Three Dead and Several Injured in Philippines School Shooting

Earlier today, two students, ages 14 and 15, opened fire inside San Jose National High School in Tacloban City in the Philippines. Police said the suspects, who were both male students at the school, used a 9mm Glock pistol and a .38 revolver during the attack. Investigators recovered more than 40 shell casings from the scene.

The three students who were killed were all girls ages 16 to 17. Several others were wounded, with the number of injured students later increasing to 13 as authorities continued to account for everyone affected. Some were wounded by gunfire while others were injured in the panic.

Police said the 9mm pistol used in the attack belonged to a police officer who was one of the shooter’s aunts. That officer was taken into custody as authorities investigated how the weapon ended up in the hands of a teenager. The other firearm, the .38 revolver, was reportedly registered to a security agency. While unconfirmed, this also leads me to believe that the gun also belonged to one of the shooter’s relatives.

Police also said the school had only one guard covering multiple entry and exit points, which allowed the suspects to enter the campus with weapons.

If this situation is anything like what happens in the United States after a school shooting, that guard will probably become one of the easiest people to blame. People look for the person who was supposed to stop the attack, even when that person was put in an impossible situation. A single security guard cannot be expected to control a large school campus with multiple entrances and somehow know which student may be carrying a gun.

Police have said the suspected motive was a grudge connected to school bullying. The two suspects reportedly told investigators they had been bullied, and authorities have described bullying as a possible reason behind the attack.

But the history of school shootings shows that these explanations are more complicated than they appear.

After many school shootings, suspects have claimed they were victims of bullying. However, research into some of the most infamous cases has shown that many attackers were not simply helpless victims pushed to violence. Some were involved in bullying themselves, while others exaggerated, distorted, or perceived their own inadequacies as major injustices against them.

The Columbine cowards are one of the most well-known examples. For years, the idea that they were just victims of relentless bullying became part of the public narrative. Later investigations found that the reality was far more complicated, with the attackers themselves engaging in aggressive behavior.

The reported bullying motive raises questions, especially when combined with other details that have emerged. The suspects allegedly targeted students inside classrooms; the victims who died were all girls, and police have said the shooting may have involved “random” gunfire as the students fled.

That combination makes me wonder whether this was simply a personal grudge that escalated or whether something else influenced the attack.

One question is whether this was an example of what I call an “American import” shooting, where a type of school violence that has become associated with the United States begins appearing elsewhere. The Philippines has firearms issues, but school shootings remain uncommon when compared with America. The idea that students would enter a school with guns and shoot classmates is still a largely unknown concept there.

Another question is whether the suspects were influenced by the darker side of online culture that turns real-life violence into something to study, discuss, and sometimes even obsess over. There are online communities where people analyze past attacks in disturbing detail, focusing on the attackers, their stories, and the circumstances around their crimes. Since this is just speculation on my part, I’ll refrain from naming that online community, but I think you know who I mean.

Authorities will continue investigating the guns, the suspects’ backgrounds, their online activity, and what happened before the shooting. The families of the victims are left dealing with an unimaginable loss, while students and staff at San Jose National High School are left trying to process how a normal school day turned into a tragedy.

The hope is that this investigation does more than explain what happened. It should also help identify what could have been noticed earlier, what systems failed, and what steps can prevent another school from experiencing the same nightmare.

Whether the Philippines ignores these problems like the US continues to do remains to be seen.

(Sources)