Mass Shootings Research Articles

An Archaeology of the Pomeranian Crime of 1939: The Case of Mass Crimes in the Szpęgawski Forest (Poland)

This article presents the general historical context of the mass shootings in the fall of 1939 in the pre-war Gdańsk Pomerania, Poland, and introduces the very term “Pomeranian Crime of 1939.” The executions in the Szpęgawski Forest, where between 2,413 and 7,000 people lost their lives, illustrate of the process itself. The results of archaeological research carried out at the site of the mass killings in the Szpęgawski Forest in 2023 is used as a case study. Archaeological research is shedding new light on the crime and its cover-up through analyses of the material evidence.

News media heeding call to reduce reporting names of mass shooters

The U.S. news media has been under pressure to avoid reporting the names of the perpetrators of mass shootings. This research shows a connection between the number of people killed in a mass shooting and the number of times the news media report the perpetrators’ name. It shows that from 2012 to 2021 the news media heeded the call to limit the number of times the name of a mass shooter was reported.

Bringing the firepower: examining muzzle energy and caliber of ammunition in the context of mass shootings

ABSTRACT Prior research focusing on mass shootings in the US has established the significant role of weapons in these events. Despite the extensive literature on the topic, minimal consideration has been given to the specific muzzle energy and caliber of ammunition used in these events and whether these factors influence the outcome of these shooting incidents. The current study examined the effect of muzzle energy and caliber of ammunition on the number of victims killed and injured in mass shootings. Analysis of The Violence Project (Version 6) mass shooting dataset indicated that the muzzle energy of the ammunition used in a mass shooting was positively associated with the number of people killed and total victims while the caliber of the ammunition was negatively associated with those outcomes. However, these findings were largely accounted for by the use of an assault weapon with high-capacity magazines.

Preventing the Next Mass Shooting in America

Preventing the Next Mass Shooting in America

Firearm-Related Violence in the Pediatric Population.

Children, particularly adolescents, are dying from firearm-related injuries. Screening for firearms, early recognition of firearm-related concerns, appropriate referrals, and follow-up are crucial to the safety of our patients and their families. Clinicians are strongly encouraged to address firearm-related violence during clinical encounters. Risk reduction, advocacy, and policy implementation are key in mitigating the long-term negative sequelae of firearm violence in youth. The epidemiology of firearm-related death, mass shootings, school firearm violence, adolescent health, prevention, injury patterns, postinjury care, policy, and resources are all discussed in this article. [Pediatr Ann. 2024;53(1):e28-e33.].

Media, Politics Mass Shootings and Terrorism

Media, Politics Mass Shootings and Terrorism

Factors of social equilibrium shaping and preventing violence

The continuous landscape of violence that unfolds parallel to everyday life undermines our sense of well-being, security, and trust in the effectiveness of institutions that are evidently failing to guide individuals to act and react in socially desirable ways. In the paper, the authors explore the phenomenon of violence within the framework of objectively established structures and the circumstances under which economic polarization and power polarization dominate, arguing that mass shootings represent factors that significantly influence the emergence and frequency of violence. Since moral competence is one of the key resources of society for successfully coping with adaptive demands, particularly during crises, increasing connectedness, developing moral competence, and enhancing empathy are imperatives for building a society that can consistently and effectively respond to the (moral) challenges posed by its environment. The paper aims to point towards ideas on violence prevention by affirming the importance of moral competence in preventing violence, thereby preventing moral confusion, and reducing the risk of society?s inadequate response to moral challenges.

Correction to: an Examination of US School Mass Shootings, 2017–2022: Findings and Implications

Correction to: an Examination of US School Mass Shootings, 2017–2022: Findings and Implications

Reflections on evaluators' role in community needs assessment

Evaluators play a critical role in shaping evaluation practices, but in practice this can be challenging to accomplish in ways that are productive as well as healing. This article discusses evaluation practices in the context of a project commissioned as needs-based to assist with community recovery after a racially motivated mass shooting in an urban neighbourhood marginalised by crime, income, race and unemployment. Development of an unmet needs survey included incorporating initial data collected by empowered community leaders with subsequent data collected by evaluators through focus groups and surveys. Evaluators then analysed and organised the data into a report that community leaders could submit to local and state officials. Identifying details were omitted out of an abundance of concern and respect for the privacy of the communities and constituents that were directly and indirectly affected by the tragedy that inspired this discourse.
 
 
 
 This article presents a reflective discussion between evaluators on whether or not it would have been appropriate to suggest integrating an assets-based community development (ABCD) approach within a commissioned community needs assessment. It also covers the evaluators’ process of using a critical lens to retrospectively assess the appropriateness and effectiveness of adopting an asset-based community development (ABCD) approach. The discussion emphasises the importance of acknowledging and engaging with the diverse perspectives held by the wider evaluation community. It recognises, too, the value of ongoing dialogue and debate to encourage evaluators to critically reflect on the appropriateness and implications of integrating a variety of approaches within community needs assessments. This article also explores how the authors ‘made space’ for this conversation, including aspects of content analysis and consideration of crucial conversations, parameters and ethics, in the hope of further stimulating discussion and fostering a decision-making process that would encompass a range of viewpoints, ultimately driving more effective and responsive community development practices.
 
 

Hold your fire! Influence of female legislators on gun legislation in the United States

AbstractObjectiveThis article considers the influence of female legislators on gun legislation across U.S. states. Females have behavioral differences with males and likely different exposure to gun‐related violence.MethodUsing data from 1991 to 2020, we estimate the drivers of gun legislation across U.S. states. The dependent variables are alternately the total number of gun laws enacted and 5‐year differences in gun laws.ResultsWe find that female legislators in state houses significantly increase the supply of gun laws. Female senators, on the other hand, were no different from their male counterparts. In other results, states with greater population density had more gun laws, while economic prosperity, race, and the elderly population did not generally have significant effects. Finally, when special interest aspects, involving gun ownership, mass shooting episodes, and states with single‐party control of the legislative and executive branches are considered, mass shootings and single‐party control increase laws, while gun owners have the opposite effect. These findings show significance when 5‐year differences in gun laws are used.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that when it comes to gun legislation and female legislator representation, it matters which chamber of the legislature females are elected to. Furthermore, different interest groups can significantly bear upon gun legislation.

Public mass shootings cause large surges in Americans' engagement with gun policy.

As public mass shootings continue to plague the United States, a growing scholarly literature seeks to understand the political effects of these tragic events. This literature, however, focuses on public opinion or turnout and vote choice, leaving open to question whether or not public mass shootings affect a range of other important actions citizens may take to engage with gun policy. Leveraging the as-good-as random timing of high-publicity public mass shootings over the past decade and an immense array of publicly available and proprietary data, we demonstrate that these events consistently cause surges in public engagement with gun policy-including internet searches, streaming documentaries, discussion on social media, signing petitions, and donating to political action committees. Importantly, we document the behaviors where shootings induce polarizing upswings in engagement and those where upswings skew toward gun control. Finally, we demonstrate that low-publicity shootings largely exert little-to-no effect on our outcomes.

Arm the educators… but not without conditions: a qualitative assessment of law enforcement officers’ support for armed teacher policies

ABSTRACT In the wake of high-profile mass shootings in schools, policymakers have explored options designed to mitigate harms to students, faculty, staff, and visitors during similar tragedies. Among the most controversial measures introduced has been armed teacher policies, which currently are authorized in some form in more than half of U.S. states despite no evidence about their effectiveness in such situations. Public support for arming teachers is divided, though the perceptions of law enforcement, who would be tasked with responding to the shooting and could potentially encounter armed teachers, has been largely overlooked. This study helps to address this gap through a qualitative evaluation of feedback provided by officers as part of a broader survey. Ten subthemes were identified in the responses and were grouped into three broader categories: the value of armed teachers, training (both broadly and related to specific requirements), and other considerations. Broader implications for policymakers stemming from these perceptions also are explored.

Aporia in Barack Obama’s 2016 Dallas Police Memorial Speech

ABSTRACT On 13 July 2016, President Barack Obama delivered a speech memorializing five police officers slain during a peaceful protest in downtown Dallas, Texas. Obama’s speech came on the heels of many other mass shootings, some associated with acts of racialized violence, during his administration. We argue that by deploying aporia, Obama addressed the conflicting constraints and exigencies exposed by the Dallas shooting and opened inventional possibilities that included virtuous behavior, commemorative speech, and dialogic-reciprocal encounters that also reappraised the concept of double consciousness. We conclude by exploring how aporia enables and undercuts discussions of complex social problems during epideictic encounters.

The leading personnel of the German Police apparatus in Kyiv, 1941–1943

On September 29–30, 1941, the mass shooting of the predominantly Jews in Babyn Yar was carried out by execution teams consisting of members of Sonderkommando 4a and the 45th (reserve) and 303rd police battalions assigned to help. Members of Ukrainian police were engaged in sorting the belongings of the dead and other auxiliary functions. As a result, up to 34,000 Jews were killed in two days. Historians have already established the biographies of the main perpetrators involved in these shootings. However, the killings did not end there. Jews, POW’s, communists, members of the Soviet and OUN underground, as well as ordinary citizens were executed throughout the entire German occupation of Kyiv. The main perpetrators of mass violence belonged to the SS und Polizei apparatus. Nevertheless, the issue of responsible institutions and their personnel remains unsolved. That is why the author of the article aims to highlight the personnel of two main German institutions — the Ordnungspolizei, and Sicherheitspolizei, and SD.

Conservative Anger and Police Misconduct: Exploring Conservative Discussion of Police on Social Media

ABSTRACT This exploratory study applies thematic analysis to posts made in a popular conservative subreddit on the social media platform Reddit to understand how conservatives discuss police with one another in the context of two ongoing American tragedies—acts of race-based police brutality and mass shootings—in which police seem, at face value, to play very different roles as victimizers and first responders respectively. The study finds that the roles of police are discussed very differently in the online community studied. Within the context of race-based police brutality, popular posts tend to criticize liberals rather than police, and funding police is associated with better crime control. In contrast, posters highlight police inaction during mass shootings—particularly the shooting in Uvalde, Texas—as a form of misconduct and issue calls for accountability. These results suggest that the conservative community studied views defending members of the public as an important obligation of law enforcement, expects that providing the police with resources will enable them to better carry out this obligation, and wants police who fail in doing so held to account.

Post-event support as a critical element of crisis preparedness: Reflections from the Mass Casualty Commission.

Including post-event support planning as part of crisis preparedness is necessary to meet the emotional and psychological needs of those most affected. This necessarily requires engagement with health and community organization leaders best positioned to provide immediate, short- and long-term post-event supports as part of the response planning for a crisis. Drawing on the findings of the Mass Casualty Commission, the public inquiry tasked with investigating Canada's worst mass shooting, the critical role of post-event supports is explored as a critical element of crisis preparedness.

Alienation flows through the barrel of a gun: Despair, mass shootings, and suicide in an American settler colony

In what is now referred to by many as the United States, gun violence rages on. When one considers the country’s sheer number of annual gun deaths, the data is as overwhelming as it is distressing. Indeed, perhaps the only thing outpacing the trauma and loss of life wrought by gun violence is the anguish and grief of those who are impacted by it. Despite the shocking statistics and fervent calls for change, few efforts have been effective at curbing the harm. Such a reality raises pressing questions about why gun violence in the U.S. is so prevalent, and what can be done to prevent it. In this Contention, I maintain that the only way out of the U.S.’s centuries-long doom spiral of gun violence will be reckoning with the nation’s historical-ongoing trajectories of settler colonialism, heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and imperialism. I further contend that any effort to eliminate gun violence in the U.S. mandates ending mass alienation and taking masculinity to task. Accordingly, I illustrate how guns are not actually the root of the problem, even though their ease of access and the culture(s) surrounding them are corollary symptoms that necessitate urgent intervention. In short, I argue that resolving gun violence in the U.S. demands a historical-structural-intersectional focus and that the source of the country’s firearm-involved deaths are alienation, despair, and oppression owed to capitalism, entrenched patriarchal social relations, and the settler colonial state­­––all of which must be abolished if we are seriously concerned with livable futures.

Depictions of Firearm Violence Perpetrators and Support for Firearm Policies: An Experimental Survey Analysis of Mental Illness and Criminal Background

We used an experimental study design with newspaper vignettes to examine how characteristics of gun violence perpetrators including mental illness and previous incarceration influence three categories of firearm policy support in a national sample of U.S. adults ( N = 3,387). Depictions of mass shootings elicit greater support for firearm policies than other types such as suicides, accidents, or street-level homicides. Further, depictions of mental illness and previous incarceration increase support for policies regulating who may legally own, purchase, and possess firearms. Demographic characteristics of perpetrators such as gender and race largely do not affect public policy support, although personal characteristics of respondents themselves are predictive of support.

The Field’s mass shooting: emergency medical services response

BackgroundMajor incidents (MI) happen infrequently in Scandinavia and mass shootings are even less frequently occurring. Case reports and research are called for, as literature is scarce. On 3rd July 2022, a mass shooting took place at the shopping mall Field’s in Copenhagen, Denmark. Three people were killed and seven injured by a gunman, firing a rifle inside the mall. A further 21 people suffered minor injuries during the evacuation of the mall. In this case report, we describe the emergency medical services (EMS) incident response and evaluate the EMS´ adherence to the MI management guidelines to identify possible areas of improvement.Case presentationForty-eight EMS units including five Tactical Emergency Medical Service teams were dispatched to the incident. Four critically injured patients were taken to two trauma hospitals. The deceased patients were declared dead at the scene and remained there for the sake of the investigation. A total of 24 patients with less severe and minor injuries were treated at four different hospitals in connection with the attack. The ambulance resources were inherently limited in the initial phase of the MI, mandating improvisation in medical incident command. Though challenged, Command and Control, Safety, Communication, Assessment, Triage, Treatment, Transport (CSCATTT) principles were followed.ConclusionsThe EMS response generally adhered to national guidelines for MI. The activation of EMS and the hospital preparedness program was relevant. Important findings were communication shortcomings; inherent lack of readily available ambulance resources in the initial critical phase; uncertainty regarding the number of perpetrators; uncertainty regarding number of casualties and social media rumors that unnecessarily hampered and prolonged the response. The incident command had to use non-standard measures to mitigate potential challenges.

Mass shootings, firearm injuries, and mental health

IntroductionThe correlation between mass shootings, firearm injuries, and mental health is an ongoing polarized debate within the U.S., making it essential to develop public policy on mental illness and firearm injuries exacerbated by a significant increase in firearm sales in March 2020. Although many mass shooters are labeled “mentally ill,” mental illness is only present in a small minority of cases. Most mentally ill people are never violent but are more likely to be the victims of violence.Easy access to firearms and a triggering event deriving from social and economic inequalities are primary causes of mass shootings and growing online radicalization. Radicalization can easily lead to fatal firearm injuries, particularly for individuals with diagnosed or undiagnosed mental illness. RecommendationsProposed solutions include permits for firearms purchase, including a 25-year-old age limit, universal background checks, and banning large-capacity magazines. Additionally, a speedy and effective law enforcement response is the sole factor and the most reliable way to stop a mass shooting once it has started. The research identified several other recommendations, including expanding Medicare and mental health care access, expanding school safety and law enforcement training, and promoting public education about mental health and firearm safety.