Virginia Tech shooting
shooting on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States
The Virginia Tech shooting was a spree shooting and mass shooting that occurred on Monday, April 16, 2007, comprising two attacks on the campus of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. Seung-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old undergraduate student at the university, killed 32 people and wounded 17 others with two semi-automatic pistols before committing suicide. Six others were injured jumping out of windows to escape Cho.
Cho first fatally shot two people at West Ambler Johnston Hall, a dormitory. Two hours later, he perpetrated a school shooting at Norris Hall, a classroom building, where he chained the main entrance doors shut and fired into four classrooms and a stairwell, killing thirty more people. As police stormed Norris Hall, Cho fatally shot himself in the head. It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history and remained so for nine years until the Pulse nightclub shooting, which was surpassed a year later by the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. It remains the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history and the deadliest mass shooting in Virginia history.
The attacks received international media coverage. It sparked debate about gun violence, gun laws, gaps in the U.S. system for treating mental health issues, Cho's state of mind, the responsibility of college administrations, privacy laws, journalism ethics, and other issues.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Virginia Tech shooting” as shooting on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as shooting on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q188799. The Library of Congress control number is sh2007004644. Authority coordinates are 37.229, -80.423. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007 and 2017.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Virginia Tech shooting”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Virginia Tech shooting primary sources, Virginia Tech shooting archive and Virginia research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Virginia Tech shooting”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Virginia Tech shooting” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.