School shooting prevention and response at the building level

The prevalence of internalizing problems among US adolescents has risen in the past decade. The extent to which concerns about school violence or shootings are associated with risk of internalizing problems is unknown. To examine the prospective association of concern, worry, and stress related to school violence or shootings with internalizing problems and to examine sex and racial and ethnic differences in the magnitude of the associations. This longitudinal cohort study involved 3 surveys administered 6 months apart (fall of grade 11 [prebaseline]; spring of grade 11 [baseline]; and fall of grade 12 [follow-up]) from 2015 to 2016. Participants included 2263 students from 10 high schools in Los Angeles, California. Analyses were performed from April 29, 2020, to April 8, 2021. Baseline self-reported level of concern, worry, and stress about shootings or violence at the student's school or other schools, each rated on 5-point scales (ranging from not at all [0] to extremely [4]) with a mean score calculated as a 3-item composite index rescaled into z-score standard deviation units. Surpassing clinically significant or borderline significant thresholds for major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, or panic disorder based on symptom ratings on the Revised Children's Anxiety and Depression Scale at 6-month follow-up. Of the 2263 students included in the analyses (1250 [55.2%] girls; mean [SD] age, 16.5 [0.4] years), appreciable proportions reported being very or extremely concerned (850 0f 2226 [38.2%]), worried (703 of 2209 [31.8%]), or stressed (332 of 2183 [15.2%]) about shootings or violence at their school or other schools. After adjusting for prebaseline covariates, concerns about school violence or shootings were associated with clinically significant generalized anxiety symptoms (odds ratio [OR], 1.31; 95% CI, 1.15-1.50) and panic symptoms (OR, 1.18; 95% CI, 1.05-1.32), but not depressive symptoms (OR, 1.13; 95% CI, 0.99-1.30) at the 6-month follow-up. There was a significant association between concern with school violence or shootings and depressive symptoms for Black youth (OR, 3.15; 95% CI, 1.38-7.19) and non-Hispanic/Latinx White youth (OR, 1.62 [95% CI, 1.25-2.09]) but not for youth of other races and ethnicities (OR for Asian, 1.26 [95% CI, 0.86-1.85]; OR for Hispanic/Latinx, 0.94 [95% CI, 0.76-1.16]; OR for other, 0.93 [95% CI, 0.54-1.61]). Sex did not moderate these associations. The findings of this study suggest that concern, worry, and stress related to school violence or shootings may be risk factors for internalizing problems among adolescents, with variation in the strength of the association by race/ethnicity.

Drawing from the experience of our military forces over the past decade, First Responders are just now starting to realize the benefits of employing unmanned systems. For more than a decade, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV) have proven their value to the United States military. Law Enforcement personnel are learning to employ UAS and UGV against perpetrators of crimes in a variety ways, most importantly to respond to disaster scenarios. Firefighters and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) personnel could employ these technologies to help find lost personnel, identify the magnitude and map the area of a fire, and respond to hazardous situations or natural disasters, among many other functions. One of the most important scenarios in which First Responders could employ them is a school shooting. With the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, our nation is struggling to find solutions. This article describes an experiment conducted December 3-6 to assess the value and utility of a UGV, a UAS, and a technology that distributed the video feeds from them to iPhones, Androids, and other viewing devices to the First Responder, in a school shooting scenario.

This essay explores the role of shame as a mediator of thought and action in school shootings. A focus on shame widens the debates around this American societal tragedy beyond mental health concerns and gun control. The 1999 school shooting at Columbine High School in the U.S. state of Colorado, is recognized as a paradigmatic event for subsequent shooters. The lives of the two shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, reveal a shame spiral prominent in school shootings. This spiral implicates society’s relational web. The essay argues that pastoral care providers are among the social agents who can diminish and disrupt the shame spiral.

I use data from a national public opinion poll conducted 4 months after the mass shooting of teachers and students in Sandy Hook Elementary School to analyze the content and predictors of public opinion about gun control and gun control politics. I find that a slim majority of Americans favors a semiautomatic weapon ban and proposals to make gun control laws stricter, and a large majority supports a federal background check law. Consistent with previous research, I also find that both instrumental concerns and cultural beliefs are significantly related to people’s opinions about gun control, but the strongest, most consistent predictors of people’s gun control preferences are their political beliefs and affiliations. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the national gun control debate.

The United States has experienced a tragic increase in school shootings in recent years. Despite substantial media attention being paid to such incidents and widespread support for stricter gun control measures, substantial legislative action remains absent, however. To make sense of this puzzle, this paper focuses on the mobilizing responses of gun rights supporters in the aftermath of such events. Using granular data from 225,000 donations to the NRA's political action committee in a difference-in-differences design, this study provides causal estimates showing substantial increases in both donation amounts and donor numbers after school shootings. These results provide insight into the counter-mobilizing responses of the pro-gun political right after shootings. In contrast to the typically transient nature of gun control movements, these counter-mobilizing responses are notably durable. The results of this study have important implications for our understanding of the complexities of, and obstacles to, gun regulation in the United States.

Current school safety practices, namely retroactive punishments and target hardening strategies, fail to address key correlates of school violence. Support-oriented approaches, including mental health services, may be promising alternatives by tackling concerning behaviors before they manifest into violence. Using 2017–18 School Survey on Crime and Safety data, zero-inflated negative binomial regression models estimate how school mental health services and violence prevention training for teachers impact the number of school violence incidents. The findings suggest that the mere availability of school mental health services is not related to the number of violent incidents, highlighting the need for in-depth program evaluations. While violence prevention training varies by type in its effects, schools that provide more training to teachers are predicted to report fewer violent incidents. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.

School violence, and particularly, school shootings, remain a serious concern among parents, community members, educators, and governmental leadership at the local, state, and national levels. While school shootings periodically dominate media coverage of school safety issues, schools are among the safest places for students in the community. This article unpacks key issues central to the field. We provide an overview of school violence program coherence, curriculum alignment, staff development, support systems to meet student needs, and related capacity issues. The article also explores issues not commonly included in the school safety literature such as gangs and weapons in school and the conflation of mental health problems and violent behavior. We offer take-away implications from the extant literature that is relevant for schools.

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

Gun violence in any form is a compound, complex problem that consistently plagues diverse communities across the United States. As such, the problem evades simplistic, unidimensional solutions such as gun control, target hardening, and tougher sentencing. When occurring in schools, gun violence is particularly troublesome as it violates social expectations, parental needs for a safe place to entrust the education of their children, and the primary functions of educational institutions those being to provide a safe and secure space for teaching, learning, and socializing. This paper addresses the problem of gun violence in schools by application of a public health approach and a novel, direct application of the Emergency Management Cycle. These two perspectives combine to offer the ability to generate comprehensive, evidence-based options to gun violence in schools and the communities that house them. To anchor the observations and recommendations presented, the author uses epistemology, the study of knowledge and its limits, as the filter to make clear to the reader the body of evidence that is used to support assertions and recommendations. Finally, a case is made for the essential role that social workers can play in school gun violence intervention.

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.

After a school shooting disrupts his family's life, a physician calls for action on gun control and gun violence.

Do evil means justify moving towards a noble goal? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, Paul is six years old when his school suffers from, and his best friend dies in, yet another school shooting. The experience changes young Paul and he spends his life working to change gun laws and prevent future school shootings. As a student, he starts the organization, Students-Saving-Students (“SSS”) that holds periodic student walkaways in support of stronger gun legislation. Paul drops out of school to pursue gun legislation full time, however, by the time he is seventeen years old, he has made little progress. That is when he gets a strange call from SSS alumni who propose taking more militant action. SSS alumni have come to the conclusion that adults who have lost children to gun violence are very likely to support gun regulation and, therefore, they should kill the fifty children with guns of the legislative members most adamantly against gun controls. They have called Paul to give him the final “go/no go” decision. Paul refuses to endorse the plan, however, as soon as he hands up the phone, he already has his doubts on if he made the right choice.

Chapter 13 - School Shootings

As students enter middle schools across the country, many of them lack the literacy skills needed to access content-area knowledge. Response to Intervention (RtI) is an intervention model that is helping students find success at the elementary level, but there are few studies and models that are appropriate for the middle-school level in helping students access literacy skills. One of the barriers that prevent middle schools from being able to use elementary RtI practices is the need for a comprehensive literacy program that will allow students to succeed in mastering the content standards. This research investigated effective ways to implement RtI in a middle-school setting while promoting the acquisition of literacy skills. Formative assessment theory informs the problem of practice by providing the lens from which RtI and literacy integration can be achieved in the middle-school setting. The overarching research question for this study was: What is the process by which a suburban, East Coast, middle school designed and implemented Tier 1 Response to Intervention (RtI) strategies in their classrooms and what perceived impact have these strategies had on improving the literacy skills and access to content-specific knowledge for students? This research question was answered using data collected and analyzed from a descriptive, single case study of one middle school in Central Massachusetts. The findings showed that RtI is necessary for students who need extra support. Teachers felt the different aspects of the professional development they received highlighting RtI and the Workshop Model was both a positive and negative experience depending on the content area. Teachers and administrators believed there were benefits of the Workshop Model. The findings also demonstrated that literacy integration benefited all students and requires collaboration among teachers. Lastly, the findings showed that RtI required commitment from both teachers and administrators.