April 16 edit
The Virginia Tech massacre was a school shooting comprised of two separate incidents about two hours apart on April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Tech. The shooter killed thirty-two people and wounded twenty-three others before committing suicide, making it the deadliest shooting in U.S. history. The perpetrator had been court ordered to seek treatment at the University's Cook Counseling Center seventeen months earlier, but the order was neither obeyed nor enforced. Additionally, the University's administration had failed to heed warnings from the shooters' professors on numerous occasions. The incident sparked intense debate in the U.S. and globally about gun violence, gun laws, gaps in the U.S. system for treating mental health issues, the perpetrator's state of mind, the responsibility of college administrators, privacy laws, journalism ethics, and other issues. The incident prompted immediate changes in Virginia law that had allowed the shooter, an individual adjudicated as mentally unsound, to purchase handguns. It also led to passage--with support from both the National Rifle Association and the Brady Campaign--of the first major federal gun control measure in more than thirteen years, a law that strengthened the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, on January 5, 2008.
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The one-year anniversary.