By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
At least 15 people are reported dead and more than 20 others were injured when a lone gunman opened fire inside a building at Charles University in Prague, making it the worst mass shooting in the Czech Republic, according to the Associated Press.
The incident underscores arguments from Second Amendment authorities in the U.S. that this is not the only place where such incidents occur.
Fox News is reporting that Prague police say the suspect has been “eliminated,” but there are no details about how. He reportedly suffered “devastating injuries,” the AP reported. A report in the New York Times said the killer fell from, the roof of the university’s “faculty of arts” building.
The AP report noted that authorities think the killer may have also murdered his father in Hostoun, located west of Prague, prior to going to the university and launching his rampage.
Reports say the suspected gunman legally owned several firearms. He was not immediately identified by the authorities, but Reuters is reporting that, “Police asked not to reveal the man’s identity, but his name as reported by some Czech media matched a police search report and an account on a social network where its owner talked about being inspired by a mass shooting in Russia.”
This has not been confirmed by other news agency reports in the shooting aftermath.
Reuters noted that gun-related crime is “relatively rare in the Czech Republic.” However, there have been exceptions to that statement. The news agency recalled a December 2019 incident in which six people were murdered in a hospital waiting room in the city of Ostrava. The gunman fled and subsequently committed suicide.
In 2015, an armed killer shot eight people in a Uhersky Brod restaurant.
The Fox News report said details are emerging about the shooting. There is apparently no suspicion this is part of a broader scheme, and one official already told reporters the dead man evidently did not have an accomplice.
There does appear to be some dispute between news agencies about the body count. CNN is reporting only 14 fatalities, and that is the number reported by the Washington Post.
Likewise, the BBC, which has obtained video of students leaping off an upper balcony to escape the carnage, also listed the number of victims at 14, but this number could be fluid/
The incident is likely to become part of the gun control debate in the United States, where anti-gunners maintain that gun-related violence seems largely confined to this country. There have been many high-profile and deadly attacks in Europe over the years.
Reuters assembled a year-by-year list which includes attacks in Britain (1987, 1996, 2010), France (1989, 1995, 2015), Germany (2002, 2009, 2016, 2023), Finland (2007, 2008), Slovakia (2010), Netherlands (2011), Norway (2011) and Serbia (2023).
