The shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut yesterday was America's second-deadliest campus shooting incident which left 28 dead including 20 children.
On Monday, April 16, 2007, in two separate incidents at the Virginia Tech campus, a gunman Seung-Hui Cho went on a shooting spree killing 32 and wounding at least 17 others before fatally shooting himself.
Two Indians also perished in the 2007 shootout which was carried out by a campus student. While the shooter Cho, reportedly was a senior English major, the victims, Tamil Nadu-born G V Loganathan was a professor there and Minal Panchal was a student hailing from Mumbai.
Up until the Monday mayhem, the deadliest campus shooting in the US history was in 1966 at the University of Texas, where Charles Whitman climbed to the 28th-floor observation deck of a clock tower and opened fire, killing at least 16 people before he was gunned down by the police, the New York Times had reported.
The Columbine High School attack in Colorado on April 20, 1999 had two teenagers, Eric Harris (18) and Dylan Kiebold (17) gone berserk who killed 12 fellow students and teacher before they killed themselves in the school library, CNN said in a study.
The Red Lake High School incident in Minnesota on March 21, 2005 saw Jeff Weise (16) killing his grandfather, and eight others before he shot himself to death, the study said.
The trail of blood through the 20 years is horrendous and painful with the last incident before the Virginia Tech incident falling ironically on October 2, 2006, celebrated globally as the the International Day of Non-violence marking the birthday of Mahatama Gandhi.
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The October 2 incident at West Nickel Mines School in Pennsylvania had Charles Roberts IV (32) taking 11 girls hostage, of whom five were killed and rest six wounded before the assailant killed himself, the study said.
The history of gun violence in the US has sparked global outrage and has brought the debate on gun controlling laws there to the forefront.