【军武次位面】作者：军武菌
Sudden school shootings in the Czech Republic
According to Xinhuanet, the day before yesterday (December 21) afternoon, a mass shooting occurred in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, a gunman in the building of the School of Arts of Charles University, armed with a gun to indiscriminately shoot teachers and students and passers-by of the school, resulting in 15 deaths and 24 injuries so far.
On the same night, many people spontaneously lit candles and placed flowers under the building where the shooting took place to mourn the dead, and the Czech government declared the next day, December 22, as the National Day of Mourning, lowering flags at half-mast and observing a minute of silence throughout the country.
Founded in 1348, Charles University is one of the oldest universities in Europe, and even today it is ranked among the top three universities in Eastern Europe, and it is hard to believe that there could be a shooting at Charles University on a calm winter afternoon, let alone that the gunman was a 24-year-old college student at the same university.
The gunman, David Kozak, is a history student in Charles University's Faculty of Letters, Xi world history and has excelled in school, with no previous bad record. Because of this, the gunman legally owned eight firearms in the Czech Republic and used them in the shooting.
▲ Some teachers and students climbed to the outer wall of the building to avoid the gunman
Just when everyone speculated that this was just a sudden and isolated shooting, the Czech police released information that it was a premeditated and planned shooting, and we can also find through analysis that the gunman has a clear tendency to imitate the crime.
▲Teachers and students blocked the door with tables and chairs to prevent the gunman from entering
Although the mass shooting took place on December 21, a shooting murder occurred on December 15 in the Kranowice Natural Forest Reserve on the eastern outskirts of Prague.
On that day, a 32-year-old father was walking in a stroller in the reserve when he was shot dead, and the gunman did not even spare the baby in the stroller.
▲People put down dolls and candles at the scene of the crime to mourn
At that time, when the police investigated the forest shooting murder, they found that the shooting case had many similarities with the "forest killer" case in 2005. Two days after his 28th birthday, a police officer named Victor Calivoda shot and killed an elderly couple and a man walking their dog in the forest.
Victor Kalivoda was an excellent student at the local grammar school, but he was more introverted and silent, and after graduating from university, he became a police officer in Prague's 6th district, and the first half of his life seemed to be easy.
▲ Victor Calivoda during his time in the police
In 2004, Viktor Kalivoda also participated in the Czech version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", in which he won a whopping 320,000 kroner, but was eliminated after answering the next question incorrectly, and the prize money was reduced to zero.
▲ The gunman once participated in the show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire".
I don't know if this experience made him confuse the real world, but after investigation, Viktor Kaliwoda tried to commit suicide several times during his time as a police officer, and he has shown signs of not being able to integrate into society.
At the time of his trial, Viktor Kaliwoda did not express any motives and showed no regrets about his actions, even stating that he once wanted to carry out a massacre on the Prague metro line C, but when he brought his pistol into the metro, he did not have the courage to shoot it.
▲Glock held by Victor Calivoda
Viktor Kalivolda also graciously admitted that his actions were inspired by Olga Hpunarova, who deliberately drove a truck into and killed eight people in 1973, making her the last woman to be executed in the Czech Republic.
▲ Olga Khpnarova
In the end, the court found that Victor Calivoda had no possibility of resocialization and sentenced him to life imprisonment. But in 2010, Victor Calivoda committed suicide by slitting his wrists while in prison.
David Kozak, the gunman in the Charles University shooting, has repeatedly reposted and quoted previous indiscriminate killings on his personal social media, and the shooting and killing in the forest on December 15 was the beginning of his imitation crime.
After the forest shooting on December 15, the police searched everywhere for the suspect, but they were unable to suspect David Kozak's head until after this mass shooting, the police searched David Kozak's home for guns and ammunition, and found that they matched the forest shooting through ballistic comparison.
Before December 21, David Kozak praised the shooters of the "2021 school shooting in Kazan, Russia" and the "2023 school shooting in Bryansk, Russia" on his personal social media. And the Charles University shooting is likely to be David Kozak's parody of two Russian school shootings.
On May 11, 2021, 19-year-old gunman Ilnaz Galyaviev shot and killed nine teachers and students and injured 23 others, and in the December 7, 2023, school shooting in Bryansk, Russia, 14-year-old female gunman Alina Afanaskina shot herself after shooting and killing one student.
▲ The school shooting in Kazan, Russia
The Charles school shooting, which has killed 15 people and injured 24, is the worst shooting in the Czech Republic since independence, but the consequences of the case were to be even worse.
At 12:20 p.m. on December 21, the Central Bohemian police received a call from David Kozak's mother, who claimed that her son was planning suicide and was on his way to Prague from his hometown of Hostonen.
At 12:45, the police first rushed to David Kozak's hometown to investigate the situation, and found the body of David Kozak's father at home, which can be confirmed that David Kozak shot his father at home.
At the same time, when the police tried to conduct a thorough search of the room, it was also found that David Kozak had set up an improvised explosive device in the house, but due to the police's caution during the search, the explosion could not be triggered.
After the police discovered that David Kozak had shot and killed his father, an arrest warrant was issued for David Kozak and the Prague police were informed of the situation.
Upon receiving the information, the Prague police rushed to Charles University, where they learned that David Kozak would attend a lecture in a nearby building at 2 p.m., and immediately suspected that he was likely to carry out a massacre at an overcrowded lecture.
So, before the lecture began, the Prague police rushed to the building where the lecture was about to be held to evacuate and completed the evacuation at 2:22 p.m., but David Kozak was not found during the evacuation, and the danger was not removed.
It wasn't until 2:59 p.m., when Prague police continued their search for David Kozak nearby, that they learned that there had been a shooting inside Charles University, just a 12-minute walk from the lecture building where the evacuation had been completed.
As the police learned in advance, the first batch of special police officers arrived at the building where the shooting took place at 3:03 p.m., and began to evacuate students and people, and a large number of ambulances also began to arrive near the scene of the crime, ready to transport the injured at any time.
Since then, the shooting has continued, but the police have launched an operation and exchanged fire with the gunman, but finally at 3:20 p.m., the gunman, David Kozak, shot himself from the roof of the building.
Police later searched the roof and found explosives and a large amount of firearms and ammunition, which may have been used by David Kozak at the lecture, if so, the casualties would have been much greater.
Through the video released by witnesses, we can find that the gun used by the gunman is an AR rifle that is very common in the civilian market, but it is equipped with a high-power lens, and the gunman actually legally owns 8 such guns.
As of 2022, a total of 313,000 people in the Czech Republic have legal gun licenses, and these 313,000 people have a total of about 1 million legal guns, about 3 per capita, and college students like David Kozak have 8 guns legally.
In their reports on this matter, the Western media have mentioned a point of view, that is, there are not many shootings in the Czech Republic, in addition to the Charles University shooting, there have been two in recent years:
On February 24, 2015, a 63-year-old man armed with a CZ75B pistol and an Alpha 820 revolver shot and killed eight people without saying a word after entering a restaurant, and the gun hit him in the head, and then committed suicide after a two-hour standoff with the police.
Another was on December 10, 2019, when a 42-year-old gunman armed with a CZ75B shot and killed seven patients and family members in an Ostrava hospital, and the gunman later shot himself while fleeing.
There has always been a big difference between China and Western countries in their attitude towards shootings, and most of the Western countries think about how to arm themselves legally after shootings, and when there are shootings in schools, they try to find ways to equip school teachers with guns, and even allow students to go to school with guns.
▲Individual states in the United States have required teachers to be equipped with guns to protect students
In the case of the 2019 hospital shooting in the Czech Republic, witnesses regretted that there was no legal gun owner in the hospital to stop the gunman, rather than worrying about why the gunman was mentally ill and could still possess a gun.
The shootings mentioned by the Western media are relatively rare in the Czech Republic, and compared to the United States, a country where shootings occur every five times, the two in 2015 and 2019 are already mass shootings, and some small-scale shootings are actually not uncommon in the Czech Republic and most European and American countries.
In the aftermath of the shooting, the mourning is certainly mourning, but a total ban on guns is absolutely impossible.
The Constitution of the Czech Republic gives citizens the right to bear arms to defend their own lives or the lives of others, which is one of the fundamental rights of citizens, and anyone can obtain, possess and carry firearms as long as they have a firearms license.
In the Czech Republic, taking a gun license is similar to taking a driver's license, as long as you pass a medical examination, a gun ability test and have no criminal record, you can get a gun license within a month, and it is only renewed every ten years.
Compared with other EU countries, the Czech Republic's gun law is relatively relaxed, because although some EU countries allow citizens to own guns, there are many restrictions on carrying them out, especially concealed carrying, and most guns still exist in the shooting range.
The Czech Republic's gun law not only allows citizens to carry firearms in public, but also allows them to carry concealed weapons for self-defense, and 252,000 of the 313,000 Czech people who have a legal gun license also have a concealed carry permit.
China's strict control of guns has made a country with a population of 1.4 billion people one with the fewest violent crimes involving guns in the world.