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After a Lengthy and heated debate Congress allowed the 10-year-old crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 banned the selling of 19 different types of military-style weapons to expire.

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See a Timeline of Gun Control in the U.S. from 1791 to the Present

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Learn about federal and state gun control laws in the United States. Here’s a timeline from 1791 to the present.

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In an effort to stop the gun show loophole allowing guns to be sold without Brady Act background checks, Jackie Speier introduced the Fix Guns Checks Act of 2015.

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Hank Johnson introduced the H.R. 5717 which would ban the purchasing and possessing of assault weapons and among other things.

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Columbine High School Shooting, April 20, 1999

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Columbine High School Shooting, April 20, 1999

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On April 29, 1999 the Columbine High School shooting occurred when 2 teens went on a shooting spree and killed 13 people while injuring more than 20 before committing suicide. The Columbine shooting was the worst school shooting in U.S. history at the time and it prompted a national debate on school safety and gun control.

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Table of Contents

1. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris

2. Columbine Shooting Victims

3. She Said 'Yes'

4. Columbine Shooting Investigation

5. Columbine Massacre Aftermath

The Columbine shooting on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, occurred when two teens went on a shooting spree, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20 others, before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide.

The Columbine shooting was, at the time, the worst high school shooting in U.S. history and prompted a national debate on gun control and school safety, as well as a major investigation to determine what motivated the gunmen, Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17. Subsequent school shootings, including at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, continue to raise questions about school safety and gun control in the United States.

Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris

At approximately 11:19 a.m., Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, dressed in trench coats, began shooting fellow students outside Columbine High School, located in a suburb south of Denver. The pair then moved inside the school, where they gunned down many of their victims in the library.

By approximately 11:35 a.m., Klebold and Harris had killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded more than 20 other people. Shortly after 12 p.m., the two teens turned their guns on themselves.

Investigators later learned Harris and Klebold had arrived in separate cars at Columbine around 11:10 on the morning of the massacre. The two then walked into the school cafeteria, where they placed two duffel bags each containing a 20-pound propane bomb set to explode at 11:17 a.m.

The teens then went back outside to their cars to wait for the bombs to go off. When the bombs failed to detonate, Harris and Klebold began their shooting spree.

Columbine Shooting Victims

Victims of the Columbine shooting include Cassie Bernall, 17; Steven Curnow, 14; Corey DePooter, 17; Kelly Fleming, 16; Matthew Kechter, 16; Daniel Mauser, 15; Daniel Rohrbough, 15; William "Dave" Sanders, 47; Rachel Scott, 17; Isaiah Shoels, 18; John Tomlin, 16; Lauren Townsend, 18, and Kyle Velasquez, 16.

She Said 'Yes'

In the days immediately following the shootings, it was speculated that Harris and Klebold purposely chose athletes, minorities and Christians as their victims.

It initially was reported that one student, Cassie Bernall, was asked by one of the gunmen if she believed in God. When Bernall allegedly said, "Yes," she was shot to death. Her parents later wrote a book titled She Said Yes, honoring their daughter.

However, it later was determined the question was not posed to Bernall but to another student who already had been wounded by a gunshot. When that victim replied, "Yes," the shooter walked away.

Columbine Shooting Investigation

Subsequent investigations determined Harris and Klebold chose their victims randomly, and the two teens originally had intended to bomb their school, potentially killing hundreds of people.

There was speculation that Harris and Klebold committed the killings because they were members of a group of social outcasts called the Trenchcoat Mafia that was fascinated by Goth culture. It also was speculated that Harris and Klebold had carried out the shootings as retaliation for being bullied.

Additionally, violent video games and music were blamed for influencing the killers. However, none of these theories was ever proven.

Through journals left behind by Harris and Klebold, investigators eventually discovered the teens had been planning for a year to bomb the school in an attack similar to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Investigative journalist Dave Cullen, author of the 2009 book Columbine, described Harris as "the callously brutal mastermind," while Klebold was a "quivering depressive who journaled obsessively about love and attended the Columbine prom three days before opening fire."

Did you know? The deadliest school shooting in U.S. history took place on April 16, 2007, when a gunman killed 32 people before killing himself at Virginia Tech, a university in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Columbine Massacre Aftermath

In the aftermath of the shootings, many schools across America enacted "zero-tolerance" rules regarding disruptive behavior and threats of violence from students. Columbine High School reopened in the fall of 1999, but the massacre left a scar on the Littleton community.

Mark Manes, the man who sold a gun to Harris and bought him 100 rounds of ammunition the day before the murders, was sentenced to six years in prison. Another man, Philip Duran, who introduced Harris and Klebold to Manes, also was sentenced to prison time.

Some victims and families of people killed or injured filed suit against the school and the police; most of these suits were later dismissed in court.

The list of school shootings in the United States grows longer every year, and includes the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, the Robb Elementary shooting in 2022, the University of Texas tower shooting in 1966, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018, the Santa Fe High School shooting in 2018 and the Umpqua Community College shooting in 2015, among others.

Gun control and disagreements over the interpretation of the Second Amendment continue to be a controversial issue in the United States, where 45,000 people die from gun-related injuries each year.

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Columbine High School Shooting: Victims & Killers

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The Columbine shooting on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, occurred when two teens went on a shooting spree, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20 others, before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide.

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The shootings at Virginia Tech are one of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. 32 people were killed on the Virginia Polytechnic institute and State University campus. The shooters name was Seung-Hui Cho, he was a senior at Virginia Tech and after the shooting he took his own life.

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virginia tech shootings fast facts - cnn

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Read Fast Facts from CNN about the shootings at Virginia Tech in April 2007, the third deadliest shooting rampage in US history.

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A U.S. Army officer went on a mass shooting spree at Fort Hood in central Texas killing 13 people and injuring 30 others. The deadly spree was carried out by Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, it was the worst shooting at a U.S. military instillation.

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On November 5, 2009, 13 people are killed and more than 30 others are wounded, nearly all of them unarmed soldiers, when a U.S. Army officer goes on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in central Texas. The deadly assault, carried out by Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, was the worst mass murder at a U.S. military installation.

Early in the afternoon of November 5, 39-year-old Hasan, armed with a semi-automatic pistol, shouted "Allahu Akbar" (Arabic for "God is great") and then opened fire at a crowd inside a Fort Hood processing center where soldiers who were about to be deployed overseas or were returning from deployment received medical screenings. The massacre, which left 12 service members and one Department of Defense employee dead, lasted approximately 10 minutes before Hasan was shot by civilian police and taken into custody.

The Virginia-born Hasan, the son of Palestinian immigrants who ran a Roanoke restaurant and convenience store, graduated from Virginia Tech University and completed his psychiatry training at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, in 2003. He went on to work at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., treating soldiers returning from war with post-traumatic stress disorder. In May 2009, he was promoted to the rank of major in the Army, and that July, was transferred to Fort Hood. Located near the city of Killeen, Fort Hood, which includes 340 square miles of facilities and homes, is the largest active-duty U.S. military post. At the time of the shootings, more than 50,000 military personnel lived and worked there, along with thousands more family members and civilian personnel.

In the aftermath of the massacre, reviews by the Pentagon and a U.S. Senate panel found Hasan's superiors had continued to promote him despite the fact that concerns had been raised over his behavior, which suggested he had become a radical and potentially violent Islamic extremist. Among other things, Hasan stated publicly that America's war on terrorism was really a war against Islam.

In 2013, Hasan, who was left paralyzed from the waist down as a result of shots fired at him by police attempting to stop his rampage, was tried in military court, where he acted as his own attorney. During his opening statement, he admitted he was the shooter. (Hasan had previously told a judge that in an effort to protect Muslims and Taliban leaders in Afghanistan, he had gunned down the soldiers at Fort Hood who were being deployed to that nation.) For the rest of the trial, Hasan called no witnesses, presented scant evidence and made no closing argument. On August 23, 2013, a jury found Hasan guilty of 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder, and he later was sentenced to death for his crimes.

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Army major kills 13 people in Fort Hood shooting spree

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On November 5, 2009, 13 people are killed and more than 30 others are wounded, nearly all of them unarmed soldiers, when a U.S. Army officer goes on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in central Texas. The deadly assault, carried out by Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, was the worst mass murder at a U.S.

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Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting, December 14, 2012

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Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting, December 14, 2012

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On December 14, 2012 Adam Lanza killed 28 people and injured 2 at Sandy Hook Elementary School after killing his mother at her home he later took his own life, it is one of the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

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Table of Contents

Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012, that left 26 people dead and 2 injured at the school. After murdering his mother at their home, Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School before taking his own life. It was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.

The murder of Adam Lanza's mother

The attack began when 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, in the home that the two shared in Newtown. She was shot four times with a .22-calibre rifle. She had purchased the rifle, as well as an AR-15-the civilian semiautomatic version of the military M16 assault rifle -and several other firearms that Adam Lanza would use later that day, in the years prior to the shooting. Before leaving the house, Lanza destroyed his computer's hard drive, an act that would make evidence gathering difficult for law enforcement personnel.

The shootings at Sandy Hook

Adam Lanza gathered the AR-15, two semiautomatic pistols, and a shotgun, as well as several hundred rounds of ammunition stored in high-capacity magazines, and drove his mother's car to Sandy Hook Elementary School, a public school in Newtown for kindergarten through fourth grade. Leaving the shotgun in the car, Lanza shot his way through a window next to the school's locked security door just after 9:30 am. He was immediately confronted by Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach. Lanza shot and killed both women, but the encounter and the sounds of gunfire were broadcast to individual classrooms via the school's public address system. In accordance with previously established lockdown protocols, teachers immediately took steps to attempt to safeguard their students, concealing them in closets or bathrooms and barricading doors with furniture or with their own bodies.

Lanza entered the classroom of teacher Lauren Rousseau and killed her and 14 children. He then went to a second classroom, where first-grade teacher Victoria Soto had hidden her students in a closet. She attempted to misdirect Lanza by telling him that her class was in the school's auditorium on the other side of the building. Lanza killed Soto, as well as six students who attempted to flee from their hiding place. Also killed in the shooting were Anne Marie Murphy, a special education aide, and behavioral therapist Rachel D'Avino; two other Sandy Hook staff members were injured. Lanza fired 154 rounds in less than five minutes, claiming 26 lives.

The first emergency call from the school was received at about 9:35 am, and law enforcement personnel responded within minutes. The first officers to enter the building caught a glimpse of an individual dressed in dark clothing, and, after hearing a series of shots, they found Lanza near the door to Soto's classroom, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. As the scale of the attack became clear, dozens of state and local police officers descended on the school, which police officials said would remain closed as a crime scene "indefinitely." The school would be demolished in 2014 and replaced by a new building-occupying the same site but with a different footprint-in 2016. Investigators determined that Lanza had used the AR-15 as his primary weapon throughout the attack, though he had taken his own life with a handgun.

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Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting | Facts & Timeline

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The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of December 14, 2012, left 26 people dead and 2 injured at the school. After killing his mother in their home, Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and 6 adults at the school in Newtown, Connecticut, before taking his own life.

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A gunman unleashed a rapid-fire barrage of bullets from the 32nd floor of a hotel in Las Vegas killing 59 people and injuring more than 500 others that were attending a country music festival. In modern history it was the worst mass shooting, the shooter was Stephan Craig Paddock.

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59 people killed, more than 500 hurt in Las Vegas Strip shooting

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At least 59 people were killed when a gunman opened fire during a Jason Aldean performance from the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas hotel, police said.