Student, Suspect Dead in Yet Another American School Shooting

The small city of Troutdale, Oregon was rocked yesterday by a shooting at Reynolds High School. Police officers from as far as Portland, 16 miles away, responded to the shooting quickly. The first reports of a shooter in the school emerged just after 08:00, and an hour later, it was reported that the shooter was confirmed dead from an apparent self-inflicted wound. The local police department has not released the name of the suspect, though the victim has been identified as a 14-year old male.

Officers were still evacuating students an hour after the shooter was declared dead. They were investigating the circumstances of the shooting, along with the type of weapon used and the motive.

This is not the first shooting in the area: three days before the shooting in Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, a gunman opened fire in the Clackamas Town Center mall, killing three, including himself. The mall is approximately twenty minutes away from Reynolds High School.

The shooting comes on the heels of the recent shootings at Seattle Pacific University, where one student died, and the shootings in Isla Vista, California, just outside the campus of UC Santa Barbara, where 7 people were murdered.

So far in 2014, there have been 31 incidents of violence on school grounds, 11 of which involved fatalities, either from gunshot or from stab wounds.

President Obama has spoken out about the spate of gun violence in schools, blaming Congress for its inability to pass gun control measures. He has called it 'the greatest frustration of his presidency.'

Currently, many states do not require background checks for gun owners, something that has been proposed as a conciliatory step by gun control advocates. Pro-gun advocates have rejected the proposal, stating that the second amendment secures their rights to gun ownership without hindrance, something that the National Rifle Association (N.R.A.) has openly stated.

The President has said that many members of Congress are frightened of the N.R.A., thus the reticence to enact tougher gun control measures.