Chapter 13 - School Shootings

Firearm violence and school shootings remain a significant public health problem. This study aimed to examine how publicly available data from all 50 states might improve our understanding of the situation, firearm type, and demographics surrounding school shootings. School shootings occurring in the US for 53 years ending in May 2022 were analyzed, using primary data files that were obtained from the Center for Homeland Defense and Security. Data analyzed included situation, injury, firearm type, and demographics of victims and shooters. We compared the ratio of fatalities per wounded after stratifying by type of weapon. Rates (among children) of school shooting victims, wounded, and fatalities per 1 million population were stratified by year and compared over time. A total of 2,056 school shooting incidents involving 3,083 victims were analyzed: 2,033 children, 5 to 17 years, and 1,050 adults, 18 to 74 years. Most victims (77%) and shooters (96%) were male individuals with a mean age of 18 and 19 years, respectively. Of the weapons identified, handguns, rifles, and shotguns accounted for 84%, 7%, and 4%, respectively. Rifles had a higher fatality-to-wounded ratio (0.45) compared with shooters using multiple weapons (0.41), handguns (0.35), and shotguns (0.30). Linear regression analysis identified a significant increase in the rate of school shooting victims (β = 0.02, p = 0.0003), wounded (β = 0.01, p = 0.026), and fatalities (β = 0.01, p = 0.0003) among children over time. Despite heightened public awareness, the incidence of school shooting victims, wounded, and fatalities among children has steadily and significantly increased over the past 53 years. Understanding the epidemic represents the first step in preventing continued firearm violence in our schools.

School violence has increased dramatically over the last decade. There have been many school shootings since the devastating mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Following each of these, there has been much national debate about gun control laws and mental health funding. While political stakeholders have been in a stalemate over these important issues, schools must develop better solutions for stopping school shootings. This dissertation discussed whether there is a clear profile for a school shooter, which emergency plans are practiced at a school in Massachusetts, and where the responsibility of resolving a school shooting falls. This dissertation addressed the problem of practice through a case study using the emergency management cycle (EMC), focusing on prevention, preparedness, and response from a school staff level. This case study focused on the following research questions: (a) Is it possible to profile and anticipate school shooters in order to prevent shootings? (b) What are the emergency protocols in place at the middle school in Massachusetts that is the focus of this study, and how can they be strengthened? and (c) What is the role of faculty and staff in the resolution of an active shooter situation? The researcher answered these questions through research as well as interviewing a multi-disciplinary selection of faculty and staff at a school in Massachusetts. Participants' responses helped inform violence prevention, preparedness, and response training.

Between 1966 and 2007, there were 44 mass murder incidents across schools and universities in the United States. Three of those incidents involved Asian school shooters. By using newspapers and government reports about the incidents, this paper examines the patterns of weapon acquisition, weapon deployment, and tactical deployment strategies of the three Asian school shooters. The role of the mass media as sources of identification fantasies, legitimacy, and ideational structures for the planned attacks are considered. The meaning of being an Asian school shooter in the United States is discussed.

30.0 Is the Next School Shooter Sitting Before Me? Critical Issues in School Threat Assessment

This chapter looks at Seung-Hui Cho and the violence at Virginia Tech to critically interrogate Asian American masculinity and racial formations in relation to contemporary postracial discourses in the American South since 9/11. On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho killed thirty-two people on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. The media soon dubbed the event the “deadliest shooting rampage in American history,” and news coverage was inundated with uncovering the “madness at Virginia Tech.” What stood out beyond the numbers of murdered individuals in a “school shooting” was the shooter himself, a Korean American whose identity and location as “alien-other” marked him as always already suspicious, dangerous, and outside. The chapter then analyzes the important ways in which Seung-Hui Cho was simultaneously racially othered as an Asian immigrant alien and whitened as disenfranchised male youth.

ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate) Training is a growing safety protocol that has been widely adopted in American schools as a multi-option approach to a school shooter situation. Technology reporter at The Information, Sylvia Varnham O’Regan, affirms that “little is known about the efficacy of the methods promulgated by ALICE” (O’Regan), and most of the research on ALICE involves “comparing the traditional lockdown to the multi-option simulations” (Jonson et al. 7). There is existing research on the psychological effects of active assailant training on students, school counselors, and on teachers, but little is known specific to ALICE Training. Additionally, “it is not clear what response teachers actually have to practicing disaster preparedness drills because researchers have not yet investigated this area” (Ilk 4). In turn, this research study explores the emotional impact of ALICE Training on the educators of a high school in Baltimore County, to determine if these teachers are more positively or negatively affected. Because of the role that educators play in both preventing school violence and responding to school violence, a phenomenological approach is used to explore their experiences with ALICE Training. Results include the following four themes: (a) enhanced preparedness, (b) overwhelming responsibility toward students, (c) necessary but frustrating, and (d) indicates a sad reality. Implications for educators, school shootings, and ALICE Training are discussed.

Many political actors lack the power or competencies to impact policy outputs and outcomes on their own. This is why they join forces to multiply their impact. Following the advocacy coalition framework, they do so based on joint beliefs and shared policy preferences. Therefore, to understand cooperation or conflict among political actors, including the potential for policy compromises or stalemates, it seems crucial to know the allies and opponents in a political subsystem. Although many studies have investigated advocacy coalitions of like‐minded actors in various political subsystems and policy fields around the globe, not much is known about the dynamics at the origin of joint belief or common preference building. In this context, we ask: How and when do actors develop similar beliefs and joint policy preferences with others in a political subsystem? To answer this question, we investigate the early stage of policy making—a so‐called nascent subsystem—when a new issue arrives on the political agenda. We argue that it is at this stage that actors start developing joint beliefs and identifying their allies. We use expert interviews and survey data to investigate pesticide regulation, a new topic on Uganda's political agenda. We conducted a three‐step approach and selected the types of beliefs and preferences that mattered in a nascent policy setting. We then presented an extensive list of possible regulatory instruments to the stakeholders and selected those evaluated as the most relevant or conflictive. Based on this selection, we calculated belief and preference similarity and clustering to identify groups of like‐minded actors. Finally, via regression analysis, we show that joint beliefs are the result of either trust or a similar problem perception, depending on whether the actor is part of a more or less developed belief cluster.

This article looks into the position of agenda-setting of national press primarily focusing on national issues of vital importance during the phase of Parliamentary General Elections 2013 in Pakistan. The study finds the correlation between news papers’ agenda and public agenda, examining the influence of national press on public perception on the issue of salience by using triangulation; media agenda on ten national issues of top priority has been explored i.e. US-drone attacks, economic crisis, corruption, Indo-Pak relations, terrorism, energy crisis, Pak-Taliban talks, education, unemployment and health, at the front and back pages of three leading national popular daily Urdu Newspapers of Pakistan. Public agenda is scrutinized by survey research from 600 respondents, to explore what public perceive about these most important issues? The finding of this study reveals a moderate positive correlation between media agenda and public agenda. Hence, a significant positive correlation exists only on four out of ten national issues i.e. terrorism, energy crisis, US-drone attacks, and economic crisis. It is inferred that agenda setting of the press is dominant over plurality of public voice. This study has the strategic and policy implications.

La desigualdad de salarios en Chile ha permanecido alta por decadas y esta actualmente en el centro de la agenda politica. Aumentar la educacion de los trabajadores se espera que contribuya a la disminucion de la desigualdad. Basados en tendencias historicas de edad, educacion y retornos a la educacion, este trabajo intenta predecir la desigualdad de ingresos. A pesar del aumento en ingresos promedios, debido a mayores niveles de educacion de los trabajadores, altos niveles de desigualdad salarial en los grupos etarios y los grupos educacionales producen que la desigualdad de salarios predicha permanezca alta por los proximos 10 anos. La estructura del mercado laboral chileno pareciera implicar que existe subyacentemente una alta desigualdad en los salarios. Sin embargo, las buenas noticias son que la estructura del mercado laboral parece impedir futuros deterioros en la desigualdad de salarios

Police officers are exposed to many dangers on the job. Despite this, society may not intuitively consider officers to be victims. Research indicates officers experience various types of victimization on the job, and these victimizations can have direct and indirect physical, mental, and economic impacts on the officer. As a result of violent and nonviolent victimizations in the line of duty, there are negative consequences on officers' wellbeing. Despite this victimhood, police stories are not often headlined in the media, placed on political agendas, or discussed in local communities. Due to the lack of inclusion on these platforms, police officers are invisible victims. This chapter discusses how officers can be considered invisible victims and examines factors that address why society and officers themselves may not equate their experiences to victimization.

The (re)industrialization of Europe and the United States has been the object of extensive debates and news coverage in recent months. With the Inflation Reduction Act in the USA, the acceleration of the industrial measures of the European Green Pact, the “Green Industry” bill in France and the French President’s speech on industrial reconquest, numerous signs indicate that industry is back on the political agenda. For example, the French government has announced a €1 billion plan to bring i...

ABSTRACTThe present research examines media agenda setting effects in a Kenyan context in 2013 and 2014. Specifically, focusing on the first level of agenda setting, the study investigates whether two national daily newspapers influenced public opinion on six issues of national importance: corruption, devolution, economic crisis, insecurity, poverty, and unemployment. Moreover, the study examines whether the newspapers’ agendas are related in connection to the coverage of the six issues. Findings indicate that the two newspapers had little influence on the opinion of the Kenyan public regarding the six issues. This is based on a low correlation of +.30 between the two newspapers’ agendas and the public agenda. However, the agendas of the two publications were strikingly similar—yielding a perfect correlation of + 1. This means in their news coverage, the newspapers gave similar weight to the six issues.

O artigo divide-se em duas partes. A primeira apresenta aspectos do método de análises da cobertura jornalística em veículos tradicionais. A segunda é um teste empírico da metodologia apresentada anteriormente. Para o teste é analisado o padrão de cobertura da Folha de S. Paulo nas elei-ções para prefeitura de São Paulo, em 2012. A metodologia quantitativa é usada para acompanhar a produção jornalística sobre eleições, partindo da importância que a mídia tem para o debate e agenda pública (McCombs, 2009). O objetivo do artigo é verificar como isso se aplica à cobertura da eleição de 2012. Para tanto, faz uma breve discussão metodológica para expor as variáveis utilizadas e analisa a Folha de S. Paulo durante o período eleitoral de 2012, tendo como foco a cobertura dos candidatos Fernando Haddad (PT), José Serra (PSDB) e Celso Russomano (PRB). Os resultados indicam que a Folha de S. Paulo reforça uma tendência de preferência eleitoral existente na cidade, o que contraria a hipótese do agendamento.

Juveniles are subject to many types of victimization, from property crimes to assaults and homicides. However, because children are dependent on adult caretakers, they can also be the victims of crimes not commonly seen among adults (e.g., neglect). When juveniles are victimized by parents or guardians, this is frequently referred to as child abuse or intrafamilial victimization (e.g., physical abuse) and when they are victimized by acquaintances and strangers who do not have responsibility for the child's well‐being, this is referred to as extrafamilial victimization (e.g., theft). Regardless of who commits the offense, research finds that juvenile victims suffer a number of outcomes, including physical and mental health problems, and that those who are victimized are at greater risk of later revictimization and offending behavior. Historically, juveniles were hidden victims, because laws and culture condoned paternal “abuse.” However, technological development, media focus on child abuse, and tragic cases like the Columbine High School shootings have resulted in a new appreciation for the level of violence and crime experienced by young people. Further, they have brought about the development of policies to deal with the special needs of juvenile victims.

More mass public shootings occur in the United States than anywhere else in the world, and these incidents occur in a variety of locations, including educational facilities. There is strong reason to separate elementary, middle, and high schools from institutes of higher education (such as colleges and universities) when studying mass school shootings. These incidents vary based on the type of school by the characteristics and motivations of the shooter as well as locational characteristics and appropriate prevention strategies. This chapter provides an overview of the differences between mass shootings at K-12 schools and those at IHEs. The authors also discuss the prevalence and characteristics of mass shootings at IHEs and introduce several prevention policies, along with relevant proposed and current legislation.