Graz–Jun. 10, 2025
You might have heard about the mass shooting at a school in Graz [1] today.
The school is about 1.2 km (about ¾ miles) northeast of where I am. I was totally unaware that anything had happened until I saw an email from someone in the US later in the afternoon. How is this possible?
- The route from the school to the nearest hospital goes away from my apartment.
- Since the nearest hospital is about 3 km (2 miles) from me, I hear ambulances coming by all the time and I may have just ignored them. (Also, with the windows closed, there’s very little outside noise.)
- Ambulances don’t run with their sirens on continuously. They only turn them on when they get to an intersection where they don’t have right-of-way.
Several people have asked me how often something like this happens. According to an article about past school shootings [2]:
- 1993: 13-year-old badly wounded the school director and then killed himself.
- 1997: 15-year-old killed a teacher and badly wounded one other
- 2012: Schoolchildren killed by their father
- 2018: 19-year-old shot by another 18-year-old student
- 2025: 10 dead in this attack, the shooter among the dead
There was also an incident in 2015 [3] where someone drove an SUV into a crowd and killed three people and injured 36 others.
So, no this is not something that happens every day, and Austria is not exactly awash with weapons. (Compare [4] Austria’s 30 weapons per 100 people—which is very high for Europe—with the US’s 120.5)
According to this article [5], the gun death rate in the US is 4.42 per 100,000. It’s 0.19 per 100,000 in Austria.
And no, it’s not just “thoughts and prayers” in response. People are giving serious thought to strengthening the gun laws [6]. Also, another article [7] says: Immer wieder ist von Passanten zu hören: "Ich dachte, das gibt's nur in Amerika, furchtbar." (Passersby are often heard saying, “I thought this only happened in America; terrible.”)
References
[1] CNN.com
[2] exxpress.at 🇦🇹
[4] kurier.at 🇦🇹
[6] diepresse.com 🇦🇹