School Shootings

Sites of School Shootings

The 1990s were a pivotal point in the history of U.S. school shootings, with high-profile occurrences in small towns (e.g., Pearl, Mississippi, in 1997; West Paducah, Kentucky, in 1997; Springfield, Oregon, 1998; Jonesboro, Arkansas, in 1998; Conyers, Georgia, in 1999), affluent communities (e.g., Littleton, Colorado, in 1999), and even some elementary and middle schools (e.g., Moses Lake, Washington, in 1996; Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, in 1999). These shootings challenged popular stereotypes and assumptions that schools in urban, poor, and largely African American neighborhoods were the most dangerous.

Risk Factors for School Shooters

For obvious reasons, the primary concern in most of the journalistic and scholarly investigations of school shootings focuses on identifying the major risk factors for becoming a school shooter. Most scholarly studies identify extreme social rejection and (verbal and physical) bullying as key risk factors. Social rejection, perpetrated by peers, often includes romantic rejection. Bullying can take numerous forms, both verbal and physical, and is heavily characterized by actions and words to humiliate the victim. In addition to social rejection and bullying, other research-identified risk factors include the availability of guns and the consumption of violent media (especially violent video games, but also violent music, television shows, and films).

Significantly, a more recently identified risk of would-be school shooters is bullying and social rejection that challenges boys' masculinity, particularly in the form of “gay-baiting.” Notably, despite the homophobic labeling and taunting, research indicates that none of the gay-baited school shooters actually were gay. In addition to gay-baiting, other masculinity-driven taunting of boys who became shooters includes mocking these boys' physical bodies with labels such as scrawny, little, short, fat, skinny, chubby, and small. Shooters are often the most bullied male members in the school, and the primary bullies of future school shooters are often the most popular male youth in the school, often the male athletes and “preppies.” Thus, it is hardly surprising that when these bullying victims became shooters, they often attack the popular males who bullied them. However, they are also likely to attack others with low status in the school, such as girls and students of color, and it is not unusual for school shooters to espouse racist (e.g., Nazi) dogmas.

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