And a great many more people were sent to those "institutions" than really needed to be there.

Not that the school killings are really new, as we have seen they started in 1927 I believe it was.

They're comparatively almost unheard of in Europe where they seem to occur at the rate of about two a decade in an area with more than twice the population of the USA. There hasn't been one in Australia since 1996. They happen two or three times a year in the US.

gun control in place.

#2. It's not limited to the USA.

Put effective gun control in place here in the USA and there would be far fewer incidents BUT they would still happen here and abroad.

Which proves my point. There is an underlying issue not being addressed.

Police seize a gunman who killed 69 people at a youth summer camp of Norway's ruling political party, on the small, holiday island of Utoeya. Anders Behring Breivik is later charged with the killings, as well as with an earlier bombing in Oslo which killed eight people...

eom

Not culture. Not country. Not mental illness.

we need strict gun control and even more then that we need to make it very, very difficult to get ammunition. Banning guns would take a long time to have a noticeable effect because so many are already out there in the hands of would be murderers. if you own a gun, you are more likely to become a murder then someone who does not a gun. If you own a gun you are a potential murderer.

An ban on the sale of nearly all ammunition to civilians would have and immediate and profound affect.

Step one should be ban the vast majority of firearms. All hand guns, all assault weapons , all large capacity clips and all semi-automatic weapons.

Step two should be to ban the sales of ammunition other then shot gun shells appropriate for small game hunting to civilians.

Killing sprees are the exception in other countries.

It's the norm in the USA.

The rate of people killed by guns in the US is 19.5 times higher than similar high-income countries in the world. In the last 30 years since 1982, America has mourned at least 61 mass murders. Below is a timeline of mass shootings in the US since the Columbine High massacre:

December 11, 2012. On Tuesday, 22-year-old Jacob Tyler Roberts killed 2 people and himself with a stolen rifle in Clackamas Town Center, Oregon. His motive is unknown.

September 27, 2012. Five were shot to death by 36-year-old Andrew Engeldinger at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis, MN. Three others were wounded. Engeldinger went on a rampage after losing his job, ultimately killing himself.

August 5, 2012. Six Sikh temple members were killed when 40-year-old US Army veteran Wade Michael Page opened fire in a gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Four others were injured, and Page killed himself.

July 20, 2012. During the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, CO, 24-year-old James Holmes killed 12 people and wounded 58. Holmes was arrested outside the theater.

May 29, 2012. Ian Stawicki opened fire on Cafe Racer Espresso in Seattle, WA, killing 5 and himself after a citywide manhunt.

April 6, 2012. Jake England, 19, and Alvin Watts, 32, shot 5 black men in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in racially motivated shooting spree. Three died.

April 2, 2012. A former student, 43-year-old One L. Goh killed 7 people at Oikos University, a Korean Christian college in Oakland, CA. The shooting was the sixth-deadliest school massacre in the US and the deadliest attack on a school since the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.

October 14, 2011. Eight people died in a shooting at Salon Meritage hair salon in Seal Beach, CA. The gunman, 41-year-old Scott Evans Dekraai, killed six women and two men dead, while just one woman survived. It was Orange County’s deadliest mass killing.

September 6, 2011. Eduardo Sencion, 32, entered an IHOP restaurant in Carson City, NV and shot 12 people. Five died, including three National Guard members.

January 8, 2011. Former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in the head when 22-year-old Jared Loughner opened fire on an event she was holding at a Safeway market in Tucson, AZ. Six people died, including Arizona District Court Chief Judge John Roll, one of Giffords’ staffers, and a 9-year-old girl. 19 total were shot. Loughner has been sentenced to seven life terms plus 140 years, without parole.

August 3, 2010. Omar S. Thornton, 34, gunned down Hartford Beer Distributor in Manchester, CT after getting caught stealing beer. Nine were killed, including Thornton, and two were injured.

November 5, 2009. Forty-three people were shot by Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan at the Fort Hood army base in Texas. Hasan reportedly yelled “Allahu Akbar!” before opening fire, killing 13 and wounding 29 others.
April 3, 2009. Jiverly Wong, 41, opened fire at an immigration center in Binghamton, New York before committing suicide. He killed 13 people and wounded 4.

March 29, 2009. Eight people died in a shooting at the Pinelake Health and Rehab nursing home in Carthage, NC. The gunman, 45-year-old Robert Stewart, was targeting his estranged wife who worked at the home and survived. Stewart was sentenced to life in prison.

February 14, 2008. Steven Kazmierczak, 27, opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, killing 6 and wounding 21. The gunman shot and killed himself before police arrived. It was the fifth-deadliest university shooting in US history.

February 7, 2008. Six people died and two were injured in a shooting spree at the City Hall in Kirkwood, Missouri. The gunman, Charles Lee Thornton, opened fire during a public meeting after being denied construction contracts he believed he deserved. Thornton was killed by police.

December 5, 2007. A 19-year-old boy, Robert Hawkins, shot up a department store in the Westroads Mall in Omaha, NE. Hawkins killed 9 people and wounded 4 before killing himself. The semi-automatic rifle he used was stolen from his stepfather’s house.

April 16, 2007. Virginia Tech became the site of the deadliest school shooting in US history when a student, Seung-Hui Choi, gunned down 56 people. Thirty-two people died in the massacre.

February 12, 2007. In Salt Lake City’s Trolley Square Mall, 5 people were shot to death and 4 others were wounded by 18-year-old gunman Sulejman Talović. One of the victims was a 16-year-old boy.

October 2, 2006. An Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster, PA was gunned down by 32-year-old Charles Carl Roberts, Roberts separated the boys from the girls, binding and shooting the girls. 5 young girls died, while 6 were injured. Roberts committed suicide afterward.

March 25, 2006. Seven died and 2 were injured by 28-year-old Kyle Aaron Huff in a shooting spree through Capitol Hill in Seattle, WA. The massacre was the worst killing in Seattle since 1983.

March 21, 2005. Teenager Jeffrey Weise killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s girlfriend before opening fire on Red Lake Senior High School, killing 9 people on campus and injuring 5. Weise killed himself.

March 12, 2005. A Living Church of God meeting was gunned down by 44-year-old church member Terry Michael Ratzmann at a Sheraton hotel in Brookfield, WI. Ratzmann was thought to have had religious motivations, and killed himself after executing the pastor, the pastor’s 16-year-old son, and 7 others. Four were wounded.

July 8, 2003. Doug Williams, a Lockheed Martin employee, shot up his plant in Meridian, MI in a racially-motivated rampage. He shot 14 people, most of them African American, and killed 7.

September 15, 1999. Larry Gene Ashbrook opened fire on a Christian rock concert and teen prayer rally at Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, TX. He killed 7 people and wounded 7 others, almost all teenagers. Ashbrook committed suicide.

July 29, 1999. Mark Orrin Barton, 44, murdered his wife and two children with a hammer before shooting up two Atlanta day trading firms. Barton, a day trader, was believed to be motivated by huge monetary losses. He killed 12 including his family and injured 13 before killing himself.

April 20, 1999. In the deadliest high school shooting in US history, teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Kiebold shot up Columbine High School in Littleton, CO. They killed 13 people and wounded 21 others. They killed themselves after the massacre.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/14/1337221/a-timeline-of-mass-shootings-in-the-us-since-columbine/

indicates it's not just a matter of needing gun control. It goes beyond that.

Not that one killing justifies another, or anything like it. The other night Rachel Maddow was going over countries where there have been mass murders and she pointed out how many we had compared to everyone else. But it seemed to me that her point overlooked Mexico and Iraq for that matter. You know its not an unusual night in Iraq - now that the war is over - for fifty to a hundred people being killed. I realize that is a different circumstance, but still, death is death.

In the US, we have a mass shooting every other month. In any other country YEARS go by between incidents - even DECADES.

America has a TOO MANY GUNS problem, and it's destroying us. Shit like this OP, inferring that it's no big deal is part of the problem.

Also, how many gun attacks since in Scotland. You may have to go to a web site other than the NRA to copy and paste, I'll wait....

It is really sad that DU'ers are so reactionary and unable to think any further to look for underlying issues.

My post does NOT argue against gun control. In fact, it clearly says it would help.

It shocked the hell out of everyone precisely because nothing like that had never happened before.

Contrary to right-wing belief, Norwegians are neither wimpy (cf. their World War II Resistance Museum, their present love of hiking, skiing, and other outdoor activities) nor lacking in guns (but the owners are mostly farmers). But they don't feel compelled to shoot large numbers of their fellow citizens periodically.

I accidentally ended up as part of a 150,000-person memorial march on the Monday after the massacre. Everyone gathered in front of the city hall, and at some unknown signal began silently marching to the parliament building, carrying flowers. Every once in a while, they stopped and held their flowers in the air.

I arrived in Oslo two days after the massacre, just as the national memorial service was ending. I realized that the site was only two blocks from the memorial service at the cathedral, so I walked over and found a growing memorial of flowers and candles.

I speak and read enough Norwegian to puzzle out a newspaper, and I saw no expressions of hatred or vengeance. Instead, I saw people leaving notes at the memorial site that said things like, "We must create a better Norway" or "No more hatred, no more racism." The newspaper coverage of the march quoted the King as saying, "Last night, the streets of Oslo were filled with love."

...among them the U.S.