Two days. Almost 48 hours to the minute since the last school shooting took place, there was another one, and in the same state as the last one.
Even at this late hour (2:30 am CDT) there aren’t a whole lot of details about yesterday’s shooting. What we do know is that around noon on September 1st, a shooting took place at Mount Tabor High School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The victim has been identified as William Chavis Renard Miller Jr. I haven’t seen his age reported on anywhere yet. Miller was rushed to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, where he later died from his wounds.
The suspect was said to be at large for a few hours before the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office announced that a suspect was in custody. The suspect has not been identified, probably due to his age, but he is believed to be a student of the school. From what I’ve read, no motive for the shooting has been made public so far.
One woman who was interviewed by the Winston-Salem Journal has a grandson that attends Mount Tabor. She and her family say that they recently moved there from Philadelphia, and they thought Winston-Salem would be safer. I’ve lived in Philadelphia. Most of my family is from Philadelphia. In certain parts of town, including the one I lived in, the sounds of gunfire were an almost nightly occurrence. I also lived in a somewhat rural part of North Carolina, where it wasn’t uncommon to hear my redneck neighbors occasionally popping off a few shotgun rounds in drunken revelry. If I was asked, I would definitely say that Winston-Salem is far safer than Philadelphia overall. However, that’s the thing about school shootings. They almost always seem to happen in the suburbs or in smaller cities like Winston-Salem.
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper issued the following statement about the shooting…
I’m not a fan of Roy Cooper. Back during the MySpace days, he was North Carolina’s Attorney General while I was living there. He introduced a bunch of legislation that he claimed would curtail the use of MySpace by sexual predators. The legislation had no real teeth to it, and I called it feel-good legislation designed to garner the soccer mom vote. Today, that would be known as the ‘Karen’ vote. However, as governor, Roy Cooper has a pretty good reputation when it comes to gun control. For example, he vetoed a bill that would have allowed church-goers to attend service while armed. Nothing like being strapped for Jesus, I guess.
Anyway, my point is that while Governor Cooper has a decent record on gun control, will he do anything further to curb the extent of gun violence in North Carolina schools? You have to keep in mind that he’s a Democrat governor in a mostly red state. He can only push the Gravy Seal gun nuts so far, especially since he’s in the lame duck phase of his governorship. While he is not currently campaigning for Senate and looking to finish out his term, that doesn’t mean that Cooper won’t run for Congress in the future, and he’ll need some of those red votes.
It’s my hope that governors across the country start standing up to these groups who think the gun problem can only be solved with more guns. As I’ve said before, that’s like trying to cure cancer with more cancer. Children are dying in our schools just so Jethro can hope that he catches someone breaking into his house, so he can shoot them with his over-kitted AR-15 that he keeps loaded in an unlocked tactical case next to the mattress on the floor of his bedroom.
As always, I’ll provide more details as they become available.
Thanks to Lady Gray for the tip.
- (Sources)
- 1 student killed in North Carolina school shooting; suspect taken into custody
- Deputies confirm arrest of deadly Mount Tabor High School shooting suspect
- One student killed, suspect in custody after shooting at Mount Tabor High School
- The suspect in the fatal shooting of a student at a North Carolina high school is in custody
Real Crime with Trench Reynolds 
A $10 million study commissioned by President Barack Obama in 2013 found that there is no evidence that gun restrictions reduce gun violence.
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