Sounds of gunfire and explosions had surfaced from Kanzan, central Russia on Tuesday, May 11. The shooting killed seven students and two employees and left 20 wounded. Witnesses and officials have condemned a teenager for the rare mass shooting.  The shooter, 19 years old, had a legal automatic shotgun, who attended the school previously. The thing about civilians possessing a gun legally is when it’s bought, it is registered under the reference that it’s a “hunting gun.” Within hours of knowing of the tragedy that had surfaced on Tuesday, President Putin had ordered a tightening of Russia’s civilian gun ownership which was already confined. 

School shootings in Russia are rare but in the past, there have been a handful of them. On September 1, 2004, there was a school shooting at Beslan School Siege that lasted three days. There were about 1,100 people incarcerated as hostages and ended up with the death of 330 or more people, the majority including children. It was named the deadliest school shooting in history that lasted from September 1 to September 3. Another example was a school shooting at Kerch Polytechnic College in Kerch, Crimea on October 17, 2018. An 18-year-old student named Vladislav Roslyakoc shot and killed twenty people and wounded seventy more before shooting himself and committing suicide. 

The provincial capital, Kazan is about 450 miles east of Moscow while the police and ambulance were rushing to get there. During the shooting, students jumped out of windows and sadly two eighth-graders jumped from the upper floors and died.

“Students and teachers have barricaded themselves in classrooms for help,” said a 15-year-old student, Vyacheslav Yegoshin who was late to school that Tuesday. “It was scary, and everybody was crying,” said Vyacheslav in a telephone interview.

Regional governor, Rustam Minnikhanov, said the wounded range in ages from 7 to 62. After the past shootings, Putin never called for more gun control, but after this, he had made a step forward to change the gun control in Russia. In conclusion, the shooter has been detained.