Sadly, this pattern of looking to attribute motivation to the characteristics of a particular ethnic / religious group goes waaaaay back [Thanks Saheli]. While today’s attack in Virginia is the worst ever school shooting incident in US history, it is not the worst ever school killing. That bloody honor belongs to an incident almost 80 years ago, involving a suicide bomber and victims in elementary school:
The Bath School disaster was a series of bombings in Bath Township, Michigan, USA, on May 18, 1927, which killed 45 people and injured 58. Most of the victims were children in second to sixth grades attending the Bath Consolidated School. The bombings constituted the deadliest act of mass murder in a school in U.S. history. [Link]
The killer planned his attack very carefully for at least a year. Hundreds of pounds of explosive denoted but luckily enough an additional 500 pounds of explosive did not, thus limiting the damage. The terrorist filled his vehicle full of shrapnel and then detonated it, with himself inside, killing the school superintendent and some of the rescuers who had started to gather.
The killer was a school board member who blamed his financial problems on taxes levied to pay for the new school. The KKK spun this in a religious direction, saying that Catholics were opposed to paying for secular schools since it was against their religious beliefs. They provided multiple quotes from Catholic authorities strongly opposing “Protestant or godless schools” as evidence that Catholics thought that public schools were a tool of Satan (I give only two):
These forty-five lives were sacrificed to satisfy the lust of a shrewd mind, poisoned by intolerant, religious dogma. It is a self-evident fact that the Roman Catholic church, from the moment of birth, assumes the self-appointed duty of shaping and developing the mind of the Catholic born child… as the following quotations will show:
“We don’t want to be taxed for Protestant or godless schools. Let the Public School system go to where it came from – the Devil.” – Freeman’s Journal. (Catholic).
“The children of the Public Schools turn out … well versed in the schemes of deviltry… Catholics stand before the country as the enemies of the Public Schools” [Link]
Sound like a familiar tactic? They also produced quotes arguing that according to Catholic doctrine, the children at school were heretics and gave a quote from a priest in New York where he said:
“Heretics should be put to death and that if the Catholic church was strong enough, the Catholic people would hinder even by death, the spread of such error among the people.” [Link]
You see how the game is played? Nobody would believe it about white Catholics today, but they would believe it about brown Muslims. Same game, different players, and people just keep falling for it again and again.
Unfortunately, the horrific shooting rampage at Virginia Tech (240 miles from D.C.), which is now being described as the deadliest in U.S. history 
