students having learned virtually in 2020 because of the pandemic, the nation logged a record low for school shootings.
Now, as students return to schools for in-person instruction, the specter of school shootings is back.
This was evidenced in the April 12 school shooting at the Austin-East Magnet High School in Knoxville, Tennessee.
The shooting left one student dead and an school resource officer injured.
A school shooting in Knoxville, Tennessee, has left one person dead.
Ominous statistics The Knoxville school shooting on April 12 was the 37th school shooting of 2021, according to the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s K-12 School Shooting Database.
The database includes information on “each and every instance a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time of day, or day of week.†Year-to-date comparisons are complicated, because not all school districts went to remote or hybrid learning at the same time or to the same degree.
Taking a narrower view of shootings with injuries or deaths that occurred while school was in session, it was the fourth school shooting of 2021 and second fatal shooting of the year.
The phrase “school shooting†typically is reserved for mass casualty events like the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and the 2018 Parkland high school shooting.
school property every 77 days.
We’ve spent the last four years examining the lives of school shooters, searching for solutions.
The data shows, importantly, that school shooters tend to be current or former students of the school.
School shooters also tend to leak their plans for violence in advance, mostly to their peers, often via social media.
And school shooters usually get their guns from family and friends who failed to store them safely and securely.
It’s unclear at this point how well the Knoxville shooter fits this profile, but these findings point to important avenues for school shooting prevention.
Beyond school police First, if school shooters are nearly always students of the school, then educators and others who work with them may need to work harder to find ways to identify and counsel them long before they ever pick up a gun
The existing US$3 billion “homeroom security†industry is predicated on putting up walls to keep active shooters out, rather than building bridges to keep actual students connected
Some school districts rely on school resource officers, or SROs, to police student problems to such an extent that the ACLU estimates that millions of students are in schools with police but no counselors, school psychologists or social workers
SROs have intervened in school shootings in the past, including the one in Knoxville on April 12, but we believe they are yet another example of society’s overreliance on police to solve systemic social problems, from mental illness to homelessness to drug abuse
Research shows the presence of police officers in schools feeds a larger social problem known as the “school-to-prison pipeline,†in which even minor infractions at school are handled by the criminal justice system
In a February 2021 study, we examined 133 attempted and completed mass school shootings from 1980 to 2019 and, controlling for other factors like the school size, the number of shooters, and the number and type of firearms, we found that the death rate for victims – that is, the perpetrator being excluded – was three times greater in school shootings with armed guards on the scene
Research has shown that the presence of officers’ weapons increases aggression – it is known as the “weapons effect.†This effect may be further exacerbated by the fact that many school shooters are suicidal and may intend to provoke law enforcement into shooting them
This logic runs counter to our research, which shows that warm and welcoming school environments where all students feel safe and supported are the foundation upon which good school security is built
School personnel and students need training to identify a student in crisis and describe how to report something they see or hear indicative of violent intent
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