A school shooting is an attack at an educational institution, such as a school or university, involving the use of a firearm(s). Incidents that involve four or more deaths are also categorized as mass shootings. School shootings have sparked a political debate over gun violence, zero tolerance policies, and gun control.
The United States has the highest number of school-related shootings.
Video School shooting
Possible underlying causes
Younger age (Raine 2002; Steinberg 2002, Deakin, Overman, 2004; Figner et al 2009; Burnett et al 2010)
According to Raine (2002), immaturity is one of many identified factors increasing the likelihood of an individual committing criminal acts of violence and outburts of aggression. This fact is supported by findings on brain development occurring as individuals age from birth.
According to the Australian-based Raising children network and Centre for Adolescent Health (and a number of other sources): the main change occurring in the developing brain during adolescence is the (so-called) pruning of unused connections in thinking and processing, while this is occurring within the brain, retained connections are strengthened. Synaptic pruning occurs because the nervous system in humans develops by firstly, the over-producing of parts of the nervous system, axons, neurons, and synapses, to then later in the development of the nervous system, make redundant the superfluous parts, i.e. pruning (or apoptosis, otherwise known as cell death). These changes occur in certain parts of the brain firstly; the pre-frontal cortex, the brain location where decision-making occurs, is the concluding area for development. While the pre-frontal cortex is developing, children and teenagers might possibly rely more on the brain part known as the amygdala; involving thinking that is more emotionally active, including aggression and impulsiveness. As a consequence each individual is more likely to want to make riskier (i.e. risk) choices (choices which are more risky, or to make more risky choices).
Steinberg (2004) identified the fact of adolescents taking more risks typically, than adults, Deakin et al. (2004), and, Overman et al. (2004) indicate a decline in risk taking from adolescence to adulthood, Steinberg (2005), Figner et al. (2009), and, Burnett et al. (2010) identified adolescent age individuals as more likely to take risks than young-children and adults.
Gun ownership
Evidence shows the number of deaths by guns in any population correlates to the number of guns owned within the same population.
However, some countries with high numbers of gun owners also have very low gun related deaths, such as Iceland.
Maps School shooting
Profiling
The United States Secret Service published the results from a study regarding 37 school shooting incidents, involving 41 individuals in the United States from December 1974 through May 2000. In a previous report of 18 school shootings by the FBI, they released a profile that described shooters as middle-class, lonely/alienated, awkward, caucasian males who had access to guns. The most recent report cautioned against the assumption that a perpetrator can be identified by a certain 'type' or profile. The results from the study indicated that perpetrators came from varying backgrounds, making a singular profile difficult when identifying possible assailant. For example, some perpetrators were children of divorce, lived in foster homes, or came from intact nuclear families. The majority of individuals had rarely or never gotten into trouble at school and had a healthy social life. Some experts such as Alan Lipman have warned against the dearth of empirical validity of profiling methods.
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." Often times, shooters are inspired by past shootings as motivation for the method of executing these attacks from the guns to purchase down to the what to wear during the attack.Princeton's Katherine Newman has found that, far from being "loners", the perpetrators are "joiners" whose attempts at social integration fail, and that they let their thinking and even their plans be known, sometimes frequently over long periods of time. In addition, psychologist Peter Langman has noted that school shooters typically fall into one (or occasionally two) of three categories: psychopathic, psychotic, or traumatized.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released "The School Shooter: A Quick Reference Guide," which is a compilation of information from the Safe School Initiative, School Violence Threat Management, and The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective. The document includes risk assessments, statistics about attacker background, and warning signs about which investigators should be vigilant. The report lists the 11 Key Questions created by the US Secret Service for threat assessment. The top reported motives of an attack were bullying/persecution/threatened (75%) and revenge (61%), while 54% reported having numerous reasons. The remaining motives included an attempt to solve a problem (34%), suicide or depression (27%), and seeking attention or recognition (24%). Some basic statistics are provided from the Safe School Initiative: 59% of attacks occurred during school hours, in 68% of the incidents the weapon used was obtained from the attacker's home, 93% of the attacks were premeditated, and 95% of shooters were current students. The FBI suggest observing behavioral warning signs and mostly encouraging others to report concerning behavior. In 80% of cases, at least one person was aware the assailant was thinking/planning an attack and in almost 2/3, at least two individuals were aware of the attack before it happened. The information included in the document is not meant to be used as a profile, but rather a guide of possible behaviors that an individual might exhibit.
Table 1 displays data reported in the Safe School Initiative program by the US Secret Service and the US Department of Education. The Secret Service and Department of Education began examining pre-attack behaviors after the 1999 Columbine High School attack. The table demonstrates the varying backgrounds of school shooters. More than 3/4 of attackers (76%) were caucasian and 100% (41 individuals) were male. The report documented five types of household environments: 44% of attackers lived with two biological parents, 19% lived with one biological and one step-parent, 19% had one biological parent, 2% had two biological parents in separate households, and 5% lived in foster care or had a legal guardian. The academic performance was available for 83% (34) of the individuals, which ranged from straight As to failing. Almost half of attackers were getting As and Bs (41%) and few attackers were failing. The percentage of attackers recorded for the mental health variable exceeds 100 because individuals were recorded for every profile that applied to them. The largest reported profiles include previous suicidal thoughts/actions (78%), self documentation of depression (61%), and 34% of attackers received previous psychological treatment. More than half (59%) of attackers expressed violent behavior, but there was not one common violent outlet among attackers. The most common violent expression was through personal media (journal, videos, essays, poems etc.) with 37% of attackers exhibiting this behavior. These data were collected from 37 school shootings, committed by 41 individuals, in the US between 1997 and 2000.
An angle that it not mentioned in media but is bolstered by important social scientists is dysfunctional family structure. Eminent Harvard sociologist Robert J. Sampson wrote: "Family structure is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, predictor of variations in urban violence across cities in the United States." His views are echoed by the eminent criminologists Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi, who have written that "such family measures as the percentage of the population divorced, the percentage of households headed by women, and the percentage of unattached individuals in the community are among the most powerful predictors of crime rates." According to Dr. Peter Langman, it is a myth that school shooters come from stable homes, and showed that in one sample, 82% of the shooters were from dysfunctional families, while 18% from intact families.
Perpetrators who "run amok" in schools and other public settings do also share in common a severe lapse or more pervasive deficit in their capacity for empathy coupled with their inability to contain their aggression--this may be due to their psychopathy, psychotic symptoms (i.e. loss of a sense of reality), and/or to a consequence of significant violent traumatization--such as that of early physical abuse, that contributes to the development of dissociative states of mind (i.e. disavowal of reality, derealization, depersonalization). In short, as clinical psychiatrist Daniel Schechter has written, for a baby to develop into a troubled adolescent who then turns lethally violent, a convergence of multiple interacting factors must occur, that is "every bit as complicated...as it is for a tornado to form on a beautiful spring day in Kansas."
Many of the shooters told Secret Service investigators that alienation or persecution drove them to violence. According to the United States Secret Service,
One "trait" that has not yet attracted as much attention is the gender difference: nearly all school shootings are perpetrated by young males, and in some instances the violence has clearly been gender-specific. Bob Herbert addressed this in an October 2006 New York Times editorial. However, at least three female school shooting incidents have been documented, including Laurie Dann of Winnetka, Illinois.
Though the perpetrators of school shootings are often said to be almost exclusively white males, this is misleading. A study of 48 shooters found that though white males constituted 79% of secondary school shooters, white males were actually a minority among college and other adult perpetrators. There is significant racial, ethnic, and gender diversity among school shooters. These shootings have happened in "suburban and rural school districts" and many seem to be random with random targets. Most of these shooters tend to come from two-parent households and have been found to appear on the honor roll at their schools.
School shootings receive extensive media coverage and are frequent in the US (see list below). They have sometimes resulted in nationwide changes of schools' policies concerning discipline and security. Some experts have described fears about school shootings as a type of moral panic.
Such incidents may also lead to nationwide discussion on gun laws.
School bullying
"Bullying is common in schools and seemed to play a role in the lives of many of the school shooters". A typical bullying interaction consist of three parts, the offender/bully, a victim and one or more bystanders. This formula of three enables the bully to easily create public humiliation for their victim. Students who are bullied tend to develop behavioral problems, depression, less self-control and poorer social skills, and to do worse in school. Once humiliated, victims never want to be a victim again and try to regain their image by joining groups. Often, they are rejected by their peers and follow through by restoring justice in what they see as an unjust situation. Their plan for restoration many times results in violence as shown by the school shooters. 75% of school shooters claimed or left behind evidence of them being victims of bullying, including Nathan Ferris, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Edmar Aparecido Freitas, Brian Head, Seung-Hui Cho, Wellington Menezes Oliveira, Jeff Weise, Adam Lanza, and Nikolas Cruz.
Cyberbullying has changed the effect of bullying in another way. "... in the modern era a bully can also do so on Facebook and Twitter for the world to see. Once something is on the Internet, it cannot truly be removed, further enhancing the torment. That type of bullying is infinitely easier for the perpetrator to commit and just as infinitely hard for the victim to address or escape."
Notoriety
Shooting massacres in English-speaking countries often occur close together in time. Forensic psychiatrists attribute this to copycat behaviour, which can be correlated with the level of media exposure. In these copycat shootings, often times the perpetrators see a past school shooter as an idol, so they want to carry out an even more destructive, murderous shooting in hopes of gaining recognition or respect. Some mass murderers study media reports of previous killers.
Research has now shown the presence of a direct correlation between a desire for infamy and school shootings. This hypothesis was suggested by Justin Nutt in 2013, those who feel as though they are alone and who feel no one will remember them may seek to be remembered through acts of violence. Nutt explains through the examination of the way in which news exposure is connected not to the victims, but the perpetrators. "... in an age of internet news and 24 hour news cycle, to avoid doing so would be seen as poor news reporting, but it also means those who feel nameless and as though no one will care or remember them when they are gone may feel doing something such as a school shooting will make sure they are remembered and listed in the history books." This has been linked as a leading cause of most school shootings and planned, but unexecuted school shooting. Recent premedatative writings were presented according to court documents and showed Joshua O'Connor wrote that he wanted the "death count to be as high as possible so that the shooting would be infamous." Infamy and notoriety, "a desire to be remembered" has been reported as the leading reason for planned shootings by most perpetrators who were taken alive either pre or post shooting.
Injustice collectors
In a 2015 New Republic essay, Columbine author Dave Cullen described a subset of school shooters (and other mass murderers) known as "injustice collectors." The essay described and expanded on the work of retired FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole, who has published a peer-reviewed journal article on the subject. It also quoted Gary Noesner, who helped create and lead the FBI's hostage negotiation unit, and served as Chief Negotiator for ten years.
Mental illness
The degree to which mental illness does or does not contribute to school shootings has been debated in society.
Although the vast majority of mentally ill individuals are non-violent, some evidence has suggested that mental illness or mental health symptoms are nearly universal among school shooters. For example, on April 16, 2007, a Virginia Tech (VT) student named Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed thirty-two faculty members and students on the campus and injured twenty-five more before taking his own life. For another instance, a 2002 report by the US Secret Service and US Department of Education found evidence that a majority of school shooters displayed evidence of mental health symptoms, often undiagnosed or untreated Criminologists Fox and DeLateur note that mental illness is only part of the issue, however, and mass shooters tend to externalize their problems, blaming others and are unlikely to seek psychiatric help, even if available. Other scholars have concluded that mass murderers display a common constellation of chronic mental health symptoms, chronic anger or antisocial traits, and a tendency to blame others for problems. However, they note that attempting to "profile" school shooters with such a constellation of traits will likely result in many false positives as many individuals with such a profile do not engage in violent behaviors.
McGinty and colleagues conducted a study to find out if people tended to associate the violence of school shootings with mental illness, at the expense of other factors such as the availability of high-capacity magazines. Nearly 2,000 participants read a news piece on a shooting in which the shooter is diagnosed as having a mental illness and who used high capacity magazines. One group read an article that presented only the facts of the case. A different group read an article about the same shooting, but in it the author advocated for gun restrictions for people with mental illness. Another group read about the shooting in an article that suggested the proposal to ban large-capacity magazines, which acted to advocate that shootings could stem from a societal problem rather than an individual problem. The control group did not read anything. Participants were then all asked to fill out a questionnaire asking about their views on gun control and whether they thought there should be restrictions on high-capacity magazines. 71% of the control group thought that gun restrictions should be applied to people with mental illness, and nearly 80% of participants who read the articles agreed. Despite the fact that the article exposed the readers to both the mental illness of the shooter, and the fact that the shooter used high-capacity magazines, participants advocated more for gun restrictions on people with mental illness rather than bans on high-capacity magazines. This suggests that people believe mental illness is the culprit for school shootings in lieu of the accessibility of guns or other environmental factors. The authors expressed concern that proposals to target gun control laws at people with mental illness do not take into account the complex nature of the relationship between serious mental illness and violence, much of which is due to additional factors such as substance abuse. However, the link is unclear since research has shown that violence in mentally ill people occur more in interpersonal environments.
Violent video games
It has long been debated that there exists a correlation between school shooting perpetrators and the type of media they consume. A popular profile for school shooters is someone who has been exposed to or enjoys playing violent video games. However, this profile is considered by many researchers to be misguided or erroneous. Ferguson (2009) has argued that a third variable of gender explains the illusory correlation between video game use and the type of people who conduct school shootings. Ferguson explains that the majority of school shooters are young males, who are considerably more aggressive than the rest of the population. A majority of gamers are also young males. Thus, it appears likely that the view that school shooters are often people who play violent video game is more simply explained by the third variable of gender.
The idea of profiling school shooters by the video games they play comes from the erroneous belief that playing violent video games increases a person's aggression level, which in turn, can cause people to perpetrate extreme acts of violence, such as a school shooting. There is little to no data supporting this hypothesis (Ferguson, 2009) but it has become a vivid profile used by the media since the Columbine Massacre in 1999.
A summation of past research on video game violence find that video games have little to no effect on aggression (Anderson,2004; Ferguson, 2007 & Spencer, 2009). Again, this supports the idea that although it is a popular opinion to link school shooters to being violent video gamers, this misconception is often attributable to third variables and has not been supported by research on the connection between aggression and gaming.
Ultimately, this type of profiling is popular in media but not supported by any data (Anderson, 2004).
Frequency trends
Beginning in the late 1990s, there has been a steep increase in the frequency of school shootings across the globe. In the United States specifically, the most recent trend has been downward following the spikes of the 1990s, yet at the same time they are trending towards a higher likelihood of being premeditated and executed with a strict plan in mind.
Differences globally
United States
School shootings are considered an "overwhelmingly American" phenomenon due to the availability of firearms in the United States.
Infamous school shootings that occurred in the United States include the 1966 University of Texas tower shooting, the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, and the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Other school shootings that resulted in multiple casualties occurred at Northern Illinois University in 2008 and Santana High School in 2001, along with Red Lake Senior High School in 2005, Umpqua Community College in 2015, Marshall County High School in 2018, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.
There were 11 firearm-related events that occurred at a school or campus in the first 23 days of 2018.
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21st century
A 2015 investigation by CNN identified "more than 40 people...charged with Columbine-style plots" since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and found that almost all were white male teenagers and almost all had studied the Columbine attack or cited the Columbine perpetrators Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as inspiration.
2000s
|March 7, 2018 | Birmingham, Alabama |0,000,0011 |0,000,0011 |Two students were shot at a high school in Birmingham Alabama. When students were being dismissed for the day at least two shots were fired. The gunshots resulted in the death of a 17 year old female and injuries to a 17 year old male. Both students attended Huffman high school. The school was placed on lock down while police were dispatched to the scene. The police considered the incident to be an accidental shooting. |-
2010s
Studies of United States school shootings
During 1996, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) together with the US Department of Education and the United States Department of Justice, published a review of deaths related to schools occurring as a result of violence, including explicitly "unintentional firearm-related death", for the academic years 1992-1993 and 1993-1994. A second study (Anderson; Kaufman; Simon 2001), a continuation from the 1996 study, was published December 5, and covered the period 1994-1999.
Cultural references
Californian punk rock group The Offspring has created two songs about school shootings in the United States. In "Come Out and Play" (1994), the focus is on clashing school gangs, lamenting that "[kids] are getting weapons with the greatest of ease", "It goes down the same as a thousand before / No one's getting smarter / No one's learning the score / A never ending spree of death and violence and hate". In the 2008 song "Hammerhead", a campus gunman thinks he is a soldier in a warzone.
Canada
The following is a list of shooting incidents that have occurred at schools in Canada.
Mexico
The following is a list of incidents of shootings that occurred at schools in Mexico.
Europe
The following is a list of incidents of shootings that occurred at schools in the continent of Europe.
South America
The following is a list of incidents of shootings that occurred in South American schools.
Asia
The following is a list of incidents of shootings that occurred in schools in the continent of Asia.
Oceania
The following is a list of incidents of shootings that occurred in Oceanic region.
Africa
The following is a list of incidents of shootings that occurred in schools in the continent of Africa.
Political impact
School shootings and other mass killings have had a major political impact. Governments have discussed gun-control laws, to increase time for background checks. Also, bulletproof school supplies have been created, including backpacks, desks, bullet-resistant door panels, and classroom whiteboards (or bulletin boards) which reinforce walls or slide across doors to deflect bullets. Another organization that has proposed possible solutions to school shootings is the National Rifle Association (NRA), to allow teachers to carry weapons on school grounds as a means of protecting themselves and others. So far, ten states have already introduced legislation to allow weapons on school property with eighteen states already allowing guns to be carried on school grounds, but not without constraints. Most states also require the gun carriers to receive advance permission from the districts' superintendents or trustees. "In New York State, written permission from the school is required in order to carry a firearm on school grounds."
Due to the political impact, this has spurred some to press for more stringent gun control laws. In the United States, the National Rifle Association is opposed to such laws, and some groups have called for fewer gun control laws, citing cases of armed students ending shootings and halting further loss of life, and claiming that the prohibitions against carrying a gun in schools do not deter the gunmen. One such example is the Mercaz HaRav Massacre, where the attacker was stopped by a student, Yitzhak Dadon, who shot him with his personal firearm which he lawfully carried concealed. At a Virginia law school, there is a disputed claim that three students retrieved pistols from their cars and stopped the attacker without firing a shot. Also, at a Mississippi high school, the Vice Principal retrieved a firearm from his vehicle and then eventually stopped the attacker as he was driving away from the school. In other cases, such as shootings at Columbine and Red Lake High Schools, the presence of an armed police officer did little to nothing to prevent the killings.
A ban on the ownership of handguns was introduced in the United Kingdom (with the exception of Northern Ireland) following the Dunblane massacre.
The Gun-Free Schools Act was passed in 1994 in response to gun related violence in schools, as a result to that a lot of school system started adopting the Zero-Tolerance Law. The Gun-Free school act required people to be expelled from the school for a year. By the year of 1997 the Zero-Tolerance for any type of weapon was implemented by more than 90 percent of U.S public schools.
Police response and countermeasures
Analysis of the Columbine school shooting and other incidents where first responders waited for backup has resulted in changed recommendations regarding what bystanders and first responders should do. An analysis of 84 mass shooting cases in the US from 2000 to 2010 found that the average response time by police was 3 minutes. In most instances that exceeds the time the shooter is engaged in killing. While immediate action may be extremely dangerous, it may save lives which would be lost if people involved in the situation remain passive, or a police response is delayed until overwhelming force can be deployed. It is recommended that civilians involved in the incident take active steps to evacuate, hide, or counter the shooter and that individual law enforcement officers present or first arriving at the scene attempt immediately to engage the shooter. In many instances, immediate action by civilians or law enforcement has saved lives. For these reasons, it is recommended that civilians are properly trained in how to respond to active shooter situations.
College and university response and countermeasures
The Massengill Report was an after-action report created in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting, which brought national attention to the need for colleges and universities to take concerning behavior and threats seriously. It has led to the creation of hundreds of behavioral intervention teams which help access and coordinate institutional responses to behavioral concerns on college and university campuses.
Armed classrooms
There has been considerable policy discussion about how to help prevent school and other types of mass shootings. One suggestion that has come up is the idea to allow firearms in the classroom. "Since the issue of arming teachers is a relatively new topic, it has received little empirical study. Therefore, most of the literature does not come from peer reviewed sources but rather published news reports. In addition, most of these reports are not objective and clearly appear to support a specific side of the debate." So far, data has been inconclusive as to whether or not arming teachers would have any sort of benefit for schools. For years, some areas in the US have allowed "armed classrooms" to deter (or truncate) future attacks by changing helpless victims into armed defenders. Advocates of arming teachers claim that it will reduce fatalities in school shootings, but many others disagree.
Many teachers have had their concerns with the idea of armed classrooms. "One teacher stated that although she is pro-gun, she does not feel as though she could maintain gun safety on school grounds (Reuters, 2012). Teachers expressed the fear that bigger students could overpower them, take the weapon, and then use it against the teacher or other students." Some members of the armed forces have also had concerns with armed classrooms. Police forces in Texas brought up the potential for teachers to leave a gun where a student could retrieve and use it. "They are further concerned that if every teacher had a gun, there would be an unnecessarily large number of guns in schools (even including elementary schools). This large number of guns could lead to accidental shootings, especially those involving younger children who do not understand what guns do."
Fortunately this is not the case for schools throughout the country which have had great success with their teachers being armed" as they followed the plan the government outlined to keep the children safe, proper training for each person who would be handling the weapon, screening to ensure individuals using the guns are willing to protect the children from a threat with the gun they are trained to use.
There are some teachers who want to carry a firearm to protect their students. Kasey Hansen, a special needs teacher in Utah thinks that every teacher should carry. She says, "We are the first line of defense. Someone is going to call the cops and they are going to be informed, but how long is it going to take for them to get to the school? And in that time how many students are going to be affected by the gunman roaming the halls?"
In order to diminish school shootings all together there are many preventative measures that can be taken such as:
- Installing wireless panic alarms to alert law enforcement.
- Limiting points of entry with security guarding them.
- Strategically placing telephones for emergencies so police are always reachable at any point in the campus.
- Employing school psychologists to monitor and provide mental health services for those that need help.
- Coordinating a response plan between local police and schools in the event of a threat.
In a 2013 research report published by the Center for Homicide Research, they find that many also reject the idea of having armed classrooms due to what is termed the "weapons effect," which is the phenomenon in which simply being in the presence of a weapon can increase feelings of aggression. "In Berkowitz & LaPage's (1967) examination of this effect, students who were in the presence of a gun reported higher levels of aggressive feelings towards other students and gave more violent evaluations of other students' performance on a simple task in the form of electric shocks. This finding points to possible negative outcomes for students exposed to guns in the classroom (Simons & Turner, 1974; Turner & Simons, 1976)."
In 2008, Harrold Independent School District in Texas became the first public school district in the U.S. to allow teachers with state-issued firearm-carry permits to carry their arms in the classroom; special additional training and ricochet-resistant ammunition were required for participating teachers. Students at the University of Utah have been allowed to carry concealed pistols (so long as they possess the appropriate state license) since a State Supreme Court decision in 2006. In addition to Utah, Wisconsin and Mississippi each have legislation that allow students, faculty and employees with the proper permit, to carry concealed weapons on their public university's campuses. Colorado and Oregon state courts have ruled in favor of Campus Carry laws by denying University's proposals to ban guns on campus. Ruling that the UC Board of Regents and the Oregon University System did not have the authority to ban weapons on campus. A selective ban was then re-instated, wherein Oregon state universities enacted a ban on guns in school building and sporting events or by anyone contracted with the university in question. A commentary in the conservative National Review Online argues that the armed school approach for preventing school attacks, while new in the US, has been used successfully for many years in Israel and Thailand. Teachers and school officials in Israel are allowed and encouraged to carry firearms if they have former military experience in the IDF, which almost all do. Statistics on what percentage of teachers are actually armed are unavailable and in Israel, for example, the intent is to counter politically motivated terrorist attacks on high value, soft targets, not personal defense against, or protection from, unbalanced individual students.
The National Rifle Association has explicitly called for placing armed guards in all American schools. However, Steven Strauss, a faculty member at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, offered a preliminary calculation that placing armed guards in every American school might cost as much as $15 billion/year, and perhaps only save 10 lives per year (at a cost of $1.5 billion/life saved).
Preventive measures
A preventive measure proposed for stopping school shooting has been focused on securing firearms in the home. A shooting in Sparks, Nevada on October 21, 2013, left a teacher and the shooter, a twelve-year-old student, dead with two seriously injured. The handgun used in the shooting had been taken from the shooter's home. Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Red Lake High School in Red Lake, Minnesota in 2005, and Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky in 1997 also involved legal guns taken from the home.
A 2000 study of firearm storage in the United States found that "from the homes with children and firearms, 55% reported to have one or more firearms in an unlocked place." 43% reported keeping guns without a trigger lock in an unlocked place. In 2005 a study was done on adult firearm storage practices in the United States found that over 1.69 million youth under age 18 are living in homes with loaded and unlocked firearms. Also, 73% of children under age 10 living in homes with guns reported knowing the location of their parents' firearms.
Most states have Child Access Prevention Laws - laws designed to prevent children from accessing firearms. Each state varies in the degree of the severity of these laws. The toughest laws enforce criminal liability when a minor achieves access to a carelessly stored firearm. The weakest forbid people from directly providing a firearm to a minor. There is also a wide range of laws that fall in between the two extremes. One example is a law that enforces criminal liability for carelessly stored firearms, but only where the minor uses the firearm and causes death or serious injury. An example of a weaker law is a law that enforces liability only in the event of reckless, knowing or deliberate behavior by the adult.
Countermeasures
In 2015 Southwestern High School in Shelbyville, Indiana, was portrayed as possibly the "safest school in America". The school has been used as a "Safe School Flagship" of possible countermeasures to an active shooter.
- All teachers have lanyards with a panic button that alerts police.
- Classrooms have automatically locking "hardened doors", and windows have "hardened exterior glass" to deflect bullets and physical attack.
- Cameras, described as "military-grade", that feed video directly to Shelby County Sheriff's Office are mounted throughout the school.
- Smoke canisters mounted in the roof of corridors can be remotely discharged to slow a shooter's movement.
See also
References
Literature
- Muschert, Glen - Sumiala, Johanna (eds.): School Shootings: Mediatized Violence in a Global Age. Studies in Media and Communications, 7. Bingley: Emerald, 2012. ISSN 2050-2060 ISBN 978-1-78052-918-9
External links
- BBC timeline of US school shootings
- Student Threat Assessment and Management System Guide
- Horrific School Shootings - slideshow by Life magazine
- School Shooters .info - database of information and documents relating to school shooters
- ^ Eppes, Mary (March 8, 2018). "JSU Student Shot on campus". MSNews. Retrieved 17 March 2018.
Source of article : Wikipedia
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