If you are only looking at recent history, this might be true, but there’s another that had more casualties than both of these together. In it, over 150 men, women, and children were killed. Unlike the two more recent shootings, it wasn’t the work of one shooter, it was done by the U.S. military and the victims were the Lakota people. It was the Wounded Knee Massacre.

In December of 1890, the 7th Cavalry Unit of the U.S. military went to Lakota reservation to take away the guns from the Lakota people. The Lakota had been bison hunters, but the numbers of those animals had been reduced by the U.S. military in an effort to starve out the people who were dependent upon them as a food source. The reservation land they had been granted had been reduced to a smaller and smaller area by white settlers and gold miners.

One story of the event says that a man named Black Coyote didn’t want to give up his rifle since he had paid a lot for it. His reluctance led to a scuffle, shots were fired, and then the massacre followed. Whether this is true or whether the Lakota just decided that they needed to make a stand, we can’t really know but it’s something to keep in mind when you hear someone say that we would be better off if only the government, and not the people, have guns.

The Turkish government responded to the pope’s comments by recalling its ambassador to the Vatican, and summoned the Vatican’s ambassador in Ankara to express its “great disappointment and sadness.”

It’s okay, Turkey, I get disappointed when people bring up my horrendous crimes against humanity too.

So, what actually happened and when?

In 1915 there were about 2 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) where their ancestors had lived for 3000 years. They were both an ethnic and religious minority in the Muslim-ruled country. (Armenia, when it was independent, was the first country to make Christianity its official religion.) The Turkish government wanted a solution to the “Armenian problem” so they decided to force them from their homes and send them into the Syrian Desert without food or water.

It began on April 24 of that year. On that day the government arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals – many Armenians were well-educated business owners, lawyers, doctors, and craftsmen, in contrast to the majority Turkish peasant farmers – and the rest were given a choice of walking until they dropped dead of exhaustion and exposure or stopping walking and being shot dead on the spot.

The military weren’t the only ones to get to join in the mass murdering fun. Killing squads made up of murders and ex-convicts went about crucifying (literally), drowning, and burning Armenians. They raped the women and kidnapped children, converting them to Islam and giving them to Turkish families. The children were given new Turkish or Arabic names and were beaten if they spoke Armenian.

In May, the Ottoman government began confiscating “abandoned” Armenian property. This resulted in a lot of property seizures since people were not allowed to take anything with them nor were they allowed to sell it before they left.

Ancient cities were leveled and all traces of Armenian culture was destroyed.

The genocide didn’t end until 1922. During those years the Armenian population in Turkey went from a couple million to fewer than 400,000.

The architects of the Armenian Genocide fled to Germany which promised not to prosecute them for their crimes. They were later located and assassinated by Armenian activists.

If you see similarities between the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, you’re not imagining it. Hitler saw how little was done by other countries to come to Armenia’s aid and used it as a guideline for his own genocidal plans.

Thus for the time being I have sent to the East only my ‘Death’s Head Units’ with the orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish race or language. Only in such a way will we win the vital space that we need. Who still talks nowadays about the Armenians? – Adolf Hitler

It was August, 1968, and it had already been a year of mob violence and riots in many American cities. People were angry about our involvement in Vietnam (Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?) And some important political leaders – Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy – had been assassinated, taking away some of the guidance that might have eased the rioting.

President Lyndon Johnson had announced that he would not seek re-election, but his vice-president Hubert Humphrey decided to run. Anti-war activists saw him as someone who would continue the war policies of Johnson so they came to Chicago to protest the war.

The Republican convention that year was being held in Miami and some Democrats tried to get their convention moved there too. There was a phone strike in Chicago and reporters needed phone lines to get their stories in to their networks (this was before satellites and immediate streaming of news reports.)

Chicago’s mayor, Richard Daley, was a powerful part of the Democratic political machine and he was able to keep the convention from being moved out of his city.

Daley wanted Ted Kennedy to run. (This was before Kennedy left Mary Jo Kopechne to drown in his car. Not that it would have made any difference to Daley if it had happened earlier.) This challenge, plus the anti-war groups made it unsure that Humphrey would get the nomination.

There was in-fighting among the delegates on what to include in the Party Platform and delegations marched around the convention hall in protest. In spite of the division, Humphrey got a majority of the delegate votes and won the nomination. The convention ended with a tribute to Bobby Kennedy and a sign-carrying demonstration in support of Richard Daley (paid for by Richard Daley.)

Outside the convention hall, about 10,000 protesters met with almost 12,000 police, 7500 army troops, 7500 National Guards troops, and 1000 Secret Service agents. The protesters wanted to get close to the convention site, the armed forces wanted to stop them. The police viewed the protesters as their enemy but they also viewed the press who were reporting on the conflict as an enemy.

Protesters were stopped in their march to the convention hall. The police used their batons to beat protesters. Innocent bystanders and doctors that were trying to come to the aid of the injured were also beaten. Police used teargas on the protesters and sprayed them and other people in the area with mace.

In the end, Chicago police reported 589 arrests and said that 119 police and 100 protesters were injured. (Those numbers don’t sound fake, nope, not at all.)

Eight people were charged with the federal crime of crossing state borders to incite a riot (part of the Civil Rights Act). Mayor Daley later rewarded the police with a pay raise for beating down the dirty hippies their vigilance in keeping the peace.

The first woman to run and complete the Boston Marathon was Bobbi Gibb in 1966. She finished in 3:21:40. In 2016, 50 years after being refused an official entry because women weren’t thought to be capable of running that distance, Gibb was the Boston Marathon’s grand marshal.

In 1967 Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to run as a numbered entry even though women were still not officially allowed to compete. (She had registered under K.V. Switzer.) She finished in four hours and twenty minutes, about an hour behind Bobbi Gibb who ran unregistered again.

The man shown trying to stop Switzer in the photo above is Jock Semple. He wasn’t against women running so much as he didn’t want anyone not officially entered to run. He also tried to physically stop runners who were “unserious” – mostly college boys who would come out in costume or do something for attention rather than be there to compete. He just wanted the race and its rules respected. Once women were permitted to enter, he was a strong supporter of them.

Section 1

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

Section 3

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

It was 1863 and there was a new military draft lottery in NYC to draft men to fight for the Union army in the U.S. Civil War. All male citizens between the ages of twenty and thirty-five were eligible, as were all unmarried men between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five. Men with means could either hire a substitute or buy their way out of the army for $300, that would be over $5000 today, adjusted for inflation. While blacks could, and did, join the army, they were not subject to the draft because they were not considered citizens.

It started with protests – demonstrations against the first federally mandated conscription laws in the United States – but quickly became violent riots that lasted for four days.

The city had always been divided on the subject of the Civil War. There had been calls for the city to secede from the Union, it depended heavily on the slave trade and had strong business ties to the South. Democratic Party leaders incited people with stories about how the Emancipation Proclamation would leave New York overrun by freed slaves.

Early Monday morning on July 13, 1863, the riots began. A group of firefighters who were mad about the conscription of their chief began smashing windows of the city’s Provost Marshall’s office. The mob that had formed outside followed them in and began destroying draft equipment.

Another early target was the offices of the New York Tribune newspaper because it was pro-war. (The editor, Horace Greeley was an abolitionist.)

By the afternoon the attackers had begun going after black people. The mob went to the Colored Orphan Asylum (the children had been safely removed shortly before) and destroyed clothing and toys and then set the building on fire. The destruction took only 20 minutes.

They were temporarily slowed by a night of heavy rain but were back out the next morning, ready for more mayhem. They destroyed downtown businesses and constructed barricades to keep the police away.

One black man, William Jones, was lynched.  Jeremiah Robinson was beaten and drowned. A black sailor, William Williams was stabbed and stomped on, then stoned.

Col. Henry O’Brien who was in charge of the 11th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment was also killed when he was coming to the aid of police fighting the rioters. The mob had withdrawn and O’Brien had walked down the street to a drugstore. Unfortunately, a group of rioters returned and attacked him. He was beaten, stoned, kicked, and then tortured to death. A black coachman, Abraham Franklin, was removed from his home and hanged, then dragged dead through the streets by his genitals.

They attacked white abolitionists and prominent Republicans. The mob burned down the home of Abby Hopper Gibbons, an abolitionist and social activist.They attacked two white women, Ann Derrickson and Ann Martin, who were married to black men.

White dock workers and longshoremen who had resented having to work with blacks attacked any buildings near the docks that catered to black clients – boarding houses, dance halls, tenements, and brothels. The businesses were destroyed and their white owners were stripped naked and left in the streets.

The New York state militia and other troops were called in to put down the riots. Many of the federal troops had just come from the battle at Gettysburg.

City Democrats put forth a bill to provide low interest loans for draft exemptions, Republican Mayor George Opdyke vetoed it, but the veto was overturned. This was the era of the Tammany Hall run city government which continued to grow in power by fighting for the rights of white working men.

Over 100 people died. Hundreds of buildings were damaged, some burnt to the ground, but only 67 people were convicted for their violent attacks and none of them received a meaningful sentence.

The draft was restarted a month later. Out of 80,000 men drafted from the state of New York, fewer than 2,400 actually went into the army. The rest had physical deferments or other exemptions.