Tragedy Strikes Austrian School

A school shooting occurred at a high school in Graz, Austria, the country’s second-largest city, on Tuesday, 10 June. According to multiple English-language news sources, Graz Mayor Elke Kahr told Austrian news outlets that a gunman killed at least nine people, including students and at least one adult, and that the shooter was also dead. The mayor said several others were injured.

The authorities said they believe the attacker acted alone and took his own life at the scene. Several hours after the morning incident, authorities said they believed there was no longer any immediate danger.

There are few details as the investigation of the incident gets underway. The Telegraph and other news outlets reported that Austrian news outlets have said the shooter was a 22-year-old former student of the school and was possibly the victim of bullying while at the school—though The Telegraph and other outlets say the attacker’s details have not been verified. The Austrian news outlets also said the shooter had recently purchased at least one of the guns and that he used a handgun and a shotgun in the attack.

Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker posted a statement in German on X that the France24 news agency translated as saying the shooting was “a national tragedy that deeply shocks our whole country. …There are no words for the pain and grief that all of us—the whole of Austria—feel now.”

Compared to the United States, Europe has far fewer school shooting incidents. The last mass shooting related to an educational institution in Europe was earlier this year in February when 10 people died in an attack on an adult educational center in Sweden. Russia experienced school shootings in 2022 and 2021, but overall, there have been relatively few school shootings with mass fatalities across the region.

However, the region is not immune to severe school violence. Also on 10 June, a student allegedly stabbed and killed a school employee who was assisting with bag checks at a middle school in Nogent, France, which is just north of Dijon, France. A police officer who was assisting with the bag checks was injured in the attack while arresting the student.

Varying press reports listed the age of the student in custody as either 14 or 15 years old, and reported that he was not “formerly known to police.” The Associated Press reported that a regional prosecutor stated the student was a representative in the school’s anti-bullying program and that the student had been briefly suspended earlier in the year for disrupting class.

An April knife attack at a school in Nantes, France, that included one fatality led to French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou to call for additional security controls at schools. The bag checks were part of the enhanced security protocols. According to France24, the education ministry has reported that 958 random bag checks in schools around the country had led to the seizure of 94 knives.

The United States has a particularly grim record when it comes to protecting its youth. A CNN report from 2018 noted that the United States had 57 times more school shootings than the next G7 countries combined. Last year, NBC reported on an article in the journal JAMA Pediatrics showed that the U.S. mortality rate of 0- to 19-year-olds far exceeded other wealthy countries. Even accounting for the higher infant mortality rate in the United States, people aged 1 to 19 died at a much higher rate than the other countries in the study. The authors pointed to firearm deaths—including murder, accidents, and suicide—as well as deaths from drugs and car accidents as the likely reason for higher U.S. death rates.

And this week, The New York Times reported on another JAMA Pediatrics paper that showed the U.S. states with the loosest gun restrictions have a higher firearm mortality rate for people aged 1 to 17 than states with tighter gun regulations.

ASIS International is completing work on a School Security standard to be released later this year. In addition, Security Management magazine recently released a package of articles on school security featuring interviews with representatives from several organizations that have been involved in the development of the standard.