Six dead in Krakow market square shooting

A 25-year-old Polish man killed six people and wounded 16 in a mass shooting in Krakow on Friday, BBC News reported. The gunman first killed his father, mother, and sister at the family home, then drove to the Main Market Square and fired into the crowd.

Police shot and wounded the attacker within three minutes of his arrival at the square, the AP reported. He was wearing military-style clothing and carried a military-grade weapon.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the attack an act of terrorism. Reuters reported that the gunman had expressed far-right and ultranationalist views online. One of the dead was a British national.

What the coverage missed

The family murders came first. The gunman killed his 53-year-old father, his 52-year-old mother, and his 21-year-old sister before he ever left the house. That detail was in the BBC report but buried below the market square coverage. Three of the six dead never made it to the square. The story starts at the kitchen table, not at the tourist destination.

The weapon was military-grade. Poland has strict gun laws. How a 25-year-old with no military service obtained a rifle capable of this damage is the question that will not go away. The coverage has not answered it yet.

Krakow’s Main Market Square is the largest medieval town square in Europe. It was a Friday afternoon. The square was full. The death toll could have been far worse.

What I think

This was terrorism by any definition. The gunman targeted a public space, he had an ideology, and he wanted to kill as many people as he could. Tusk was right to call it what it was.

The gun question matters. Poland is not the United States, and the gun debate is different there. But a 25-year-old with no military background got a military-grade rifle. That is a failure somewhere in the system, and it needs to be identified before the next person tries the same thing.

The family violence is the part that will get the least attention. Men who commit mass attacks often have a history of domestic violence. This one started by killing his own family. That is not a precursor — it is the first act of the same crime.