School Shootings Research Articles

Book Review of “School Zone: A Problem Analysis of Student Offending and Victimization”

The subject of school violence remains an enduring subject of media coverage and discourse in the United States and a consistent source of conversation both public and private. That, of course, reflects the steady drumbeat of school shootings in this country that justifiably garner so much attention (and horror). Yet, as School Zone makes clear, those horrific incidents that symbolize the issue of school violence represent only a small component of that issue, and the many other aspects of school violence—and school-based crime more generally—are neither interrogated nor understood nearly enough outside the realm of academic sociology, criminology, and psychology. What the authors do with this book, therefore, is shine a light on the full scope of that issue to illuminate what does and does not go on in school, attempt to answer the important question of “why?”, and distill some important lessons from this information about what can be done in response. As such, this book is both timely and needed, and it serves an important role in translating sociological knowledge for broader use.

Is school safety mainly about school shootings? Research-informed guidance for the field

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.

Infrastructure of social control: A multi-level counterfactual analysis of surveillance and Black education

In response to the continued reoccurrence of school shootings, policymakers have increased surveillance measures to ensure safer learning environments. However, in addition to being used to preempt school shootings, these surveillance measures may have increased the capacity of schools to identify and punish students for more common and less serious offenses, which may negatively impact the learning environment. Using counterfactual and multi-level modeling strategies with national survey data, we show that schools ranking highest in surveillance infrastructure suspend more students than schools that rank among the lowest in their surveillance capability, even when controlling for school social disorder and student misbehavior. In addition to suspending more students, the infrastructure of surveillance reduces test scores in mathematics and college enrollment altogether for suspended and non-suspended alike, suggesting the presence of negative spillover effects. We conclude that the “safety tax” students pay with their average levels of test performance and college going rates is greatest for Black students of both genders given their overrepresentation in high-surveillance schools. The article concludes with a discussion of control wave theory and the study's implications for policy and practice.

Learning from Error in Violence Prevention: A School Shooting as an Organizational Accident

This article argues that the organizational structure and culture of schools may impede the prevention of violence in America’s schools, specifically threat assessment and management for students of concern. The data come from a qualitative case study of a school shooting where two students died; the data include deposition testimony from 12 school officials and more than 4,000 pages of school and law enforcement records. The findings illustrate the way the school’s organizational structure and culture shaped and hindered violence prevention practices. The tightly coupled guidelines for threat assessment created an institutional myth of safety and a false sense of security for the school and district, and the loosely coupled structure of the organization led educators to modify guidelines and make decisions about the student’s behavior problems and discipline without consulting others. The school’s culture of autonomy for staff and fresh start mentality for students created unintentional secrets about the history of the student’s difficulties, which gave educators little context for understanding the problem behaviors they observed and inhibited the threat assessment team’s ability to adequately evaluate and monitor those behaviors. Recommendations for building organizational structures and cultures that support violence prevention in schools are discussed.

The parent trap: Extending New York State's parental liability law to hold parents liable for minor child's bullying

AbstractBullying is a phenomenon that results in psychological and physical effects, or even suicides and school shootings. Many states have enacted anti‐bullying laws to prevent bullying, but we still see the same tragedies that come from it. A town in New York jails parents for their child's bullying and has seen improvement. However, the goal of this amendment is to deter, not to punish. To protect the welfare and safety of our state's children, this Note proposes that New York amend its parental liability law by adopting the parental liability laws of Oregon, Tennessee, and the notification law of Utah.

STOP WARS

STOP WARS

Talking with youth about school shootings: Taking initiative in the new school year

Last month's commentary focused on the link between gun reform and prevention of school shootings, with a promise to follow up this month on how we talk to children about tragic events. There is no question that school violence is impacting our nation's youth, with recent discussion outlining the mechanisms by which this can occur. For example, a recent APA's Monitor on Psychology article noted the increase in anxiety and stress in children because of mass shootings and referred to a “cascade of collective trauma” (Abrams, 2022). The article notes that most teens worry about a shooting at their school and that a third of adults avoid some settings due to a fear about violence occurring there. Of course, for those directly impacted, suffering is increased, with effects such as increased absenteeism and reduced high school and college graduation rates. Effects were noted into their mid-twenties — with lower employment rates and earnings. As the number of mass shootings overall increases, this creates a societal effect. Further, this is occurring during what has already been identified as a mental health crisis for our youth (AACAP, 2021).

Curating Art for Antirape and Ecofeminist Movements: A Conversation with Monika Fabijanska

Curating Art for Antirape and Ecofeminist Movements:A Conversation with Monika Fabijanska Michael Dango (bio) and Monika Fabijanska (bio) When ARIELLA AZOULAY asked, "Has anyone ever seen a photograph of rape?" she wanted to know about a visual economy of representations: which images are or are not allowed into public circulation. Images of murder, traffic accidents, and even school shootings are unfortunately ubiquitous in news broadcasts and Hollywood blockbusters. But not images of rape. For AZOULAY, this lack enforces a toxic commonsense about women's bodies: it maintains a visual culture in which women are available to be violated or are violated already; it leaves women unable to recognize rape when it happens to them; and it removes the grounds on which women can make "emergency claims" about sexual assault, claims that would activate political discussion rather than private therapy for a social group denied the status of a political class.1 Contributing images of rape is not the best or only feminist means of disrupting this visual economy and its political consequences. Indeed, graphic images of sexual violence tend to sensationalize rape rather than ending it, like Gaspar Noé's ten-minute long take of a brutal assault in Irréversible (2004). Perhaps for this [End Page 441] reason, when in 2018 Monika Fabijanska curated one of the most expansive art exhibitions devoted to representations of rape in contemporary U.S. women's art, The Unheroic Act, she made sure she was not inviting viewers into a "house of horrors." The exhibition—which was widely hailed by the New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, Art in America, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, and Art Papers and ranked fifth on Hyperallergic's best shows of the year in New York City—demonstrated the range in which artists had interrupted a masculinist tradition of depicting rape as "heroic," not just by focusing on survivors but by multiplying the modes of response available to them: shocking, seeking revenge, healing, documenting, educating, and organizing. Two years later, Fabijanska's exhibition on ecofeminism(s) continued to break stereotypes about the work of ecologically engaged feminist artists. Here was work that was not just written in "small letters," as Fabijanska puts it, but said in a "big voice" that was both technologically innovative as well as intellectually rigorous.2 As curator of ecofeminism(s), Fabijanska exposed a range of ecological responses and unpacked the diversity of strategies internal to ecofeminist movements. In her selection, she constructed a genealogy of resonance across artists: including an established cohort of recognizable names such as Ana Mendieta, Lynn Hershman Leeson, and even Barbara Kruger; up-and-coming artists like Bilge Friedlaender; and emergent artists such as Eliza Evans, Carla Maldonado, Jessica Segall, and Hanae Utamura. The Unheroic Act offered similar points of entry to audiences seeking feminist interventions in the visual culture surrounding rape. Fabijanska reframed the work of foundational feminist artists such as Suzanne Lacy, Yoko Ono, Senga Nengudi and Kara Walker with the paths taken after by younger artists such as Roya Amigh, Bang Geul Han and Naima Ramos-Chapman. Although trained as an art historian, Fabijanska came to curating after a decade as Poland's cultural attaché in New York (2000–2010), where she served as director of the Polish Cultural Institute. She saw as one of her charges "bringing the most cutting-edge and sophisticated of Poland's culture to the U.S., which was largely unknown here."3 In that position, she curated a multidisciplinary program of close to a hundred projects a year, by initiating and copresenting them at institutions across the country, including The Museum of Modern Art, The Jewish Museum, BAM–Brooklyn Academy of Music, La MaMa, the Lincoln Center, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the [End Page 442] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Jessica Segall, A Thirsty Person, Having Found a Spring, Stops to Drink, Does Not Contemplate Its Beauty (2011). Performance/video still, archival print. ©2011 Jessica Segall. Courtesy of the artist. UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The most important of her initiatives was the retrospective Alina Szapocznikow: Sculpture Undone, 1955–1972, organized by Connie Butler at MoMA in...

"Was Definitely Different Because They Were Kids": Caring for Patients From a School Shooting.

Trauma nurses may experience secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, and burnout as their clinical roles expose them to patients with traumatic injuries. Because traumatic events described as being most stressful for nurses involve sudden death or children and adolescents, multicasualty, school-associated shooting events are likely to be particularly stressful for nurses who care for the affected patients. This research examined the psychosocial effects of caring for patients in an inpatient trauma unit following a multicasualty, school-associated shooting event. This research was guided by a qualitative case series approach, a theory of secondary traumatic stress, and the compassion fatigue resilience model. Registered nurses who provided care in the trauma unit of a Level I trauma center to patients who were injured during a multicasualty, school-associated shooting event in the Southeastern United States were invited to participate. The three themes identified by this research were (a) innocence of the patients, (b) trajectories of increased emotions, and (c) processing emotional stressors. Nurses reported the benefits of peer support and provided recommendations to increase the efficacy of formal debriefing sessions. Nurses value self-care routines and peer support as coping mechanisms to foster well-being following exposure to traumatic events. Hospitals should encourage active participation in timely critical incident stress debriefings and promote the use of employee assistance services to support nursing staff after these events.

Sustained Effects of Animal-Assisted Crisis Response on Stress in School Shooting Survivors

Animal-assisted crisis response (AACR) is an intervention that harnesses the human-animal bond for therapeutic benefit through specially trained animal-handler teams deployed to provide comfort following a mass traumatic event. During the months and years following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018, therapy animals joined the campus community to promote healing and stress reduction. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the sustained effects on bonding and stress in a sample of survivors of the tragedy who participated in animal-assisted crisis response. Data was collected through a quasi-experimental study of three intervention groups (i.e., discussion of AACR, viewing photos related to AACR, and engaging with therapy animals). Cortisol analysis indicated a reduction in stress post-intervention across groups with the largest difference in the therapy animal interaction group. Implications for AACR and addressing the psychological effects of mass traumas are provided.

The Forgotten Children of Bath: Media and Memory of the Bath School Bombing of 1927 by Amie Marsh Jones

Reviewed by: The Forgotten Children of Bath: Media and Memory of the Bath School Bombing of 1927 by Amie Marsh Jones Arnie Bernstein Amie Marsh Jones. The Forgotten Children of Bath: Media and Memory of the Bath School Bombing of 1927. Self-published, 2021. Pp. 235. Bibliography. Notes. Photographs. Paperback: $24.99. The May 24, 2022, mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, unfolded on television in what is now a familiar pattern. The story was easy to cover, something that is both ironic and infuriating. Since the Columbine High School shooting of April 20, 1999, in Columbine, Colorado, a template has evolved for media outlets covering large-scale school murder—a configuration used for mass school killings at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and so many others. Cable news and broadcast networks interrupt their regular programming using the requisite plan to cover the unfolding horror. The relied-upon elements include reporters on the scene telling what they know, repeated images of victims fleeing the school grounds, interviews with eyewitnesses and survivors, law enforcement officials giving press conferences, and ubiquitous graphics coupled with dramatic music. In recent years, social media has gained ground in this unblinking coverage, with people inside the schools posting cell phone videos on TikTok and Twitter. Viewers are thrust onto the violent front lines in real time. It wasn’t always like this. On May 18, 1927, in the small farming community of Bath, Michigan, about sixteen miles outside of Lansing, an explosion rocked the local consolidated school, demolishing the north wing of the building in a matter of seconds. Not far from the scene, a farmhouse owned by Andrew Kehoe, a school trustee, was ablaze. Kehoe drove to the school, where he blew himself up in his truck, killing others in the process. The next day, the remains of his wife, Nellie, were found burned beyond recognition at the smoldering remains of their home. Five hundred pounds of dynamite were discovered beneath the undamaged main portion the school building; it was later estimated that about one hundred pounds of dynamite went off beneath the ruined north wing. In total, thirty-eight children and four adults were murdered, in addition to the deaths of Kehoe and Nellie. A sign found on the edge of Kehoe’s farm read “Killers Are Made, Not Born.” The Forgotten Children of Bath: Media and Memory of the Bath School Bombing of 1927 by Amie M. Jones is a thoughtful consideration of how America’s first mass school killing was reported by contemporary news sources. Just as today, people of the time wanted to know the basics of the massacre. Like modern audiences, they turned to the media for information. But in 1927 news reporting was mostly limited to newspapers. To a lesser extent, movie newsreels also got the word out. Radio, still struggling to find its voice, was not much of a factor. [End Page 120] There is an axiom, attributed to many sources, that newspapers are first rough draft of history. This adage provides a baseline that threads throughout the book, as Jones digs into the many tabloid stories by the reporters who headed to Bath in the wake the crime. In addition to Michigan papers, The New York Times and the Chicago Daily Tribune sent reporters to the scene. The Bath School bombing required a vocabulary necessary to match the terror of its sole perpetrator. The word “fiend” was often used to describe Kehoe. A common theme within the reportage was Kehoe’s terrorism contrasted to the town of Bath as a bucolic victim. This juxtaposition further emphasized the devastation, both physical and psychological, one man rendered upon his neighbors. The Bath School bombing was an incredible story, but it was wiped from front pages just a few days later when Charles Lindbergh took off from New York on his daring flight solo flight to Paris. The country—indeed, the world— was mad for “Lucky Lindy.” The media frenzy in Bath dissipated, which was probably the best thing that could have happened. A town bonded in collective mourning was no longer the hot story. Though repercussions of...

Use of whole blood deployment programs for mass casualty incidents: South Texas experience in regional response and preparedness.

Firearm-related deaths have become the leading cause of death in adolescents and children. Since the Sutherland Springs, TX mass casualty incident (MCI), the Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council for trauma instituted a prehospital whole blood (WB) program and blood deployment program for MCIs. The program was adopted statewide by the Texas Emergency Medical Task Force, of which Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council is the lead for Emergency Medical Task Force 8. The recent active shooter MCI in Uvalde, TX was the first time the MCI blood deployment program had been used. To our knowledge, no other similar programs exist in this or any other country. On May 24, 2022, 19 children and 2 adults were killed at an MCI in Uvalde, TX. The MCI WB deployment protocol was initiated, and South Texas Blood and Tissue Center prepared 15 U of low-titer O-positive whole blood and 10 U of leukoreduced O packed cells. The deployed blood arrived at Uvalde Memorial Hospital within 67 minutes. One of the pediatric patients sustained multiple gunshots to the chest and extremities. The child was hypotensive and received 2 U of leukoreduced O packed cells, one at the initial hospital and another during transport. On arrival, the patient required 2 U of low-titer O-positive whole blood and underwent a successful hemorrhage control operation. The remaining blood was returned to South Texas Blood and Tissue Center for distribution. Multiple studies have shown the association of early blood product resuscitation and improved mortality, with WB being the ideal resuscitative product for many. The ongoing efforts in South Texas serve as a model for development of similar programs throughout the country to reduce preventable deaths. This event represents the first ever successful deployment of WB to the site of an MCI related to a school shooting in the modern era. Therapeutic/Care Management; Level V.

An Examination of US School Mass Shootings, 2017-2022: Findings and Implications.

ObjectivesGun violence in the USA is a pressing social and public health issue. As rates of gun violence continue to rise, deaths resulting from such violence rise as well. School shootings, in particular, are at their highest recorded levels. In this study, we examined rates of intentional firearm deaths, mass shootings, and school mass shootings in the USA using data from the past 5 years, 2017–2022, to assess trends and reappraise prior examination of this issue.MethodsExtant data regarding shooting deaths from 2017 through 2020 were obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the web-based injury statistics query and reporting system (WISQARS), and, for school shootings in particular (2017–2022), from Everytown Research & Policy.ResultsThe number of intentional firearm deaths and the crude death rates increased from 2017 to 2020 in all age categories; crude death rates rose from 4.47 in 2017 to 5.88 in 2020. School shootings made a sharp decline in 2020—understandably so, given the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent government or locally mandated school shutdowns—but rose again sharply in 2021.ConclusionsRecent data suggest continued upward trends in school shootings, school mass shootings, and related deaths over the past 5 years. Notably, gun violence disproportionately affects boys, especially Black boys, with much higher gun deaths per capita for this group than for any other group of youth. Implications for policy and practice are provided.

School shootings: Advocacy and education as prevention

Perhaps the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas in May of 2022 will lead to lasting change with the signing of the bipartisan gun bill on June 26 by President Biden. Though not as far reaching as some hoped it would be — it does extend requirements for background checks for prospective buyers under the age of 21, funds increases in mental health and drug courts to carry out red flag laws and confiscate guns, funds increases in school safety, toughens laws against trafficking of guns, and includes recent partners in the ban on domestic abusers purchasing firearms. These are positive steps.

In Case You Haven't Heard…

A decade ago, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre when mass shootings gripped the nation, the mental health community staunchly fought against any notion that people with mental illness are more likely than others to commit gun violence. Instead, the community said — with plentiful research to back it up — that people with mental illness are more likely to be victims of gun violence. Well, how a little money can change reality. Now, as Congress wraps up gun legislation focused on increasing federal funding for mental illness — funding that is needed — that argument has gone by the wayside. The groups that will benefit from the money support the idea that yes, people with mental illness are more likely to commit gun violence. More money for treatment, good. More stigma for people with mental illness, not good. People with substance use disorders already know they can't easily buy guns. And by the way, easily buying guns is also not good. For more, see the excellent report in last month's Roll Call. https://rollcall.com/2022/06/15/15gunsmental/

AACAP re‐issues resource library on guns and violence

The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) has a library of resources for clinicians to turn to, which may be particularly useful in the wake of the school shootings in May. Pro‐gun advocates insisted that the solution is more guns and hardening of schools, and sometimes also mention treatment for mental illness. Yes, treatment is needed, of course, but not instead of cutting the gun supply — rather, in addition to it.

Guns, Classrooms, and Politics: Eliciting and Reflecting Upon Education Student Beliefs in the Age of School Shootings

Unearthing the perspectives students bring with them in their college-level education coursework is especially important as education instructors are tasked with interrupting the unexamined proliferation of dominant ideologies among future educational professionals. The introduction to education course serves as an important site for this interrogation. One trend largely unexplored in the scholarly literature is the pedagogical use of controversy in introduction to education coursework. This study analyzes student discussion of the controversy of school gun violence within a redesigned introduction to education course. Data for this study come from student postings and final reflection papers in an online section of that course. Qualitative analysis of student thinking reveal three themes regarding U.S. school gun violence: gun violence as political intrusion into schools, gun policy as marginalizing and legitimizing presence, and gun use as professional boundary for teachers. These themes provide insight into the ways education students conceptualize teachers, professional educators, and the context of schooling. The student interactions and reflections in this study also suggest that scaffolded discussions of school gun violence present a poignant opportunity for education coursework to foster authentic student reflection on the policy, politics, and professions associated with American education.

Differences in Perception of Safety Before and After School Shootings: A Multi-Event Analysis

ABSTRACT Scholars have explored ways in which school shooting events have impacted students’ perception of safety. However, less is known on whether the effects of school shootings are stable across time and event. This study uses data collected through the Delaware School Survey before and after three school shootings, Columbine (1999), Virginia Tech (2007), and Stoneman Douglas (2018), to examine if individual events were associated with a decrease in how often students feel safe at school and if the effect was consistent across multiple events. Analyses indicate that there are noticeable and significant differences in perception of school safety while at school post-school shooting. Although there was a difference in perception of safety post Virginia Tech and Stoneman Douglas shooting, the difference was greatest post Columbine school shooting.

School Shooters: Patterns of Adverse Childhood Experiences, Bullying, and Social Media.

Since 2013 there have been at least 421 recorded incidents of gunfire on school grounds METHOD: This study used a critical review of national and local media news reports of 25 American male school shooter cases from 2013 to 2019. Approximately 88% of school shooters had at least one social media account, and 76% posted disturbing content of guns and threatening messages. Over 72% of shooters had at least one reported adverse childhood experience, and 60% reported being bullied in-person or online DISCUSSION: Professionals who work with adolescents are front-line providers who routinely assess student safety. Social media use is often underassessed, demonstrating a knowledge gap that may reveal insights into the perspective and well-being of adolescents. Inclusion of questions on social media, adverse childhood experiences, and experiences of bullying by pediatric nurses and others may be proactive measures that can help identify, protect, and intervene with at-risk students.

OTs’ Perceived Preparedness to Work With Youth Exposed to School Shootings

Abstract Date Presented 04/01/2022 The United States is witnessing a significant rise in school shootings. Students exposed to school shootings often develop emotional disturbances that negatively affect their meaningful participation in daily activities. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the self-efficacy of OTs who may encounter students exposed to a school shooting and explore perceived treatment strategies that practitioners may use to positively influence their clients’ mental health. Primary Author and Speaker: Bridget Scheidler Additional Authors and Speakers: Nancy E. Carson Contributing Authors: Karen Snyder