School shooting is a term used to refer to gun violence in educational institutions, especially the mass murder or spree killing of people connected with an institution. A school shooting can be perpetrated by people who have a mental disorder, expelled students, alumni, faculty members, outsiders, or even regular students who still attend the school. Unlike acts of revenge against specific people, school shootings usually involve multiple intended or actual victims, often randomly targeted. Most of the school shootings that have occurred have ended up with the perpetrators killing themselves and others.

Definition

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. The term "school shootings" most commonly describes acts committed by either a student or intruders from off campus. They are to be distinguished from crowd-containment shootings by law-enforcement personnel, such as the student protests and unrest of 1970 at two U.S. universities, Kent State and Jackson State, that led to fatal shootings by National Guardsmen and police.

The most commonly referred to school shooting is that at Columbine High School, in Littleton, Colorado, on Tuesday, April 20, 1999. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were the perpetrators. Like many instances of "school shootings," Harris and Klebold took their own lives before the end of the event. Also similar to many school shooters, Harris and Klebold were found to be victims of bullying. Perpetrators of school killings frequently voice severe anger and isolation preceding their actions. They may have a history of violence, or uncommon inappropriate and extreme behaviors at school.

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 areas (which tend to be impoverished sections of cities). Inner-city or urban schools were much more likely than other schools to report serious violent crimes, with 17 percent of city principals reporting at least one serious crime compared to 11 percent of urban schools, 10 percent of rural schools, and five percent of suburban town schools in the 1997 school year.¹ Student-perpetrated school shootings in North America have mostly been in overwhelmingly white, middle-class, non-urban areas.^{citation needed} In some cases, the victims of the shootings were involved in bullying or other acts of violence and intimidation against the perpetrators. However, school shootings in other countries may take on more national or religious overtones, such as the Merkaz HaRav shooting.

School shootings with more than ten victims are usually referred to as "school massacres".

Profiling

School shooting is a topic of intense interest in the United States.² 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 Service³ 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."⁴ 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:

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.⁶ One female carried out a school shooting in an exceptionally rare incident.⁷

Discussion

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold gained infamy for killing 13 people at Columbine High School and then themselves. The shooting led to widespread panic across America; schools were fitted with metal detectors, guards were allowed to search students and their belongings and those deemed a threat were sent to psychologists, psychiatrists and counselors. This has led to controversy and anger from both students and parents.

School shootings receive extensive media coverage and are infrequent.⁸ 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.⁹

Such incidents may also lead to nationwide discussion on gun laws.¹⁰

Notable shootings

Further information: List of school-related attacks

North America

United States

Note 1: not a "school shooting" in the contemporary sense

Canada

Worldwide

Media-famous cases

Impact

Cultural impact

School shootings in the USA have to a larger extent influenced American society and culture, for instance the following lists numerous television, film and documentary TV series that have featured at one time or another an incidence of school shootings or person(s) involved. Since so many of the shootings have occurred in the USA, it has impacted the USA more so than any other country. Industries such as music, film, literature and theatrics have been actively involved in portraying a killer's behaviour, adding also how victims respond afterwards. Some critics however cite that this has led to stereotypical attitudes being attributed to killers. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold however changed many people's view on such stereotypes when they killed together, but nonetheless the stereotypes are very much in society in general. Many thought the killers who perpetrated school massacres were loners but usually had a close group of friends to associate with.

Political impact

School shootings have also had a political impact, spurring some to press for more stringent gun control laws. However, the National Rifle Association and many Americans are opposed to such laws. Some have called for fewer gun control laws in light of the fact that most of these mass shootings occur in areas where it is illegal for private citizens to be armed, thus making it harder to defend themselves. Such individuals and groups have also called for legislation to allow students the right to carry a concealed firearm, citing some empirical evidence that armed students can stop or at least limit the loss of life during a school shooting, and that the prohibitions against carrying a gun in schools does not deter the gunmen³⁸. One such example is the Mercaz HaRav Massacre, where the attacker was not stopped by police but rather a student, Yitzhak Dadon, who stopped the attacker by shooting the attacker with his personal firearm which he lawfully carried concealed on his person.

Armed classrooms

Some areas in the US are experimenting with the idea of armed classrooms to deter (or truncate) future attacks, presumably by changing helpless victims into armed defenders. 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 2006.³⁹⁴⁰ In 2008, Harrold, Texas became the first public school district in the US 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.⁴¹

It has been said that the armed school approach for preventing school attacks, while new in the US, has been used successfully for many years in Israel and Thailand⁴²; however, Israel does not arm its teachers or students, but rather provides armed guards at all school entrances. ⁴³

References

See also

• Bullying
• School violence
• Social rejection
• Youth subculture

External links

• The Depressive and the Psychopath: The FBI's analysis of the Columbine killers' motives
• Schoolboy killing stuns Canada (The Guardian)
• Crime Library article about school shootings
• BBC timeline of US school shootings
• Indianapolis Star: School violence around the world (November 2004)
• The Scene of the Crime Was the Cause of the Crime - Excerpt from Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion -- From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond by Mark Ames.
• Dreading Columbine - Sociological exploration of suburban school shootings.
• Deadly Lessons: Understanding Lethal School Violence
• Teaching Kids to Kill
• Chronology of School Shootings
• Held Hostage at Case Western

Reports

• Mass Shootings at Virginia Tech Report of the Review Panel
• U.S. study of school shootings, "The Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative"
• Advice for safe schools, Threat assessment in schools: A Guide to managing threatening situations and to creating safe school climates
• School Violence