On November 5, 2017, a man walked into a church in Texas and shot and killed 26 people. This event became the fifth deadliest shooting in United States history. Unfortunately, mass shootings are not new occurrences in America, nor in other countries across the globe. In the past 100 years, there have been many notable tragedies in this country. These shootings occur at unpredictable places and times by people who normally walk the streets like everyone else. As well as causing immediate chaos, these catastrophes have many effects on the country as a whole.

“I know that most [of the deadly shootings] were caused because of mental instability and illness in the individuals, as well as terrorism and hate being prime motives,” sophomore Braedon Naramore said. “Some effects of these tragedies have been political tensions, grief, anger and the movement of people’s political agendas.”

The shooting with the most casualties is one from earlier this year with 58 deaths. The tragedy occurred at Harvest Music Festival on October 1, 2017. Another one of the deadliest shootings includes one from June 12, 2016. This event, called the Pulse nightclub massacre, happened at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. 49 people died and over 50 more were injured in the attack. Going back further in history, one can find even more tragedies. For example, the Virginia Tech massacre from April 2007, where a student shot and killed 32 people on campus. On December 14, 2012, a 20 year old man fatally shot 26 people, 20 of them being children aged six or seven. This disaster is known as the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

Although there are more massacres than these in the history of the United States, these are a few of the most deadly. The aforementioned disasters all occurred in the past 11 years. This and the increasing severity of the massacres may show the direction our country is heading.