.
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The shooting took place at Ayser Çalık Middle School in Turkey's Kahramanmaras region, roughly 140 miles west of the high school where another student killed himself after injuring 16 others in a shooting one day earlier.
So nearly 30 people were shot in two incidents in two days.
That doesn't sound so much like a uniquely American problem, now does it?
No, Turkey doesn't have the same level of violent crime that the United States does. Then again, they don't have liberal judges letting people skip out of prison sentences when they do shoot at someone. I'm sure there's a connection between those two facts. I can feel it in my bones.
While gun control is pretty strict there, not everyone has the same rules to follow. Police officers, for example, don't have to jump through the same hoops as everyone else, which is why there was a gun in the household in the first place.
It should be noted, though, that anti-gunners here in the US often work to exempt police officers from gun control laws. Just throwing that out there for no particular reason.
Look, I'm genuinely heartbroken for the parents who lost children and the teacher's family. I lost someone I cared about in a mass shooting, so I have an idea what that pain is like. I'm not trying to make light of that. It's beyond awful.
But it's awful because someone awful did something awful. It's not because of a lack of gun control, which is precisely what the leftist news would be saying right now if it happened here. I know it, you know it, and even they know it.
