The Worst School Massacre in American History Didn’t Involve Guns

Lately, I’ve been looking at various massacres throughout history that shatter the gun control myths. My goal here is to illustrate that the problems with these various incidents, much like modern “mass shootings,” are that there’s a person or people who want to hurt a lot of other people for some reason.

I started with the Enoch Brown school massacre in 1761. It’s one that’s always kind of in the back of my mind, and the shooting at a Manhattan office building earlier this week, coupled with the anniversary of the shooting, sort of sparked something.

When I shared this on X, a friend reminded me of another incident, one far worse than the Enoch Brown massacre.

And this one didn’t involve guns in the least.

The tragic school shootings that occurred at Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Parkland will never be forgotten and are truly tragic – to say the least. 

Those events indeed highlighted the absolute worst in what we are as a nation, and they shouldn’t be forgotten. Each even gave us questions on where our society has gone wrong, and what role our modern culture of music, movies, video games, and of course guns played in allowing those horrific events to unfold.

Yet, the deadliest school massacre in U.S. history has largely been eliminated from the conversion.

Few today even remember the Bath School Massacre, and it is rarely – if ever – even mentioned by the media alongside those other mass killings. The reason is that it sadly doesn’t fit the modern narrative.

 

While it left forty-four people dead, including thirty-eight children, no one could blame video games, and suggesting movies had an influence would be a stretch as this day of infamy took place on May 18, 1927. Unlike other mass school killings that have taken place largely in the suburbs, this one took place in the small Michigan town of Bath Township located about one hundred miles northwest of Detroit.

Even more noteworthy is the fact that the killer, farmer, and school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe, didn’t shoot up the school either. Rather he used surplus dynamite and other explosives from the First World War and blew up the school with the children inside.

Now, let’s look at this for a moment. Yes, dynamite is more tightly controlled today than it was back in 1927, but the killer was a farmer. Farmers can still get dynamite. They use it to clear land all the time. Current law wouldn’t necessarily have stopped this horrific event from happening.

And yet, 44 people died because Kehoe lost an election and didn’t like an increase in taxes. He was also set to lose his farm to foreclosure.

He was a man enraged, apparently a difficult person as a member of the school board and in private dealings. He lost his campaign to become town clerk and then spent a year stockpiling explosives, which he then used to kill 44 people who damn sure didn’t deserve it.

Rage.

All too often, these people who commit such atrocities are enraged over something, or nothing at all. They just feel a burning rage within them, convinced the world is against them or something, and they just have to lash out.

Kehoe also equipped his truck with a bomb, then killed himself and school superintendent Emory Huyck, as well as two others, in a separate explosion.

He had a gun, for the record. He’d purchased a Winchester Model 54 in .30 caliber. In fact, he and Huyck were believed to be struggling over the rifle when the truck exploded. Yet he shot no one.

Again, a murderous intent was all that anyone needed.

It’s all anyone has ever needed, coupled with the determination to act on it. You can’t legislate that one away.

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