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Lesson 18: Rampage, School and Mass Shootings

Social ProblemsRobert Wonser

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Mass Shootings

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Active Shooter Incidents (2000-2013)

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Active Shooter Casualties (2000-2013)

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Broken Down By Casualty Type: Killed or Wounded

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Shooter Location Categories

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Major Findings from the FBI’s Active Shooter Incidents Study

The just-released “A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013” contains a full list of the 160 incidents used in study, including those that occurred at Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook Elementary School, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Fort Hood, the Aurora (Colorado) Cinemark Century 16 movie theater, the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, and the Washington Navy Yard, as well as numerous other tragic shootings. Here are some of the study’s findings:

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Active shooter incidents are becoming more frequent—the first seven years of the study show an average of 6.4 incidents annually, while the last seven years show 16.4 incidents annually.

These incidents resulted in a total of 1,043 casualties (486 killed, 557 wounded—excluding the shooters).

All but six of the 160 incidents involved male shooters (and only two involved more than one shooter).

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More than half of the incidents—90 shootings—ended on the shooter’s initiative (i.e., suicide, fleeing), while 21 incidents ended after unarmed citizens successfully restrained the shooter.

In 21 of the 45 incidents where law enforcement had to engage the shooter to end the threat, nine officers were killed and 28 were wounded.

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The largest percentage of incidents—45.6 percent—took place in a commercial environment (73 incidents), followed by 24.3 percent that took place in an educational environment (39 incidents). The remaining incidents occurred at the other location types specified in the study—open spaces, military and other government properties, residential properties, houses of worship, and health care facilities.

Rampage Shooting Facts

School shootings have risen (peaking in the late nineties), though statistically schools are still the safest place for a child to be.

Since 1980, 297 People Have Been Killed in School Shootings*

Using your sociological imagination, how would you explain this fact?

Rampage School Shootings involve:

Take place on a school-related public stage before an audience,

Involve multiple victims, some of whom are shot simply for their symbolic significance or at random and;

Involve one or more shooters who are students or former students of the school.

What Aren’t Causes School Shootings?

“he just snapped…”

“violent media consumption made him do it”

“he was crazy/mentally ill”

What Actually Causes these Shootings?

No one thing causes school shootings

The explanations aren’t simple and solutions to them aren’t simple

Like all social problems, their origins are multifaceted and the solutions must be as well (and require a critical look inward at or society).

At least five necessary but not sufficient conditions for rampage school shootings:

Shooter’s Perception

1) The shooter’s perception of himself as extremely marginal in the social worlds that matter to him.Hierarchical arrangement of

popularity and masculinityPerception doesn’t always mean

reality

Psychological Problems

2) School shooters must suffer from psychosocial problems that magnify the impact of their marginality.Not the same thing as ‘crazy’

Cultural Scripts

3) “Cultural Scripts” – prescriptions for behavior– must be available to lead the way toward an armed attack. Provide models for problem solving;

means to an end Media can play a role here Masculinity

Blueprints for a masculine self may help explain why rampage school shooters direct their anger and hopelessness outward, rather than inward.

Failure of Surveillance Systems

4) Failure of surveillance systems that are intended to identify troubled teens before their problems become extreme. Shooters are often under the radar

because they don’t tend to exhibit the types of behavioral problems schools associate with violent or troubled kids

Peers fail to report threats (most shooters do issue threats or tell some one).

Guns

5) Gun availability; particularly the ease of which potential shooters can get their hands on guns. This alone, like all the other is not

enough. It is when the unfortunate circumstances come together that the likelihood increases.

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What is it about the US and Gun Violence?