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Content: In order to comprehend the extent of Columbine, Charleston, Sandy Hook, and Virginia Tech and other mass shootings of today, however, we must examine those that happened in the past, and see how or if these historical occurrences have shaped how we understand the University of Texas’ tower shootings of August 1st, 1966. The mass shootings and violent crime rates that we witness today, particularly those that happen on school property, or those related to military, or ex-military personnel are seldom a reflection of today’s generation, but reflect hard to explain violent crime dynamics that have existed for a long time in this country. Mass shootings have been occurring since even before the turn of the twentieth century. Disturbing and senseless shootings have occurred since 1891 in this country. On March 28, 1891 a man with a doubled barreled shotgun fired upon a crowd of students and faculty attending a school exhibition in Parson Hall School House in Liberty, Mississippi.1The perpetrator wounded over fourteen people mostly children, with several being seriously wounded.2This incident is perhaps one of the earliest reported school mass shootings in the country. The incident that is regarded as the second mass shooting in this country happened a month after the Liberty, Mississippi shootings. On April 9, 1891 James Foster went inside St. Mary’s Parochial School in New York, and opened fire.3The students he shot all survived, the trauma they experienced left a footprint that although undoubtedly hard to forget was in time actually forgotten. The mass shootings that occurred in 1891 appear to be so far detached, time-wise, that today they are little known. In 1966, when the tower shootings happened in Austin, the headlines of the day failed to recall any mass shooting that happened before the turn of the twentieth century, almost as if these had been erased in our society’s collective memory. The mass shootings that have followed the two 1891 incidents, those in the twentieth century, have become ever more constant, and even at times seem as being more acknowledged.