Thresholds of Violence: How school shootings catch on

[ehrnst]

13. I went to a high school in the 70's where there were gun racks in trucks students drove to school.

Last edited Mon May 21, 2018, 11:13 AM - Edit history (3)

There were guns available to anyone that walked out into the parking lot with a key to those vehicles - far more access than they would have in the last 20 years.

Hunting was a male rite of passage.

Most men and boys I knew owned guns - BB guns and air rifles as kids, then a rifle when he got to his teens. I'm sure that number has gone up.

There has not been a single shooting at that high school.

(Another example: http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20160109/news/160109001/ )

Other suburban high schools had shooting clubs with teens bringing guns to school, too.

"Guns were in the schools," Wagner recalls, "and there were no problems with them."

The Arlington High School students involved walked to school with their guns, brought their guns on their bicycles along with their backpacks or simply carried a gun case onto the school bus. English teacher Wayne Wagner would secure the arsenal in a locked classroom closet until the final bell rang.

Clearly there is something else at work in the last 20 years, in addition to the simple increase in guns, when we are talking about school shootings by students. (Let's keep on topic, shall we?)

School shooting are covered nonstop in the media worldwide. School shootings don't happen worldwide. Any notion that there's some causal link between the media coverage and school shooting is on it's face nonsense.

To declare that media, especially social media, has no effect is on its face nonsense. To state that in addition to the availability of guns that all the media coverage of shooters can be the tipping point for some young men who would not have otherwise opened fire in a school is not ignoring the problem of gun availablity. What it does do is let us know that there are kids who don't show signs of mental illness who could be at risk. A good thing, yes?

If you had bothered to read the article that you keep trying to say is "nonsense" you would have understood that there is a snowball effect - a young white American male sees peers, sees a model for dealing with pain, and it is amplified via social media. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the "Incel" groups that worship the shooters that have been "rebuffed" by women who they think owe them sex.

I suggest that if you are not going to even read the article, that you do a bit of research on the effects that social media especially has, on young white men.