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School Shootings
School shootings range from impulsive acts to well-planned rampages. Among school shootings are those related to individual disputes; anticipation or perceptions of being wronged or humiliated by a teacher or peer; gang activities; and retaliatory mass, or rampage, violence. Such shootings have resulted in multiple deaths and injuries; traumatized youth and adults; and caused grief, traumatic grief, and other mental health disturbances. At least outside of violent inner-city locations, schools used to be considered a place of safety for youth. Repeated attempts by some youth at outdoing the rampage shooters who accomplished multiple deaths and injuries have added to an atmosphere of fear, stress, and caution for teachers and students in many schools. This entry reviews some of the well-publicized school shootings (including two notable university shootings), and provides information on the incidence of school shootings and a brief look at descriptors of victims and perpetrators.
Well-Publicized Events
Among the most well-publicized school shootings are those that have been described as massacres—school shootings with many deaths and injuries, such as the 1966 University of Texas (UT) clock tower shootings, the 1999 Columbine rampage, and the 2007 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) shootings. On August 1, 1966, a former Marine, who had attended UT, killed his mother and his wife before dawn. He then went to the UT clock tower and clubbed a receptionist, who later died, killed two people, and wounded two others before reaching the observation deck. From there, he opened fire on people crossing the campus, killing 10 more people and wounding 31 others (one of whom later died). After elaborate planning, on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Colorado, two students fatally shot 12 students and a teacher and wounded 23 others before committing suicide. More deaths were planned, but the bombs they planted around the school did not detonate. On April 16, 2007, a Virginia Tech student killed a female student and the resident advisor in a dormitory. After mailing some videotaped violent ramblings to NBC News, he locked the doors to a university building from the inside and opened fire on several classrooms, ultimately killing 30 people more before killing himself. Several additional students were wounded or were injured in jumping out of the building. Also among well-publicized school shootings are those that involved taking children hostage in an elementary school classroom (e.g., Evanston, Illinois; Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Pennsylvania Amish school). As a consequence of such shootings, schools and universities have implemented or enhanced their school safety protocols.
Incidence of School Violence
To place school shootings in context, general homicide rates are described before school shootings. The statistics provided are for elementary through high school students.
Youth Homicides
Approximately 3,000 children die from gunfire per year. Adults kill 90% of child homicide victims under age 12 and 75% between ages 12 and 17. Although violent assaults increased substantially in the 1990s, arrest rates for murder increased from 1980 to 1993 and declined through 1997. The number of youths arrested for committing homicides decreased from 3,092 (1993) to 1,354 (1998).
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