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Purpose: The study explores how educators use mass media to sensemake their experiences in relation to school shootings.

Methodology/approach: The present chapter uses content analysis to analyze educator tweets and results from an anonymous online survey.

Findings: Twitter is used by educators in the aftermath of school shootings to sensemake the impact these events have on teaching and learning outcomes. Moreover, educators turn to Twitter to debate larger issues related to gun control and arming teachers. Collectively, educators remain committed to their institutions and students; however, they may struggle to meet the ever-changing demands of what it means to be a teacher in the post-Columbine educational landscape.

Research limitations: While providing a starting point for understanding how educators sensemake their experiences with mass media, there are limitations. The sample size was limited to 55 tweets and 40 survey respondents. Furthermore, researcher bias is a concern. Both researchers work in higher education and have experienced the emotional “heaviness” that comes with discussions of school shootings.

Originality/value: This study provides insights into how educators use mass media to sensemake school shootings as both content producer and consumer. Findings indicate that through the identification of patterns within educators’ sensemaking processes, educational institutions can develop better systems for processing the effect of gun violence on the teaching experience and within the classroom.

The focus of the present study was on police officers reactions to and memories of a manhunt after a shooting incident. Emotional impact and memories of these events are discussed in relation to time elapsed, support from co‐workers, supervisors and professional debriefing.

A total of 11 police officers responding to a mass shooting carried out by a young offender resulting in seven dead civilians were asked to describe the event ten months after the event, five years after the event, and again nine years after the event.

All police officers reported having vivid memories of the mass shooting incident, and visual and auditory memories of the event were best retained, although a decline was observed nine years after the incident. Regarding working through the traumatic experience, the police officers had not been offered professional help in connection with the mass shooting incident.

Owing to the fact that police officers in the present study answered the survey anonymously, it was not possible to work out repeated measures statistics for these memories over time.

Knowing that the psychological distress due to exposure to a traumatic event may be long lasting, it is crucial that police organizations consider time as an important factor in working through these experiences.

Research on emotion and memory is highly relevant to the work of police officers and to the legal system.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether threat assessment, an intelligence-led policing (ILP) tool, can prevent mass public shootings.

In order to gauge the potential effectiveness of this ILP tool, the authors conduct a retrospective analysis of 278 mass public shootings that occurred in the USA between 1966 and 2016. This retrospective analysis allows us to determine how successful threat assessment protocols could be in preventing mass public shootings by examining how successful this tool would have been in identifying the offenders in our data.

The results show that threat assessment has the potential to be an effective tool in the ILP arsenal to identify and prevent impending mass public shootings. However, our results also point to several obstacles for the effective implementation of this ILP tool. The underreporting of threats and using the content of threats and characteristics of threateners are problematic in correctly assigning risk. The authors make suggestions for how to overcome these obstacles.

This study makes several contributions to the intelligence-led policing and mass murder field. This is the first study to test the potential effectiveness of an intelligence-led policing tool to prevent mass public shootings. Additionally, this is one of the first studies to examine the leaks, types, context and follow-though of threats made by mass public shooters in the United States. Consequently, it provides unique information on the foreshowing behaviors of mass public shooters.

There were 374 mass shootings in the United States between 2013 and 2014 and they were not random occurrences. We expanded the FBI’s definition of mass shootings (four or more injured or killed, not including the shooter), and collected data on every mass shooting that occurred in the United States to observe geographical patterns. Social Disorganization theories state that violence will occur in areas with high levels of poverty, large population density, and little economic opportunity. These theories work well with strain theory, which suggests that blocked goals, the introduction of a negative stimulus, or the removal of a positive stimulus leads to negative emotions, and these emotions can lead to crime in order to resolve the strain felt. From under this framework, we discover with point pattern analysis that there are patterns in the location of mass shootings crime scenes. They are not random. These crimes were far more likely to occur in the South, the Upper Midwest, and in Southern California, while they were considerably less likely to occur in the Pacific Northwest, Upper Midwest, or the Northeast. The lack of random spatial pattern indicates that the structural factors that contribute to mass shootings are more prevalent in certain areas of the United States than in others.

The purpose of this study is to explore the current literature which assesses the incidence of completed or attempted mass shooting events in which a female party acted either alone or as an accomplice; explore the involvement of women in the planning or execution of acts of terrorism; evaluate the pathology of women involved in these acts of extreme violence; highlight any gender-specific pathological and environmental risk factors associated with the planning or completion of the mass shooting, spree killing or terrorist attack events.

Using the 27-item preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines (Moher et al., 2009), the present systematic review explored peer-reviewed literature published between 1908 and September 2020 using six databases [SalfordUniversityJournals@Ovid; Journals@Ovid Full Text; APA PsycArticles Full Text; APA PsycExtra; APA PsycInfo; Ovid MEDLINE(R)], in addition to conducting a grey literature search on “Google Scholar” using specific search terms, predetermined following use of the patient/population, intervention, comparison framework.

Findings of the review did identify several distinguishing characteristics exclusive to women allied to terror organisations; including lower levels of extremism and religious ideology, lower age of radicalisation, higher levels of education than currently hypothesized and the significance of relational affiliation with extremist causes. Despite the synthesis of descriptive characterises being achieved, data relating to female mass shooters was scant and relied upon case study review and discussion. As a result, identification of precipitating psychopathological and environmental triggers was difficult, however, there does appear to be a higher proportion of female mass shooters targeting current or previous places of employment.

One of the potential limitations of this review is that some relevant studies were not identified during the search. The risk of this was minimised as much as possible by screening the reference section of relevant reviews and theoretical papers (which were identified in the search of the databases) for any potentially relevant studies that may have been missed. In addition, numerous permutations of the search criteria that were entered into the databases were also entered into “GoogleScholar”.

Current literature has highlighted that the age of radicalisation among women across both jihadi-inspired, right-wing and far-left extremist organisations are decreasing, with many new recruits being born after 1990 (Jacques and Taylor, 2012). This finding aids in identifying a target of entry to minimise the chance of radicalisation, through targeted educational training and anti-radicalisation programmes intervening in at risk groups at the correct time. However, further exploration will be necessary to identify specific risk factors prior to radicalisation in such groups.

There appears to be a large gap in literature quantitively assessing the rates of psychopathological variables among this demographic. When narrowing the lens further onto female mass shooters, empirical literature investigating even characteristic variables continues to evade the academic remit. Arguably this obstruction to the current understanding of female perpetrated violence, both in an organised terror and a mass shooter capacity, limits the ability to meaningfully evaluate whether previous models assessing risk among mass shooters is valid across genders.

Purpose – Video game violence has historically been offered by policy-makers and some scholars as one contributing factor to mass homicides, particularly with shooters who are young, male, and white. However, the evidence for or against such beliefs has not been closely examined.

Approach – The current chapter examines the research exploring violent video game playing and its links with violent and aggressive behavior. Further, research regarding mass school shooters is also examined. The chapter also engages in a sociological analysis of structural factors within both the general society and scientific community by which media is often identified as a potential cause of social problems.

Findings – Current evidence cannot support proposed links between video game violence and aggressive or violent behavior, whether mild or mass homicides. Efforts to blame mass homicides on video games appear to be due to unfamiliarity with games among older adults, prejudicial views of young offenders, and a well-identified cycle of moral panic surrounding media as a scapegoat for social ills. Poor peer-reviewing within the scientific community allowed scholars to participate in this moral panic.

Social implications – Time focused on video games as a cause of mass school shootings is time wasted. Discussions of mental health issues and mental health care are likely to bear more fruit in relation to mass school shootings.

Purpose – In the midst of the second wave of data collection for a Comprehensive School Safety Initiative (CSSI) research project, a mass shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. This tragic incident provoked responses across the United States, including intense political discourse, organized student protests, and active shooter drills. In order to assess the potential influence of a major threat to school safety on the perceptions of adolescents, this chapter analyzes the survey responses of middle and high school students in St. Louis County.

Methodology/approach – Approximately one-third of the sample was surveyed prior to the shooting and the remaining students completed surveys within three months after the shooting. The authors examines the potential influence of the shooting on students’ reports on a number of school safety issues, including fear and perceived risk of victimization, likelihood of reporting guns on campus, and engaging in avoidance behaviors.

Findings – Results indicate that the shooting significantly influenced students’ perceptions of school disorder and likelihood of reporting a weapon at school, especially in white, less disadvantaged schools. The results also reflect meaningful effects based on the timing of data collection post-shooting, with many of the significant changes appearing within three weeks after February 14, 2018.

Originality/value – This study explores how external events may influence student perceptions of school safety. Moreover, this study offers a methodological contribution by demonstrating an assessment of the Parkland shooting as a potential threat to internal validity.

Purpose – The Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings have presented new challenges in how the media covers school shootings. These events have transformed Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and Seung-Hui Cho not only from disgruntled youth to school killers, but also into actors, writers, and directors of their own narrative.

Methodology/approach – This article focuses on the role of the masculine identity and underlying messages in the communicative process of the shooters. Further examination looks at what particular messages the shooters are communicating through the media. This includes an analysis into their journals, internet postings, and videos that were left behind as archives of the performative scripts. Finally, reflection is presented in terms of which parts of the shooters’ messages are or are not communicated and why.

Findings – This article considers the differences in the Columbine and Virginia Tech cases in terms of who is controlling the information that gets released to the public. In the case of Columbine, information was or was not released by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, whereas in the case of Virginia Tech, nearly all decisions regarding material release was made by the media (particularly NBC News).

Originality/value of paper – This article applies Muschert and Ragnedda's (2010) examination of cultural scripts to two benchmark cases, examining the mediatization of the shooters’ own words.

Reducing fatalities and increasing the number of students able to remain safe during an active shooter event is paramount to the health and well-being of schools and communities. Yet, methodological limitations and ethical concerns have restricted prior research on security measures during school shooter lockdown drills. This study aims to fill that gap by using virtual reality (VR) to statistically examine the effectiveness of active shooter response protocols in a simulated high school.

Using a full factorial, within-subjects experimental design, this exploratory investigation used VR technology to investigate whether automatic classroom door locks, centralized lockdown notifications and the presence of a school resource officer (SRO) significantly impacted student safety and casualty mitigation. Data were collected from a convenience sample of 37 individuals who volunteered to participate in 24 school shooter scenarios within a simulated virtual environment.

Multiple one-way analysis of variances indicated significant main effects for automatic classroom door locks and SRO presence. Automatic locks yielded faster lockdown response times, and both factors were significantly associated with higher numbers of secured classrooms.

Findings from the current study address the gap in existing literature regarding evidence-based school safety protocols and provide recommendations for using VR simulations to increase preparedness and reduce fatalities during an active school shooter event.

This chapter seeks to shed light on the many factors that contribute to people becoming school shooters. These factors are divided into four domains: biological, psychological, social, and cultural. At the biological level, this chapter explores the potential influence of genetics, pre- and post-natal development, and body-related issues that may affect the perpetrators' sense of self. A psychological typology is presented, consisting of psychopathic, psychotic, and traumatized school shooters. Socially, school shooters often have multiple setbacks, failures, and rejections that contribute to their distress. Finally, the cultural domain includes such factors as media violence, role models for killing, and ideologies of hatred and supremacy. Rather than attributing school shootings to a simplistic cause such as bullying, this chapter discusses a wide range of potential influences that combine to cause mass attacks at schools.