The contagion

At least 15 people were killed in the shooting at Charles University in central Prague on Thursday, according to Czech police chief Martin Vondrášek. 

The chief provided the updated death toll while speaking at a news conference on Thursday evening.

Authorities received tips about a 24-year-old philosophy student at Charles University who they suspect was responsible for the deadly mass shooting at the campus in central Prague Thursday, Czech Police President Martin Vondrášek said in a news conference.

The police chief said the information he has received so far indicates that the shooter took his own life after the attack, but that this is not yet confirmed. He said the suspect has not been formally identified because of the severity of his injuries.

Police evacuated building where suspect had lecture scheduled: The police chief said authorities had information about the student prior to the incident, saying they received a tip saying he was traveling from his hometown of Hostouň to Prague with the intention to take his own life. Shortly after that, they received information that a man believed to be the suspect’s father was found dead in Hostouň.

Vondrášek said police were aware the suspected shooter had a lecture at 2 p.m. CET (8 a.m. ET) and had evacuated the building where the lecture was meant to take place.

Police then received a call about a shooting in a different building on campus, according to the police chief.

The most recent statistic I could find is that there were a TOTAL of ten firearm homicides in the Czech Republic in the entire calendar year of 2017 (0.10 per 100,000; population of ten million).

So this is a country that has (or had) essentially no gun violence, other than suicides, where the rate was 1.43 per 100,000. The rate of firearm sucides in the USA is seven times higher. Approximately half of all suicides are impulsive, and the availability of firearms is a huge factor in that regard.