Using a Chinese-made Type 56 semi-automatic rifle, 24-year-old Patrick Edward Purdy kills five children and wounds 29 other students and a teacher when he opens fire at 11:41 a.m. on the playground of Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton – where he was once a student. Purdy, who wears combat gear, then shoots himself in the head with a 9mm Taurus pistol.
“He was just standing there with a gun, making wide sweeps,” Lori Mackey, a teacher of deaf children at the school, tells the New York Times.
At least 106 rounds are fired – in three minutes. Stockton police say he was spraying bullets, not aiming. The victims — Raphanar Or, Ran Chun, Sokhim An, Oeun Lim and Thuy Tran range in age from nine to six. All are Cambodian immigrants, except Tran who is born in Vietnam.
Purdy is a drifter with a record of arrests for drugs, prostitution and possession of a dangerous weapon. None of the convictions are felonies, which would have disqualified him from legally purchasing any of the weapons he uses at Cleveland Elementary.
“Remembering the tragedy” – The Stockton Record
The so-called “Stockton Schoolyard Massacre” sparks a national call for stricter regulation of semi-automatic weapons. California’s Republican governor, George Deukmejian, who is initially elected in 1982 with the votes of gun owners, backs legislation banning various types of semiautomatic pistols and rifles, which the measure’s supporters label “assault weapons.”
Three days after the shooting Deukmejian tells the Los Angeles Times:
“I, just for the life of me, cannot see why anybody who is going to use a gun just for sporting purposes would want or would need to have a military assault-type weapon that is produced and is used by Communist countries.”
Deukmejian signs the Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Act, the first such ban in the country, on May 24 – less than five months after the shootings. The law, which has been amended several times since, reads, in part:
“The Legislature hereby finds and declares that the proliferation and use of assault weapons poses a threat to the health, safety, and security of all citizens of this state. The Legislature has restricted the assault weapons specified … based upon finding that each firearm has such a high rate of fire and capacity for firepower that its function as a legitimate sports or recreational firearm is substantially outweighed by the danger that it can be used to kill and injure human beings.”
Since 1989, there have been multiple mass shootings in California and the United States using similar weapons. Those shootings have occurred at beauty parlors, government buildings, law firms, public schools, restaurants, synagogues and various other workplaces.
Deukmejian, who died in 2018, tells the Los Angeles Times in a January 2013 interview why he signed the legislation, sounding much like he does 24 years earlier:
“My thoughts simply were that regardless of what argument somebody might make about having the right to own and possess a gun, there was no common sense reason for someone to have an assault weapon.”