Active School Shooter Research Paper

The lack of school surveillance plays a big role for school shootings. Author of the book Rampage: the Social Roots of School Shootings, Katherine Newman states that “Failures of surveillance systems that are intended to identify troubled teens before

The intention of this paper is to look at and present some issues and strategies that members of a school community think about when trying to create safer schools. Particularly when addressing an active shooter in a school setting. A major issue to consider when trying to keep all schools safe, is the simple fact that no two schools are the same. Understanding this can lead us to the conclusion that it is impossible to have one global plan or program that can be 100% effective in all schools. “Violence prevention programs work best when they incorporate multiple strategies and address the full range of possible acts of violence in schools. For any set of policies to work, it must be established and

Research in school shootings have been administered in many categories, including sociology, psychology, and etc. past studies, and direct later studies in school shootings, offers a sociology stand point for understanding the differences of school shooting incidents, including rampage shootings, mass murders shootings, and examining the mass media dynamic of school shootings; as well as presenting a combination of causes said in the research, including those on the individual, community, and social levels. Suggestions for studies in the future in school shootings are still yet to be explored.

“Shooting massacres” in school settings, a new phenomenon within the past 50 years, are extremely rare events. Over 23 years, 1990-2012, 215 fatal school shooting incidents resulted in 363 deaths, equivalent to 0.12% of national firearm homicides during that time period …… Among these, just three shooting rampages – Columbine High School, Virginia Tech University, and Sandy Hook Elementary School – accounted for 72 (53.3%) of these 135 deaths. The frequency of random/ rampage shooting incidents in schools has remained within the narrow range of 0 to 3 episodes per year.” (Shultz, et al., 2013, p. 84)

With the large number of shootings that have occurred in United States’ history one expected a pattern to exist for the shooters yet it seemed nonexistent. Many variables existed, almost 40 (Mongan,2007), making predicting when a school shooting would occur impossible. Even threats stating a shooting would occur were not valid signs of an upcoming shooting. Many threats originated from students “blowing off steam” and no intention existed to carry out the threat. The FBI created a list of possible ways to evaluate a threat but they caution the reader that not every threat resulted in violence(FBI).

“GET DOWN!.... SHHH!!!!.... GET DOWN! GET INTO A ROOM AND LOCK IT!!!!” This is the first thing our opposite crew heard as they walked into the ER with a patient last month. Should this crew have recognized the signs of an active shooter? Is walking into a hospital with an active shooter even a real concern? From 2000-2012, there were 154 hospital related shootings in the United States with 235 injuries or deaths. That’s more than 1 shooting a month. As QIC I will implement parts of the “Active Shooter Preparedness” from United States Homeland Security. Knowing exactly what Emergency Action Plans our hospitals have in place will help us know how to recognize and react to possible active shooter situations. Scene safety is constant with EMS.

Since mass and school shootings are on the rise it is crucial to find a way to categorize these school shooters in an effort to minimize the amount of people who actually carry out the horrific act and to help pinpoint the most effective treatment intervention. Some of the factors that the media coverage focuses on are social factors such as peer harassment and the influence of media violence (Langman, 2009). In order to categorize Christopher Harper-Mercer, the examples provided in Peter Langman’s article on Rampage School Shooters: A Typology will be compared and assessed. Through this article Langman assesses the acts and history of 10 school shooters and separates the shooters into three distinct categories: Traumatized, psychotic, and

When news of an active shooter situation hits the media, word spreads quickly, especially when the event takes place at a school. Before long, expert psychologists, law enforcement personnel, and even ordinary citizens begin to look into the shooter’s personal life, attempting to find a piece of evidence that could help explain why they opened fire. The incident that took place on October 24, 2014 at Marysville Pilchuck High School is no exception. Fifteen year old Jaylen Fryberg entered the school cafeteria, took out a .40-caliber handgun, and began shooting at a table of his classmates (Carter, 2014). Four students would succumb to their injuries, and another three were critically wounded. Fryberg also took his own life in the shooting (“Marysville Shooter Texted,” 2015).

"I'm angry someone would do this to us. There are lives ruined, families ruined, and our whole school year is ruined" (Brackely 1). Casey Brackely, once a student that attended Columbine High School, remembers the tragedy of the horrific Columbine shooting that killed and injured many students. Mass shootings in the United States have been on the rise since the 1980’s, especially in the last decade. These shooters motives and profiles are almost all terrifyingly alike. Many of these shooters try to imitate and parallel the tragic shooting of the Columbine High School in 1999. These shootings have made peaceful organizations, such as an elementary school; become a place of violence and death. Currently, in the United States, an epidemic of

Columbine High School, 1999, shocked the United States and forever changed law enforcement traditional approach to mass shooting. The old tactical approach by law officers to “contain and negotiate” with the perpetrator proved to be outdated with the Columbine active shooter incident. As a result, police departments across the country were prompt to rethink and reevaluate how they should respond to active shooter incidents. This particular incident, 1. Changed the way police officers are trained. 2, how to respond to an active shooter incident. 3, reeducated the community on how to react and respond to an active shoot. 4, how the community can help prevent an active shooter incident from happening. 6, it redefined what it meant to be an active shooter.

There seems to be many controversial issues going on in the world today, particularly in the United States. Many of these issues going on right now cause division and heated debates in our country. One of the biggest and most talked about issues in America at the moment has to be whether or not if we should give teachers guns. A lot of people seem to be really divided and passionate about this topic. The fact that this issue is so relevant and talked about is what encouraged to me want to know more about it and eventually write about it. For me there is only one right answer to the topic of arming our teachers or not. We should not provide our teachers with guns as it will only increase the amount of danger in our schools, also it would be

A 17-year-old youth is facing 4 counts of first-degree murder in court, following a mass shooting in Northern Canada.

In this article, the authors provide information on past mass school shootings and introduce new theories that relate to those school shootings. The authors also discuss and analyze characteristics between the different shootings with regard to the shooters’ lives and personality, the time periods of the shootings and also the schools and people who fell victim to the shootings. By doing this, the article gives greater insight to shooter profiles and it helps the reader find reoccurring themes and personalities between different shooters. After doing so, one is able to recognize someone who may be exhibiting strange behaviors and they are then able to possibly prevent any violence by getting someone help. This article is also helpful by giving information on why shooters do what they do and the stages in which they go through to make their final decisions. This article also helps navigate the different varieties of mass shootings and is helpful when researching the various theories people have about mass shootings especially in school systems.

It is without a doubt that there has been an increase in violent crimes in schools throughout recent years. School shootings continue to become more and more common, especially in North America. Safety concerns for any and all students and staff in schools are at all all time high due to the high number of fatal and non-fatal occurring incidences. Since 2013 to the present, it is estimated that the United States has seen approximately 205 school shootings. Weekly, that is a shocking one shooting on average. Many of these shootings have resulted in the injuries and deaths of multiple of students and staff members. (Everytown Research, 2017) Evidently, school shootings are tragic events that affect so many more people than just the victims. However, these events are also interesting to look at from the psychological and sociological point of views. Through much research, it can be concluded that school shootings are a complex problem that are caused by a mix of improper brain development and societal and media influences which motivate school shooters to emerge. Psychological factors may include struggling with mental illnesses and/or abuse that leads to damaged brain development. Additionally, being bullied and/or the role of the media are examples of sociological factors.

However, with the active shooter incident at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 2007, it became clear that campuses are vulnerable targets of opportunity for the active shooter (Kelly, 2015). Vulnerabilities of campus life include access to weapons, diminished resources for intervention and prevention, lack of perceived and actual training by staff and campus safety, and campuses considered safe and insulated from violent crimes (Kelly, 2015). All these factors lead to campuses being vulnerable to an active shooter (Kelly, 2015). With so many vulnerabilities, students depend on campus safety departments to provide for their security.