Стрельба в школах: причины и последствия.

Event in which gun violence happens at a school

A school shooting is an armed attack at an educational institution, such as a primary school, secondary school, high school or university, involving the use of a firearm. Many school shootings are also categorized as mass shootings due to multiple casualties. The phenomenon is most widespread in the United States, which has the highest number of school related shootings, although school shootings have taken place elsewhere in the world. According to studies, factors behind school shooting include easy access to firearms, family dysfunction, lack of family supervision, and mental illness among many other psychological issues. Among the topmost motives of attackers 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%). Especially in the United States, school shootings have sparked a political debate over gun violence, zero tolerance policies, gun rights and gun control.

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 Federal Bureau of Investigation (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 differing backgrounds, making a singular profile difficult when identifying a 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, such as Alan Lipman, have warned about the lack of empirical validity of profiling methods.

Almost all perpetrators of school shootings are male.

One assumption into the catalytic causes of school shootings comes from the "non traditional" household perspective, which focuses on how family structure and family stability are related to child outcomes. Broadly speaking, proponents of this hypothesis claim that family structures such as single mothers, same sex parents, extended family, or cohabitation are more harmful to the development of a child's mental well being, than heterosexual, married parents (often equated with the idea of a nuclear family). This perspective is found to back federal efforts such as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 and US federal tax incentives. However, these assumptions on the detrimental effects of "non traditional" family structures have repeatedly been shown to be false, with the true issues lying within socio economic realities. Longitudinal research has shown the robust, positive effects of higher incomes and higher education levels on child well being and emotional development, which reflects on the family stability, and not family structure. Further, proponents of this hypothesis often cite family statistics for those who commit crimes, but leave out how these compare to other populations, including the general population. For example, a 2009 survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) revealed that substance abuse amongst children raised by single mothers was higher than children raised by both of their biological parents. However, the percentage of substance abuse amongst children raised by single mothers was not only remarkably low (5.4%), but also only 1.2% higher than children raised by both their parents. Those rates are revealed to be even smaller when compared to other demographics of the same time period. According to surveys commissioned by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, between 20 and 30% of teenagers used/abused illicit substances, a much higher rate than single mother households. Another example of poorly cited statistics to further this narrative can be found in children who have lost at least one parent. In the U. S., the rate of parental death before age 16 is 8%. The rate of parental death is disproportionately high for prisoners (30–50%), however, it is also disproportionately high for high performing scientists (26%) and US presidents (34%). Harvard's Baker Foundation Professor Emerita Dr. Teresa M. Amabile states, "Those kinds of events can crush a child, they can lead to a lot of problems; they can lead to substance abuse, they can lead to various forms of emotional illness. They can also lead to incredible resilience and almost superhuman behaviors, seemingly, if people can come through those experiences intact. I don't know if we—we being the field in general—have discovered what the keys are, what makes the difference for kids." Understanding that socio economic factors have greater effects on child development and emotional stability have led many to argue that single parent and other non traditional households should be afforded equivalent incentives by the state, as are afforded married households, and that focusing on family structure rather than family stability derails efforts to understand the realities of mass shooters.

Dorothy Espelage of the University of Florida observed that 8% of bullying victims become "angry, and aggressively so." She added, "They become very angry, they may act out aggressively online. They may not hit back, but they definitely ruminate." "Bullying is common in schools and seemed to play a role in the lives of many of the school shooters". A typical bullying interaction consists 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 had been bullied or left behind evidence of having been victims of bullying Other academics however are critical of a bullying school shootings connection. The Uvalde shooter who killed 21 people was frequently bullied in 4th grade at Robb Elementary school.

The degree to which mental illness contributes to school shootings has been debated. 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. 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. According to an article written on gun violence and mental illness, the existence of violence as an outlet for the mentally ill is quite prominent in some instances (Swanson et al., 2015). The article lists from a study that 12% of people with serious mental illness had committed minor or serious violence within the last year, compared to 2% of people without illness committing those same acts. 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 in 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 occurs more in interpersonal environments. It is also mentionable that school size can play a role on the presence of shooter mental health concerns. In a presented study from researchers Baird, Roellke & Zeifman from the Social Science Journal, it is presented that school size and level of attention given to students can precede violent actions, as students who commit mass shootings in larger schools are likely to have transitioned from smaller schools. This adds important nuance to the idea that larger schools are more prone to mass violence by showing that the stress associated with losing the personal support given in a smaller community is a weight on students. A 2016 opinion piece published by U. S. News & World Report concluded that 22% of mass murders are committed by people who suffer from a serious mental illness, and 78% do not. This study also concluded that many people with mental illnesses do not engage in violence against others and that most violent behavior is due to factors other than mental illness.

In a 2015 New Republic essay, Columbine author Dave Cullen describes a subset of school shooters (and other mass murderers) known as "injustice collectors", or people who "never forget, never forgive, [and] never let go" before they strike out. The essay describes and expands on the work of retired FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole, who has published a peer reviewed journal article on the subject. It also quotes Gary Noesner, who helped create and lead the FBI's hostage negotiation unit, and served as Chief Negotiator for ten years.

It has long been debated whether 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 games 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 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 finds 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.

Shooting massacres in English speaking countries often occur close together in time. In the summer of 1966, two major stories broke: Richard Speck murdered eight women on a single night in Chicago, and Charles Whitman shot and killed 15 people from a clock tower at the University of Texas in Austin. Neither was seeking fame, but with the new television news climate, they received it anyway. Seeing this, 18 year old Robert Benjamin Smith bought a gun, and on November 12, 1966, he killed four women and a toddler inside the Rose Mar College of Beauty in Mesa, Arizona. "I wanted to get known, just wanted to get myself a name," explained Smith. He had hoped to kill nearly ten times as many people but had arrived at the beauty college campus too early. Upon his arrest, he was without remorse, saying simply, "I wanted people to know who I was." Towers, et al. (2015), found a small, but significant temporary increase in the probability of a second school shooting within 2 weeks after a known school shooting, which was only slightly smaller than the probability of repeats after mass killings involving firearms. However, much more work is needed with greater scope on investigations, to understand whether this is a real phenomenon or not. Some attribute this to copycat behavior, which can be correlated with the level of media exposure. In these copycat shootings, oftentimes 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. Recent premeditative 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". O'Connor was arrested before he was able to carry out his plan. 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.

One of the infamous books, the 1977 novel Rage by Stephen King (written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman), was linked to five school shootings and hostage situations that took place between 1988 and 1997; the most recent of these, the 1997 Heath High School shooting, was ultimately influential in King's decision to pull the book out of print for good.

School shootings are a "modern phenomenon". There were scattered instances of gunmen or bombers attacking schools in the years before the Frontier Middle School shooting in Moses Lake, Washington in 1996, "but they were lower profile", according to journalist Malcolm Gladwell in 2015. A study by Northeastern University found that "four times the number of children were killed in schools in the early 1990s than today". On August 27, 2018, NPR reported that a U. S. Education Department report, released earlier in the year, for the 2015–2016 school year said "nearly 240 schools reported at least 1 incident involving a school related shooting". However, when NPR researched this 'claim', it could confirm only 11 actual incidents.

School shootings are a "uniquely American crisis", according to The Washington Post in 2018. School shootings are considered an "overwhelmingly American" phenomenon due to the availability of firearms in the United States. Kids at U. S. schools have active shooter drills. According to USA Today, in 2019 "about 95% of public schools now have students and teachers practice huddling in silence, hiding from an imaginary gunman." A U. S. Education Department report, released earlier in the year, for the 2015–2016 school year said "nearly 240 schools reported at least 1 incident involving a school related shooting". NPR independently evaluated this claim and only confirmed 11 of the 240 cited incidents. Instead, Congress relies on independent research done by non partisan organizations for getting data on gun violence in the United States. Between the Columbine massacre and the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting in Texas, shooting of some form happened at 216 schools, and at least 141 children, educators and other people were killed and another 284 were injured. 38% of the students who experienced school shootings were African American although African American students were 16.6% of the school population. Schools in at least 36 states and the District of Columbia have experienced a shooting. The type of firearm most commonly used in school shootings in the United States is the handgun. Three school shootings (the Columbine massacre, the Sandy Hook massacre, and the 2018 Parkland High School shooting in Florida), accounted for 43% of the fatalities; the type of firearm used in the most lethal school shootings was the rifle. 70% of the perpetrators of school shootings were under the age of 18, with the median age of 16. More than 85% of the perpetrators of school shootings obtained their firearms from their own homes or from friends or relatives. At least 68 schools that experienced a school shooting employed a police officer or security guard; in all but a few, the shooting ended before any intercession. Security guards or resource officers were present during four of the five school shooting incidents with the highest number of dead or injured: Columbine, the 2001 Santana High School shooting in California, the 2018 Marshall County High School shooting in Kentucky, and Stoneman Douglas. As of May 2018, more people, including students and teachers, were killed in 2018 in schools in the United States than were killed in military service for the United States, including both combat and non combat military service, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. In terms of the year to date number of individual deadly school shootings incidents in the United States, early 2018 was much higher than 2017, with 16 in 2018 and four in 2017, through May; 22 school shootings where someone was hurt or killed occurred in the United States in the first 20 weeks of 2018, according to CNN.

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. A United States Secret Service study concluded that schools were placing false hope in physical security, when they should be paying more attention to the pre attack behaviors of students. Zero tolerance policies and metal detectors "are unlikely to be helpful," the Secret Service researchers found. The researchers focused on questions concerning the reliance on SWAT teams when most attacks are over before police arrive, profiling of students who show warning signs in the absence of a definitive profile, expulsion of students for minor infractions when expulsion is the spark that push some to return to school with a gun, buying software not based on school shooting studies to evaluate threats although killers rarely make direct threats, and reliance on metal detectors and police officers in schools when shooters often make no effort to conceal their weapons. In May 2002, the Secret Service published a report that examined 37 U. S. school shootings. They had the following findings:
Incidents of targeted violence at school were rarely sudden, impulsive acts. Prior to most incidents, other people knew about the attacker's idea or plan to attack. Most attackers did not threaten their targets directly prior to advancing the attack. There is no accurate or useful profile of students who engaged in targeted school violence. Most attackers engaged in some behavior prior to the incident that caused others concern or indicated a need for help. Most attackers had difficulty coping with significant losses or personal failures. Moreover, many had considered or attempted suicide. Many attackers felt bullied, persecuted, or injured by others prior to the attack. Most attackers had access to and had used weapons prior to the attack. In many cases, other students were involved in some capacity. Despite prompt law enforcement responses, most shooting incidents were stopped by means other than law enforcement intervention.

There have been many representations of American school shootings in films and TV shows produced by both United States and international production companies. While films Elephant, We Need to Talk about Kevin, Beautiful Boy, and Mass are solely focused on the either the act or the aftermath. Many of the shows such as Criminal Minds, Degrassi: the Next Generation, Law and Order, and One Tree Hill investigate the crime for an episode or use it as a plot point for about half a season.

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. One of the more provocative songs to come out of the Parkland, Florida high school shooting was "thoughts & prayers" from alternative artist/rapper grandson (born Jordan Benjamin). The song is a critique of politicians sending out their "thoughts and prayers" to the victims of the Parkland high school shooting and other mass shootings, accompanied by what he perceives as a consistent resistance to gun control laws. desks, bullet resistant door panels, The National Rifle Association of America has proposed allowing teachers to carry weapons on school grounds as a means of protecting themselves and others as a possible solution. In 2018, 14 states had at least one school district in which teachers were armed, with another 16 states permitting districts to arm teachers subject to local policy. 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. The Gun Free Schools Act was passed in 1994 in response to gun related violence in schools, so many school systems started adopting the Zero Tolerance Law. The Gun Free Schools Act required people to be expelled from the school for a year. By 1997, the Zero Tolerance for any type of weapon was implemented by more than 90 percent of U. S. public schools.

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.

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 co ordinate institutional responses to behavioral concerns on college and university campuses.

Because of the increase in guns in the United States, many schools and local communities are taking it into their own hands by providing young students with early gun safety courses to make them aware of the dangers these objects actually are, also to prevent school shootings. According to Katherine A. Fowler, PhD, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An average 1,297 children die (two children per 100,000) and 5,790 are treated for injuries caused by guns each year, the study reported. Six percent of these deaths were accidental, 38% were suicides, 53% were homicides and the remaining 3% were from legal intervention or undetermined reasons. Guns injured children at a rate of 8 per 100,000 children, but this rate is likely considerably higher because of unreported injuries. 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. In 2019, the United States Secret Service released an analysis of targeted school violence, concluding the best practice for prevention was forming a "multidisciplinary threat assessment team, in conjunction with the appropriate policies, tools, and training". An earlier report published in 2018 concluded there was no single profile of a student attacker, and emphasized the importance of the threat assessment process instead. The threat assessment process described includes gathering information about student behaviors, negative or stressful events, and what resources are available for the student to overcome those challenges.

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. Other countermeasures include tools like doorjambs, rapidly deployable tourniquets, and ballistic protection systems like the CoverMe Seat. In 2019, Fruitport High School in Michigan became the first school in the U. S. to be rebuilt with concrete barriers in hallways for students to hide from bullets. The BBC also reports the "hallways are curved to prevent a shooter from having a clear line of sight during any potential attack." Classrooms have been redesigned so students can hide more easily. Costing $48 million to rebuild, Bob Szymoniak, Fruitport High School's superintendent, believes these alterations will become part of the structure of all U. S. schools. "These are design elements that are naturally part of buildings going into the future."

After experiencing the threat of a school shooting, as well as the changes in the school via countermeasures, students continue to experience the trauma. In several peer‐reviewed articles on mental health consequences of school shootings by Lowe & Galea, it is shown that mass shootings can bring on the onset of PTSD and continued depression. In the cities that are home to these kind of events, the town can experience continued paranoia and an exaggerated sense of fear. Lowe & Galea continue to say that continued research is necessary to pinpoint the exact mental symptoms that occur in the victims of school shootings.