Today’s word of the day is dereliction. Dereliction is a noun that means “deliberate or conscious neglect; negligence; delinquency,” “the act of abandoning something,” “the state of being abandoned” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/dereliction). It entered the language in the “1590s, ‘abandonment, state of being forsaken or abandoned’ (formerly with a wider range than in modern use, such as of the sea withdrawing from the land), from Latin derelictionem (nominative derelictio) ‘an abandoning; a disregarding, neglecting,’ noun of action from past-participle stem of derelinquere (see derelict).
“Sense of ‘act of leaving with an intention not to reclaim or reuse’ is from 1610s. Meaning ‘failure, unfaithfulness, neglect’ (with regard to duty, etc.) is by 1778. Phrase dereliction of duty attested from 1776” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=dereliction).

According to On This Day, on this date in 2009 17 people were killed in what is called the Winnenden or Albertville school shooting.

Tim Kretschmer, a 17 year old, entered the Albertville school about 9:30 a.m. local time and started shooting people. He targeted one classroom where Spanish was being taught; there he killed five students by shooting them in the head at close range. Then he entered another classroom, where German was being taught, and killed four more students and wounded five. The teacher in that room managed to get the door locked when Kretschmer went out into the hall to reload. After trying to shoot out the lock, Kretschmer entered a third classroom, this one a chemistry class, and killed the teacher.

At some point, the school principal alerted the entire school with a coded message: “Mrs. Koma has arrived.” Koma is amok spelled backwards. Amok comes from the Malaysian language and means “a psychic disturbance characterized by depression followed by a manic urge to murder” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=amok; https://www.dictionary.com/browse/amok). It has been used in some schools since a 2002 school shooting in Erfurt.

A student alerted the local police, and three minutes after the shooting started, police were on the scene. Kretschmer killed two more teachers, making for a total of twelve, as he escaped the school. As more police arrived and locked down the building, he fled through a nearby yard where he killed a gardner. He then highjacked a car and ordered the driver to drive to a nearby city. The driver later reported that, when asked why he was killing people, Kretschmer replied that it was fun.

Driving along a large highway, the driver spotted a police car. He drove into the grassy median, jumped out of the car, and ran to the cruiser. Kretschmer also ran and ended up in a car dealership. He threatened one salesman, killed another, and killed a customer. The police quickly descended upon the dealership, where a shoot out began. Kretschmer was hit twice, once in each leg, but he managed to flee out the back of the store.

From this point, according to the police, he fired somewhat randomly at buildings and passersby, hitting nobody. Then he reloaded his pistol and shot himself in the head.

All told, Tim Kretschmer killed 16 people, including himself, and wounded several more. He fired 112 rounds during the hours before his death.

Kretschmer was a troubled young man. When he was younger, he was competitive, and even wanted to be a professional athlete. But according to his coach, he was arrogant, thinking himself better than other players, and he was a poor loser. He would throw tantrums. He was also not a good student, and his poor grades in school meant that he was denied some opportunities that he would have liked. He was also fond of violent video games as well as sadomasochistic movies. When police investigated his computer, they found that he had watch S&M pornography the night before the shooting. He had also researched other school shootings, such as Erfurt, Emsdetten, and Columbine.

“Kretschmer did not have a criminal record.^[9] The press reported that in 2008, Kretschmer had received treatment as an in-patient at the Weissenhoff Psychiatric Clinic near the town of Heilbronn. After being discharged, Kretschmer was supposed to continue his treatment as an out-patient in Winnenden, but ended his treatment” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnenden_school_shooting; this wiki is where most of the above information comes from).

It also turns out that his parents did not see the problems their son was having. The father was convicted of 15 counts of negligent homicide for not keeping the gun used by his son locked up. He received a suspended sentence of 1 year, six months.

There was a variety of proposals from politicians in response to the Winnenden school shooting, including the usual calls for restrictions on violent video games, stricter gun control measures, including random searches of gun-owners’ homes to make sure guns were securely locked up, and even a proposal to “ban games such as paintball on the grounds that they ‘trivialise and encourage violence’” (ibid.). But not much was really done.

This probably sounds like a familiar story, and some of you may be thinking, “Only in the USA.” But this didn’t happen in the USA. It happened in Germany. In Germany? Yes, just like the Erfurt and Emsdetter school shootings.

When school shootings happen in the USA, we often hear people telling us that this happens only in the USA. And many of us believe that. But such a belief is an example of availability bias. We tend to make decisions or believe things based on the information that is available to us, rather than thinking more critically about what we hear and what we are told.

We Americans would benefit from news from around the world. We are generally unfamiliar with the numbers of terrorist attacks that occur in foreign countries. We are unaware of the levels of poverty that exist in other countries. We might have much different attitudes about our own country if we were more aware of how we really compare to other countries. But we rarely hear about what is going on in Europe, the Middle East, or Asian countries. That is a dereliction of duty on the part of those who provide news to us. Of course, perhaps it is also a dereliction of duty by all of us for not paying attention to the world.

Today’s image is of Winnenden, Baden-Württemberg, Germany (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/432697476674968577/). It looks like a charming city. I’d love to see it someday.