School shooting

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See also: School violence

School shooting is a term popularized in American and Canadian media to describe gun violence at educational institutions, especially the mass murder or spree killing of people connected with an institution. A school shooting can be perpetrated by one or more students, expelled students, alumni, faculty members, or outsiders. Unlike acts of revenge against specific people, school shootings usually involve multiple intended or actual victims, often randomly targeted.

School shootings receive extensive media coverage but are infrequent.[1] They often result in nationwide changes of schools' policies concerning discipline and security. Some experts have described fears about school shootings as a type of moral panic.[2]

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School shootings are typically differentiated from other kinds of school violence. Mass killings at schools like the Beslan school hostage crisis, are usually described as acts of terrorism. In the 1970 shootings at Kent State and Jackson State universities, student unrest precipitated retaliatory or defensive shootings by National Guardsmen and police, respectively.

In the United States, one-on-one public school violence, such as beatings and stabbings, or violence related to gang activity, is more common in some densely populated, impoverished sections of cities. City or urban schools were much more likely than other schools to report serious violent crime with 17 percent of city principals reporting at least one serious crime as compared to 11 percent of urban fringe schools, 10 percent of rural schools, and five percent of suburban/town schools reporting at least one serious crime.[3] Student-perpetrated school shootings in North America most often occur in overwhelmingly white, middle class non-urban areas (i.e. small towns and suburbs).[citation needed] In some cases, the victims of the shootings are involved in bullying or other exclusionary acts towards the perpetrators, and that the perpetrators seemed to think this justified the act of murder.

School shooting is a topic of intense interest in the United States.[4] Though companies like MOSAIC Threat Assessment Systems sell products and services designed to identify potential threats, a thorough study of all U.S. school shootings by the U.S. Secret Service[5] warned against the belief that a certain "type" of student would be a perpetrator. Any "profile" would fit too many students to be useful and may not fit the potential perpetrators. Some lived with both parents in 'an ideal, All-American family.' Some were children of divorce, or lived in foster homes. A few were loners, but most had close friends.

While it may be simplistic to assume a straightforward "profile", the study did find certain similarities among the perpetrators. "The researchers found that killers do not 'snap'. They plan. They acquire weapons. These children take a long, considered, public path toward violence."[6] Princeton's Katherine Newman points out that, far from being "loners", the perpetrators are "joiners" whose attempts at social integration fail, that they let their thinking and even their plans be known, sometimes frequently over long periods of times. The shootings seem as though an attempt to adjust their social standing and image, from "loser" to "master of violence."

Many of the shooters told Secret Service investigators that alienation or persecution drove them to violence. According to the United States Secret Service, instead of looking for traits, the Secret Service urges adults to ask about behavior: "What has this child said? Do they have grievances? What do their friends know? Do they have access to weapons? Are they depressed or despondent?"[7]

One of the “traits” that has not yet garnered as much attention is gender; that all of the shooters have been men or young boys has not gotten as much attention as the other “warning signs.” Gender violence has also been a part of recent school shootings. Bob Herbert addresses this in an October 2006 New York Times editorial.

Further information: List of school related attacks

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Additional Notes;

  • Several songs by Insane Clown Posse have been about attempting a school shooting.
  • "With Hope", by Steven Curtis Chapman, is not about a shooting, but is dedicated in part to the three students killed in the 1997 Heath shooting. Chapman graduated from Heath in 1981.
  • Swedish rap group Mobbade Barn Med Automatvapen got their name from school shootings in general. The name is in Swedish and means "bullied kids with automatic rifles".

Eminem also had many songs to do with columbine

  1. ^ CNN (March 25, 1998). School shootings have high profile but occur infrequently.
  2. ^ Killingbeck, Donna. The Role of Television News in the Construction of School Violence as a 'Moral Panic." Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 8(3) (2001) 186-202
  3. ^ National Center for Education Statistics' Violence and Discipline Problems in U.S. Public Schools, 1996-97.
  4. ^ "'Profiling' School Shooters", Frontline, 2007-03-17. Retrieved on 2007-03-17. 
  5. ^ The Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative (2002-05-01).
  6. ^ PBS article on murder profiles
  7. ^ Bill Dedman, Deadly Lessons: School Shooters Tell Why, description of Secret Service study. (October 15, 2000) Chicago Sun-Times. Accessed April 8, 2006

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