We used to think mass school shootings will never happen in the Philippines. It was something that just happened in the United States. And then it did.
On June 22, 2026, two Grade 9 boys — aged 14 and 15 — walked into San Jose National High School in Tacloban City and opened fire on their classmates. Three students died. Twenty more were wounded. The country awoke to a nightmare we had long assured ourselves was foreign to our shores.
For decades, we comforted ourselves with cultural alibis. Filipinos are not violent, we said. We have close-knit families and bayanihan communities. School shootings are an American problem — a product of their culture, their mental health crisis, their easy access to guns.
We were wrong. The Tacloban shooting is now officially the first mass school shooting in Philippine history. And the reasons why it happened here are not so different from why they happen everywhere else.
Police investigators quickly identified two key motives. First, a grudge over bullying. The suspects, both classified as children in conflict with the law, had harbored resentment against their classmates. Second, and more disturbingly, the suspects appeared to be imitating school shootings in the United States.
One suspect was reportedly addicted to a mobile game called GoreBox, which features graphic violence and gun use. His social media account contained violent videos and footage of him firing a gun. The PNP spokesperson said they were “very obviously red flags that could have been prevented” if anyone had been watching.
According to investigators, the attack was planned for more than a month and the suspects even studied the Juvenile Justice Welfare Act, knowing their age would shield them from severe punishment.
The normalization of violence is a global contagion, and the Philippines is not immune. Through media, social media, and video games, violence is packaged as entertainment, glamorized, and made routine. When children see brutality celebrated, monetized, and rewarded, they internalize the message that aggression is an acceptable, even admirable, way to resolve grievances.
And I think we have been asking the wrong question. We ask why a child would commit such an act, but we rarely ask how we, as a society, created the conditions for such an act to feel possible.
The normalization of violence in the Philippines is not new. It is woven into our colonial history. The United States, in particular, did not just teach us democracy; violence was very much part of their governing logic. This embedded violence in our political system, especially the idea of exterminating political competition, is a story that dates back over a century. We learned that power could be seized and maintained through force, and that lesson has been passed down through generations. The horrendous Maguindanao massacre is a recent example and so is the “war on drugs.”
Perhaps, most insidious is how we have normalized violence in our very language. We use euphemisms to sanitize the most brutal acts. “Salvaging” is widely used for extrajudicial killings — a linguistic reframing that frames the destruction of life as its “rescue” or “salvation.” A local politician once lamented how easy it is to find “painkillers” in the country, using the word to refer to assassins. This equates murder with medication, a therapeutic act of removing a “symptom,” trivializing the act and neutralizing moral constraints. When we call a killing “salvaging” or a hitman a “painkiller,” we are not just using slang. We are engaging in a profound act of moral disengagement that makes violence seem benign.
So how do we stop the next Tacloban from happening? Not with metal detectors. Not with more police in school hallways — the PNP itself admits it cannot assign officers to all 50,000 schools in the country. The answer lies in something deeper: the normalization of nonviolence.
And here, we must be precise about what we mean. There is a critical difference between non-violence and nonviolence.
Non-violence (with a hyphen) is merely the absence of physical aggression. It is passive. It is a ceasefire born of fear or submission. A bully who stops hitting because he is afraid of suspension is practicing non-violence. It requires no courage, no moral conviction, no transformation. This is the space we have been occupying. We have mistaken the absence of mass shootings for the presence of “peace and order.” We have confused apathy with harmony.
Nonviolence (without the hyphen) is something entirely different. It is an active, militant, and courageous force for social transformation. It is not just NOT fighting; it is fighting with a different weapon — truth, empathy, and moral courage. It requires discipline, training, and a willingness to confront harm without perpetuating it. This is the philosophy Gandhi called “ahimsa,” or non-harming, which is a dynamic and active force of love. This is what Martin Luther King Jr. called “soul force,” the redemptive power of love confronting evil. Nonviolence is not a tactic; it is a way of life.
The Philippines needs to normalize nonviolence, not just aspire to non-violence. And that requires deliberate, institutional action, and a reckoning with our own brokenness.
First, we must break the cycle of violence in the home. We need to eliminate corporal punishment, legally and culturally, and shift parenting norms toward positive discipline. The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) itself has described this as “cultural violence” — the belief that using violence to discipline children is an accepted part of our culture. In doing so, we teach them that violence is not just acceptable, but is an expression of care — creating a cycle that is incredibly difficult to break. This normalization of violence in childhood is a direct pipeline to future violence, as children who experience or witness it often channel their aggression through bullying and other harmful behaviors.
Second, we must institutionalize Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) in every school. Emotional literacy, active listening, and conflict resolution must be taught daily, alongside math and reading. When children practice “peace circles” every week, de-escalation becomes as habitual as breathing.
Third, we must replace zero-tolerance discipline with restorative justice. When a student causes harm, the first question should not be “What punishment fits?” But “Who was harmed, and how do we repair it?” Restorative practices build accountability while keeping students connected to their community rather than pushing them out and toward resentment.
Fourth, we must treat violent content as a public health concern. The Department of Education (DepEd) is institutionalizing child protection across schools, but we need to do more. We need media literacy programs that teach children to critically deconstruct violent imagery and parental guidance that monitors social media and gaming habits.
Fifth, we must address the root causes — bullying, isolation, and untreated trauma. The Tacloban shooters said they were bullied. They were angry, alienated, and unseen. Nonviolent communities actively seek out their most marginalized members and wrap them in support before resentment curdles into rage.
Finally, we must change the narrative. We need to elevate peacemakers to the status of cultural heroes. We need to celebrate the student who de-escalates a fight, not just the one who wins it. We need public campaigns that frame nonviolence as strength, not weakness. We need to stop using euphemisms like “salvaging” and call murder what it is. We need to reframe our language so that violence is never made benign.
The Tacloban shooting shattered our illusion of exceptionalism. We are not immune. The question now is whether we will respond with reactive security measures that treat the symptom or with a cultural revolution that treats the disease.
Nonviolence is not passive. It is not soft. It is the most difficult, most demanding, most courageous way to live. And it is the only way to ensure that no Filipino parent has to bury a child killed in a classroom ever again.
