Friday’s shootings in Binghamton, N.Y., mark yet another bloody event in a long string of tragic April days in America.
Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. were both killed in April. The Oklahoma City bombing, the end of the Waco Siege and the shootings at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech also took place in April.
Associated Content wrote that “April has historically been a whole month of assassination, mass murder and mayhem.”
Associated Content said:
“Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold wrote in journal entries how they would like to outdo events such as Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing. It has been speculated that they intended to carry out their school shooting on April 19, but it was on the 20th, 1999 that they committed the Columbine massacre.
“The Virginia Tech massacre, the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, took place April 16, 2007. In his manifesto, Seung-Hui Cho referred to ‘martyrs like Eric and Dylan.'”
But why April? The Columbus Dispatch wrote in 2007:
“‘People in depressed affect, when they are at the bottom of their mood, they can’t function well enough to do anything, even plan a suicide,’ said Randy Nelson, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Ohio State University.
“Spring, like medication, can bring them out of the winter’s depression.
“‘They’ve had bad thoughts for a long time and being affected by the seasonal change could make them do something,’ he said.
“For college students, final exams and deadlines can push stress levels to dangerous levels in April. For those in high school, the approaching end of the school year can be the catalyst for a student to act on festering emotions.”
