CHURCHES, SYNAGOGUES, MOSOUES, AND TEMPLES
Last year’s Pittsburgh synagogue massacre wasn’t America’s first mass shooting at a house of worship. In recent history, we’ve seen several, including the 2007 Youth With A Mission/New Life Church shootings; the 2012 Sikh Temple Massacre; 2008’s Knoxville Unitarian Universalist mass shooting attempt; the 2015 Charleston Church Massacre; the 2017 Antioch, Tennessee, church shooting; and 2017’s notorious Sutherland Springs, Texas, church massacre. In 2017, an extremist murdered 11 at a mosque in Canada, and an American was arrested for a plot to attack a mosque here at home. The year 2018 saw an American white supremacist murder two black men and tell a white man, “Whites don’t kill whites,” after failing to force entry into a black church in an apparent attempt to commit another massacre.
According to one researcher, America never had a church shooting resulting in four or more deaths until 1963. Since 1963, we’ve had 15. Of those, at least five have occurred since 2007. At least three other attempted mass shootings, which killed less than four took place in that timeframe. Mass shootings at houses of worship aren’t brand new to America, but they’re definitely on the rise.
MOTIVATIONS
The motives
