One variable that I think doesn’t get looked at seriously is class size and school funding. Ask any North American teacher, and you’ll get a grim assessment on the trajectory of schooling since the 90’s. When teachers have more students than they can handle, it’s no surprise that things get out of hand.
I’d argue that part of the solution is more teachers per student. This enables better relationships between faculty and students, and better opportunities for mentorship. Build more schools, hire more teachers, pay them well, make school a place where teachers want to be, and where kids can thrive.
But reforming the existing system is a hot potato that neither the left nor right wants to hold, so, here we are. The system itself is degraded to the point that it doesn’t have the resources to self-correct. We need vision, wisdom, funding, and leadership, to steer things in a new direction. I think that would go a long way in preventing a misguided kid from fermenting the idea that murdering people, or their own classmates, is an answer to their problems.
I don’t mean to paint school shootings as simply a rebellion against a malfunctioning system, but, we really need to look at the system and make sure it’s serving the students that have no choice but to be there.
Well for one we redefined mass shooting a few years back which absolutely spiked the numbers because now any robbery gone wrong or gang turf war gets classified in as a MS.
So when people see 300 MS they think 300 columbines or 300 Aurora theatre shootings. Most of those are much smaller and have nothing to do with the lone wolf shooter that people think of when the words “mass shooting” come up.
The other reason is cultural significance. There’s an increased likelihood of a shooting in a place where a previous mass shooting has occurred. The media spending weeks covering the incidents while plastering people’s likeness all over the place shows the disenfranchised extremist that they too can become infamous in a blaze of glory which leads to increased incidents of mass shooting as well.
Lastly, I think there’s a general air of “there’s no hope and I have no purpose” among people today that previous generations never had to deal with in the same manner. Add that on top of the previously mentioned things and it multiplies.
So basically media coverage and the sociopolitical divide becoming more of a chasm. Access to firearms hasn’t changed much in that time and firearms technology had semi automatic weapons invented for much longer than that.
There weren’t many school shootings, and suddenly Columbine happened.
The thing is - Columbine wasn’t really a school shooting.
It was a failed bombing. The shooting was to get everyone into the cafeteria where they’d set up barrel bombs which luckily didn’t go off. In fact, the largest casualty attack in a US school remains a bombing from 1927.
As a school shooting, Columbine was also quite atypical, with two perpetrators.
But as soon as you now had what was really a failed bombing being covered by the news as a school shooting, suddenly thereafter were a ton of school shootings (that fit the normal archetype of a mass shooting with a lone perpetrator).
And each of those got a ton of coverage and the numbers of mass shootings went up yet again.
If you suddenly prohibited covering mass shootings in media (impossible because of the 1st amendment, but hypothetically), I am certain you’d see mass shootings drop by double digit numbers.
The fact that Columbine was so atypical of what events followed in its planning but was so close to what followed in how it was covered in the news tells a pretty damning story of the role of mass media in this phenomenon.
Also see:
Towers, S., Gomez-Lievano, A. Khan, M., et al. (2015). Contagion in Mass Killings and School Shootings. PLOS One. 10(7): e0117259. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0117259
Lankford, A and Tomek, S. (2017). Mass Killings in the United States from 2006 to 2013: Social Contagion or Random Clusters. The American Association of Suicidology. doi: 10.1111/sltb.12366
As massive consumers of American news media that includes the extensive covering of mass shootings, I wonder what is keeping Canadians from a rise in shootings that is equally meteoric.
Coverage - since so much media comes from America - would seem to be the same, but the results are different.
Far from gun-avoidant, Canada boasts the longest rifle hit on a target, both for moving and stationary.
Canada has fewer guns per person than the US, but still many more than most countries. I think there are a couple of other differences though. The types of guns are very different. Handguns are extremely restricted, and ownership is rare. Many (most?) semi auto rifles are either prohibited or restricted, and there are mag limits (5 rounds) for all centrefire rifles. This doesn’t exactly prevent people from committing shootings, but a lot fewer people have those types of guns because they’re kind of a pain in the ass get, store, and use. Safe storage is legally required, and much more encouraged by the gun-owning community.
The other factor might be what guns are used for in Canada. Concealed carry is practically non-existent, open carry is severely restricted, and while self-defence with a firearm is technically legal, ownership for that purpose pretty much isn’t.
The media went absolutely batshit. Who were they? Why did they do it? Interview absolutely everyone! The public must know. And they tuned in in their droves to find out.
Incel types took note. If you’ve failed at life and want five minutes of fame, grab a gun and head back to school.
If we’re setting the calendar back 200 years, I’d have to guess that one of the contributing factors is records keeping and reporting. The definition of what is considered a “mass shooting” has also been fluid over the past 50 or so years.
These are not likely to be major contributors, but from Hollywood’s depictions, mass shootings may have been pretty common around 150 years ago.
@dope Once a meme hits mainstream consciousness it is tough to get it to go away. Columbine out school shootings in the mind of every child of that generation, and since then toxic online forums filled with trolls have kept the idea alive be it "an hero" "unalive yourself" and just generally the nihilistic attitude of if you feel bade enough about yourself to consider killing yourself, you might as well take out some others you hate with you. This is mental illness at its core, but with the enablement of technology and toxic online "community" culture.
Then there are spin off effects of this mentality combined with the impression of the efficacy of terrorism from a psychological imprint perspective, and some narcissists will mass kill for "the cause". Again mental illness at its core, with a different "community" dynamic.
In both of these cases it is the meme, in the original sociology sense of the word, that has caused the rise of the behavior. The cultural condition of alienation and anonymous communication on the rise, combined with overall eroded access to in-person and in-patient mental health services due to the privatized health system, keeps the meme breeding in the alienated cultural class.
@Siegfried and there have been mass shootings outside the USA, don't forget what happened in Norway for example. In the US the mental health and social support infrastructure is weak, so the meme is actualized more often.
No the most common definition is the one used by gun violence archive, as an event where four or more people are killed or injured (not including the shooters). Different organizations may have different definitions. How many people “witness it” isn’t used by any to the best of my knowledge.
Late Stage Capitalism: Poverty is worse than anytime after slavery, wealthy people have never been wealthier, police brutality is at the highest since slavery, workers rights are trending back towards the second Industrial Revolution, politics recognizes corporations as people (thus robbing those who cannot compete with billions upon billions of dollars), civil rights are receding, basic necessities are becoming scarce, the environment itself is being poisoned for profit, etc.
Modern societies crush people. It breaks them. There are huge contradictions too: the idea of working to succeed when it is actually not working. The idea of freedom vs the wage slavery. The idea of being in a powerful and advanced country but still poor as fuck.
And then you have this culture of guns and violence. They go togethet: you get guns because you believe it can fix problems. Because you believe that killing people can fix problems.
Add 2 and 2 together: you have these life crushing problems, and guns as problem solver. Society provoque the problem. Kill them. Kill them all. Maybe they’ll understand after that and change something.
Far right and conspiracy theory give a theoric foundation for people to focus their rage or despair too.
And this is exactly how the system is designed to work. The purpose of the US gun madness is to keep the population scared. Scared people are more likely to agree to having their rights taken away in the name of “safety”. Having constant mass shootings just helps keep up the atmosphere of fear that authoritarians thrive on.
The world has been pretty shit for the entirety of history. Working conditions are better than they ever have been. People make more than they ever have. Crime is dropping year-over-year.
Arguing that this is occuring because everything is getting worse is just completely and utterly wrong. Quality of life is increasing greatly for the average person.
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