Tag: shootings

With Months Still To Go – School Shootings Are Already At A Record In 2022
IN OTHER NEWS

With Months Still To Go – School Shootings Are Already At A Record In 2022

As a Michigan teen pleaded guilty on Oct. 24, 2022, to killing four students in a December 2021 attack, America was learning of yet another school shooting. This time, it was a performance arts high school in St. Louis, where a former student opened fire, killing two and injuring at least seven others before dying in a shootout with police. The fact that yet another school shooting took place within hours of a gunman in a separate case appearing in court underscores how often these events take place in the U.S. As criminologists who have built a comprehensive database to log all school shootings in the U.S., we know that deadly school gun violence in America in now a regular occurrence – with incidents only becoming more frequent and deadlier. Our records show that seven more people died...
What We Know About The Gunmen Who Carry Out The Mass School Shootings In The US
IMPACT

What We Know About The Gunmen Who Carry Out The Mass School Shootings In The US

When the Columbine High School massacre took place in 1999 it was seen as a watershed moment in the United States – the worst mass shooting at a school in the country’s history. Now, it ranks fourth. The three school shootings to surpass its death toll of 13 – 12 students, one teacher – have all taken place within the last decade: 2012’s Sandy Hook Elementary attack, in which a gunman killed 26 children and school staff; the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which claimed the lives of 17 people; and now the Robb Elementary School assault in Uvalde, Texas, where on May 24, 2022, at least 19 children and two adults were murdered. We are criminologists who study the life histories of public mass shooters in the U.S. As part of that research, we buil...
More Mass Shootings Are Happening At Grocery Stores – Criminologists Find 13% Are Motivated By Racial Hatred
IN OTHER NEWS

More Mass Shootings Are Happening At Grocery Stores – Criminologists Find 13% Are Motivated By Racial Hatred

An apparently racially motivated attack at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, resulted in 10 deaths on May 14, 2022, with the teenage suspect allegedly targeting Black shoppers in a prominently African American neighborhood. Mass public shootings in which four or more people are killed have become more frequent, and deadly, in the last decade. And the tragedy in Buffalo is the latest in a recent trend of mass public shootings taking place in retail establishments. We are criminologists who study the life histories of public mass shooters in the United States. Since 2017, we have conducted dozens of interviews with incarcerated perpetrators and people who knew them. We also built a comprehensive database of mass public shootings using public data, with the shooters coded on over 200 di...
After The Sandy Hook Shootings, Conspiracy Theories In The US Became More Personal, More Cruel And More Mainstream
POLITICS

After The Sandy Hook Shootings, Conspiracy Theories In The US Became More Personal, More Cruel And More Mainstream

Conspiracy theories are powerful forces in the U.S. They have damaged public health amid a global pandemic, shaken faith in the democratic process and helped spark a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. These conspiracy theories are part of a dangerous misinformation crisis that has been building for years in the U.S. American politics has long had a paranoid streak, and belief in conspiracy theories is nothing new. But as the news cycle reminds us daily, outlandish conspiracy theories born on social media now regularly achieve mainstream acceptance and are echoed by people in power. As a journalism professor at the University of Connecticut, I have studied the misinformation around the mass shooting that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012. I c...
At A Record High This Year – School Shootings – But They Can Be Prevented
EDUCATION

At A Record High This Year – School Shootings – But They Can Be Prevented

Whenever a school shooting takes place like the one at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit on November 30, 2021, it is typically followed by a familiar chorus of questions. How could such a thing happen? Why doesn’t the government do more to stop these shootings from occurring? Those questions are even more urgent in light of the fact that the shooting at Oxford High School was one of 222 school shootings in 2021, an all-time high, according to the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s K-12 School Shooting Database. That’s over 100 more school shootings in 2021 than in 2019 or 2018, respectively the second- and third-worst years on record. In the Oxford High School case, a 15-year-old boy armed with a semiautomatic handgun is accused of killing four students and injuring six oth...
On And Off The Set Hollywood’s Love Of Guns Increases The Risk Of Shootings
CELEBRITY NEWS

On And Off The Set Hollywood’s Love Of Guns Increases The Risk Of Shootings

Brad Bushman, The Ohio State University and Dan Romer, University of Pennsylvania In what appears to be a tragic accident, actor Alec Baldwin shot dead a cinematographer on Oct 21, 2021, while discharging a prop gun on set in New Mexico. It is too early to speculate what went wrong during the filming of the Western movie “Rust.” But the incident, in which the film’s director was also injured, highlights a simple fact: Guns are commonplace in Hollywood films. As scholars of mass communication and risk behavior, we have studied the growing prevalence of firearms on screen and believe that the more guns there are in movies, the more likely it is that a shooting will occur – both in the “reel” world and in the “real” world. Gun violence in Hollywood movies has increased dramatically over t...
To stop police shootings of people with mental health disabilities, I asked them what cops – and everyone – could do to help
HEALTH & WELLNESS

To stop police shootings of people with mental health disabilities, I asked them what cops – and everyone – could do to help

When Joe Prude called the police on his brother, he was asking for help: Daniel Prude, who suffered from mental health problems, had run almost naked out of his Rochester, New York, house into the snow. When officers arrived, new video footage shows, the March 23 encounter quickly turned violent, and Prude died from asphyxiation under a hood officers had put over his head. Two years prior, in 2018, Shukri Ali Said of Georgia also wound up dead after leaving her house during a mental health crisis on April 23, 2018. Police, called in to help, found Said standing at an intersection holding a knife. Officers shot her five times in the neck and chest, killing her. That same month, in New York, officers answered a 911 call about a black man waving something that looked like a gun. In fact, it...
To stop police shootings of people with mental health disabilities, I asked them what cops – and everyone – could do to help
IN OTHER NEWS

To stop police shootings of people with mental health disabilities, I asked them what cops – and everyone – could do to help

After Shukri Ali Said left her house during a mental health crisis on April 23, 2018, her sister called 911 for help. Police found Said standing at an intersection holding a knife. Officers shot her five times in the neck and chest, killing her. That same month, in New York, officers answered a 911 call about a black man waving something that looked like a gun. In fact, it was a pipe. But when Saheed Vassell, a 34-year-old father with mental illness who was well known in his Brooklyn community, pointed it at police, they shot him dead. Vassell and Said are among the hundreds of people with intellectual disabilities or mental illnesses in the United States killed by police every year. According to The Washington Post, 142 of the 752 people shot by police so far in 2019 have had a mental i...
VIDEO REELS

Chicago group aims to stop shootings

In one of the United States's deadliest cities, a group is attempting to curb gun crime by working with community. Thanks to a group that's using former gang members to reach out to one of the city's most violent neighbourhoods, gun shootings in Chicago have plummeted. It's using a novel method with a disruptive approach. by John Hendren Al Jazeera's John Hendren reports from Chicago.
Police Shootings and Black Men – A Hidden Cause
Journalism

Police Shootings and Black Men – A Hidden Cause

By Steve Boston   We have all had the experience of looking through a window at the surroundings outside when suddenly at some point we recognize that the window we were looking through was actually dirty, and on closer examination wonder how we had not seen all the dust and smudge marks before. Our vision was impaired without really realizing it. Often we can look through the same window countless times before coming to this conclusion. Upon cleaning it we then marvel at the clarity of the view that had been marred before and was obstructed by our own lack of attention and unknowingness. Many of us don't recognize that some of the ideas and beliefs that we hold are like the dirt and smudge on a window that we are so accustomed to looking through that they become a part of our wo...