Mass Shootings, Why CEE Regions Need Attention

Abstract

If one were to say that scholarship and public knowledge on mass shootings in the CEE regions is underdeveloped, they would be putting forward a grave understatement. In my time teaching in higher education at three different institutions in the CEE regions, I vividly recall the surprising expressions that would arise on students' faces when I told them that mass shootings are not simply an American phenomenon and that post-communist states have also had their share of mass shootings. On the one hand, lack of public knowledge about mass shootings in these regions of the world likely exists because there have been far fewer cases and in many of these countries, there have only been several cases in their entire history. On the other hand, media reporting that was cast on many of these incidents was often limited in terms of its global reachcases that predate 2010 tended to not go viral across social media and were only reported on in the local language of the country in which the shooting occurred. With that being said, even though this form of rare homicide is not as common in the CEE regions as it is in North America, over the last thirty or so years, cases have piled up and in total, there have been 76 different attempted and completed mass shootings which have claimed hundreds of lives, brought about around a thousand injuries,