School murders let greasy Austria and France look for answers

Two shocking attacks within two hours of each other in France and Austria have the parents and governments in France and violated how students can protect against random, fatal violence.

Around 08:15 On Tuesday, a 14-year-old boy from an ordinary family in Nogent, East France, pulled out a kitchen knife during a school bag check and fatally stabbed a school assistant.

Not long afterwards in Southeastern Austria, a 21-year-old who had stopped school three years earlier, went to the Dreierschützengasse High School at 9:43 a.m. and shot nine students and a teacher with a Glock 19 pistol and a sawdream.

In both countries there is a demand for solutions and a greater focus on young people who fall back on such violence.

Austria has never seen a school attack on this size, but the French stitch took place during a government program to combat the growth of razor crime.

The Graz shooter, which was called Arthur A by Austrian media, was described by the police as a very introverted person who had withdrawn into the virtual world.

His “big passion” was online shooters for the first person and he had social contacts with other players on the Internet.

Arthur A, a former student at the Dreihergützengasse school, had not completed his studies.

When he arrived at school, he put on a headset and shooting glasses before making a fatal seven -minute shooting stroll. Then he killed himself in a school pool.

He had the two weapons legal, had carried out a psychological test for a license and had several sessions with arms training in a Graz Shooting Club at the beginning of this year.

This has triggered a big debate in Austria about whether its weapons laws have to be tightened – and the care available for restless young people.

It turned out that the shooter was rejected from the country’s mandatory military service in July 2021.

The spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, Michael Bauer, announced the BBC that Arthur A was “psychologically idle” for the service after performing tests. However, he said that Austria’s legal system prevented the army from passing on the results of such tests.

There are now demands that this law will be changed.

Alex, the mother of a 17-year-old boy who survived the shootout, said the BBC that more should have been done to prevent people like Arthur a primarily to leave school.

“We know … If people shoot like this, it is mainly when they feel and get out alone and are out. And we do not know how we can bring them back to society, to the groups, to their peer groups,” she said.

“As adults, we are responsible for it and now have to take it.”

President Alexander Van der Bellen increased the opportunity to tighten the Austrian weapons laws after the attack: “If we come to the conclusion that Austria’s arms laws have to be changed to ensure greater security, we will do so.”

Austria has one of the most armed civilian population in Europe with an estimated 30 firearms per 100 people.

Although there have been school shots here, they were far smaller and involved far fewer victims.

The mayor of Graz, Elke Kahr, believes that no private person should be able to have weapons at all. “Weapon licenses are exhibited too quickly,” she told Austria’s ORF TV. “Only the police should wear weapons, no private individuals.”

At the entrance to the Françoise Dolto Middle School in Nogent, 100 km (62 miles) east of Paris, armed gendarmes were present when a teenager took out a 20 cm kitchen knife and repeatedly had Mélanie G, 31 years old and a four-year-old son.

The boy, who was accused of performing the murder, told the police that he was criticized on Friday by another school assistant for kissing his girlfriend.

As a result, he generally had a resentment against school assistants and had apparently decided to kill one. The schools were closed on Monday for a bank vacation and his first day was back on Tuesday.

The public prosecutor’s first assessment was that the young, Quentin, came from a normal functioning family and had no criminal or mental health.

However, the child also appeared distant and emotionless. He was sent in violent video games and showed a “fascination for death” and the “lack of reference points in relation to the value of human life”.

The nogent attack does not match the presentation of anti -social youth criminal or the gang violence seen in France.

There is also no indication of indoctrination about social media.

According to the prosecutor, the boy did little of it. He had been violent against classmates twice and was suspended for a day every time.

There is no family building or privation, and school officers described him as “sociable, a pretty good student who is well integrated into the life of the establishment”.

This year he was even appointed bullying as “Ambassador” class.

For all demands for more security in schools, this crime literally took place under the nose of armed gendarmes. As Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau put it, some crimes will take place, no matter how many police use them.

For more information about the boy’s mind, we have to wait for the full psychologist’s report, and it may well be that signs have been missed or that there are family details that we do not yet know.

At first glance, he may be more of a loner of the middle class, and his obvious normality indicates a crime that is triggered by internalized mental processes and not by peer-controlled association or emulation.

That is what hits the chord in France. If an ordinary boy can go out to watch too many violent videos, who is the next?

Significantly, the French government had only just admitted that the British Netflix series was the adolescence as help in schools.

Of course there are differences.

The boy, who was arrested in the TV series because of the murder of a youthful girl, provides the evil “toxic male” influences on social media – but there is the same question that teenagers are made susceptible to online by isolation.

There are measures in the entire political spectrum, but only a little consent to what should be a priority, or to hope that anything can make a lot of difference.

Before killing, President Emmanuel Macron had angered the right that they were too owned by crimes and were not sufficiently interested in other topics such as the environment.

The nogent attack took him to the background and he repeated his promise to prohibit social media under 15 year olds.

But there are two difficulties. One is the practicality of the measure that is theoretically treated by the EU but succumbed to the endless postponement.

The other is that, according to the public prosecutor, the boy was not particularly interested in social media. It was violent video games that were his thing.

Prime Minister François Bayrou has declared that the sale of knives is banned from the 15s. But the boy took him from home.

According to Bayrou, metal recorders in airport style should be tested at schools, but most heads are against it.

Populistic law wants harder sentences for young people who wear knives and the exclusion of disruptive students from regular classes.

But the boy in Nogent was not a problem child.

The only measure that everyone says is a stronger provision of school doctors, nurses and psychologists to recognize early signs of students who go from the rails.

Of course, this requires a lot of money, which is another thing that France doesn’t have much.