Bannister 1

April 2016

Sarah Bannister

School Shootings in America from Pre-Columbine to Post-Sandy Hook: An Analysis of the

Modern Day School Shooting Crisis

Suicide with hostile intent has been apparent in society since ancient Greek and Roman

times (Preti). This has evolved through the centuries to its current presentation, active shooting

incidents. Since 1990, there have been 143 school shootings in America. These occur with

increasing prevalence and demonstrate the underlying current of permissiveness surrounding the

issue of school shootings. Although most would believe that school shootings are independent

events with no connection, social currents surrounding school shootings show that these seeming

disasters should be analyzed as a slow moving crisis.

Boin conceptualizes crises as “disruptions of normality... a state of flux where

institutional structures of a social system become uprooted” (Boin 162). The modern-day school

shooting phenomenon can be visualized as an echocardiogram, demonstrating how the

underlying crisis results in each new school shooting event.

Table 1

The baseline demonstrates normal societal function, and variations in the baseline represent the

underlying current of school shootings, which disrupts social structures by allowing the

perpetrators to access and intensively study past shooting events in an attempt to understand and

Bannister 2

one-up them. The peaks on the ECG in Table 1 represent each individual shooting event that

takes place - seemingly unrelated when considering just the top parts of the graph, but clearly

interconnected after taking into consideration the underlying social current permitting these

disasters, or peaks on the map, to occur. Each peak on the graph stands for Columbine, Red

Lake, Pearl, Bethel, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, and many others - showing the failure of the

collective society to intervene and put an end to the school shooting crisis.

In this paper, I will explore twelve school shooting events from pre-Columbine to post-

Sandy Hook, to reveal trends and patterns otherwise unseen in the study of single shooting

events compared to the study of school shootings as a modern day crisis. One special concern

that I will take into consideration throughout this paper is the avoidance of using the shooters’

names. Identifying the shooters by name perpetuates the school shooting crisis by making

information about shooters readily available to those who might follow in their footsteps.

Through the intentional avoidance of identifying these criminals, the power is taken away from

shooters who may be seeking glory or infamy. The twelve influential school shooting events I

will examine range from 1996 to 2015, and the perpetrators range from psychopaths to “normal”

students. The application of logic and theory to these events will reveal truths about the school

shooting epidemic in this country.

One of the earliest influential school shootings took place in Moses Lake, WA in 1996.

The shooter, a 14 year old white male, became obsessed with the Stephen King novel Rage, and

brought a handgun and rifle to the school and shot two students before shooting his algebra

teacher in the back. This mirrors King’s novel, where an algebra teacher is shot by a student.

Between 1996 and 1998, there were five influential school shootings. In Bethel, Alaska, a

16 year old white male with a chaotic home life brought a 12 gauge shotgun to school, killing

Bannister 3

two. His father had previously held a newspaper publisher at gunpoint before surrendering after a

brief standoff with the police.

In Pearl, Mississippi, a 16 year old white male brought a hunting rifle to school,

wounding seven and killing three. A couple of months before this shooting he and a friend

tortured and beat his dog, before burning her with lighter fluid and tossing her body into the lake.

He wrote in his journal that “[Sparkles] cried out, it sounded almost humanlike. We laughed and

hit her hard” (Gladwell).

West Paducah, Kentucky brought a 14 year old boy obsessed with the Basketball Diaries

who brought a .22 pistol to school, killing three and wounding five.

In Jonesboro, Arkansas, the shooters, white males aged just 13 and 11, had amassed over

ten different guns and killed five. One was an average student with minor disciplinary problems,

the other, a bright cheerful “golden child” at school. They activated a fire alarm and sniped at

students from the length of around a football field away.

In Springfield, OR, a 15 year old male with an intact and loving home life became

paranoid and delusional, believing that Disney had plans for world domination, and the

government had planted a computer chip in his head. He blasted Wagner’s Liebestod on repeat

over the family’s stereo after killing his father and mother. He got a .22 pistol and killed four,

wounding twenty five. These shootings appeared to be randomized, isolated incidents.

But in 1999, two white male seniors at Columbine High School killed thirteen and

wounded twenty five, using a combination of guns and homemade bombs. Police later found

more than seventeen bombs in the high school. The shooters were psychopathic, known to be

manipulative and callous, and witnesses said that “[they] laughed and joked as they turned the

hallways into a shooting gallery” (Kennedy). In one’s school planner he had inscribed “Ich bin

Bannister 4

Gott”, German for “I am God”. They wore black dusters, left manifestos, and recorded home

movies known as the “Basement Tapes”. In the later-destroyed tapes, the soon-to-be shooters

expressed that they expected people to follow them and plan more attacks like this because they

were “so [explicit] godlike” and expressed that they wanted to “kickstart a revolution” and have

the “most deaths in U.S history... hopefully”. Despite the destruction of the tapes by the county

sherriff’s department in 2011, the information contained within them is still accessible online in

the form of transcripts. (Columbine Research Project). The legacy of the Columbine shooters

lives on, and in post-Columbine shootings, their influence is clear.

The first influential post-Columbine shooting occurred in Red Lake, MN in 2005 with a

12 gauge shotgun and a .40 handgun. The shooter was a 16 year old Native American male who

killed nine students, as well as his grandfather and his grandfather’s female companion.

In 2007, a 23 year old male of Asian descent at Virginia Tech killed thirty two in the

deadliest shooting in United States history. His motive was revenge, and witnesses described him

as “a silent killer who was calm and showed no expression as he pursued and shot his victims”

(Jackman and Shapira). He killed nearly three dozen students.

In 2012, a 20 year old white male killed six adults and twenty six- and seven-year olds at

an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. He dressed in a black duster like the

Columbine killers. Police reports show that the shooter literally shot an entrance in the side of

the school before entering and killing twenty kindergarten and first graders and six adults

(CNN). He was diagnosed with Asperger’s, a typically nonviolent, mild form of Autism

Spectrum Disorder.

A 17 year old white male was thwarted before the execution of his plans for a school

shooting in Waseca, MN. He was later diagnosed with Asperger’s. He immediately disclosed his

Bannister 5

plans to the police in a blunt fashion, demonstrating his inability to connect with those around

him. He was making bombs in a storage unit, and planned to use a .22 rifle and a shotgun along

with the bombs to prove that “high-capacity assault rifles were unnecessary for an effective

school attack” (Gladwell). Although this potential shooter was stopped before he took action, his

plan was thorough, meticulous, and already in motion. There is no doubt that Waseca would

have seen a catastrophic school shooting if he had not been caught.

In 2015, a 26 year old white male shot and killed nine at Umpqua Community College in

Oregon. He had been through basic training for the United States Army, but was discharged after

the six week boot camp as “unfit for service”. He dressed in military-style combat gear and

brought six guns to Umpqua Community College on the day of the shooting.

Table 2

Bannister 6

Aside from their predominant maleness and whiteness, these shooters have very little in

common with each other. Table 2 analyzes eight factors of school shootings, and how methods

and results vary on a case-by-case basis. They used different weapons, hailed from different

socioeconomic classes, had varying motives, ages, and a range of casualties. This inability to fit

into a pattern has puzzled criminologists and sociologists alike. Although many immediately

write off school shooters as being mentally unstable or psychopathic, school shooters have

evolved since Columbine, and became less resemblant of psychopaths and more resemblant of

socially isolated angry young men. “For every violent perpetrator of mass killings who has a

history of mental health disorders and/or psychological and social stressors, there are hundreds of

individuals who have similar profiles who do not become violent” (Dikel). The archetype of the

school shooter is increasingly baffling - kids with no violent tendencies, no criminal records, no

chaotic home lives, are getting guns and killing their peers for no apparent reason.

Although post-Columbine shooters do not fit into any identifiable pattern, many of the

pre-Columbine shooters had been unduly influenced by violent works. The glorification of

violence among today’s teens fosters ideas and conceptualizations of the world that do not

preclude unthinkable acts such as suicide by mass murder. For example, in Bethel, Alaska, the

shooter’s father believed he was “under the influence of the video game Doom” (Gladwell). The

shooter from West Paducah was obsessed with the Basketball Diaries, a film where a basketball

star freefalls into heroin addiction and ultimately steals and kills to attain drugs, while the

shooter from Moses Lake attempted to reenact the Stephen King novel Rage by killing his

algebra teacher, among others. In Springfield, the shooter played Wagner’s Leibestod on repeat

after committing matricide and patricide. Pre-Columbine shooters were often attracted to violent

games and works, while post-Columbine shooters with lower thresholds tend not to be drawn to

Bannister 7

overt caricatures of violence in this way. In fact, the thwarted shooter from Waseca told a police

officer during his interrogation that he hadn’t been playing any video games, and wasn’t enticed

by the violence (Gladwell).

The Columbine shooting set a cultural script for active shooting incidents post-1999

(Larkin). But more than that, the Columbine shooters were some of the first perpetrators with the

ability to leave behind artifacts that could be accessed by anyone via the internet. Their

Basement Tapes provided insight into their intentions and state of mind, and any subsequent

potential shooters could access them online. Despite school shooters’ refusal to fit into a clear

pattern, one thing is clearly visible and evolving throughout the twenty-first century school

shooting crisis. The post-Columbine shooters’ ideologies are clearly similar, stemming from a

reverence for the Columbine shooters. The Columbine shooters had violent fantasies - an excerpt

from one’s journal reads:

I want to tear a throat out with my own teeth like a pop can.

I want to gut someone with my hand, to tear a head off and rip

out the heart and lungs from the neck, to stab someone in the gut,

shove it up to the heart, and yank the [explicit] blade out of their rib cage!

I want to grab some weak little freshman and just tear them apart

like a [explicit] wolf. show them who is god. strangle them,

squish their head, bite their temples into the skull, rip off their jaw.

rip off their colar [sic] bones, break their arms in half and twist them

around, the lovely sounds of bones cracking and flesh ripping,

ahh... so much to do and so little chances. -- 11/17/98

Bannister 8

(A Columbine Site, parent-run webpage). The post-Columbine shooters often idolized the

Columbine shooters as gods or mentors, seeking to add to, not mimic, their actions. In fact, of

the twelve major school shootings after Columbine, eight of the shooters made explicit

references to the Columbine shooters, or stated that they wanted to follow in the Columbine

shooters’ footsteps. The thwarted shooter from Waseca stated in his interrogation that “[his]

number one idol is [Columbine shooter]. . . . I think I just see myself in him. Like he would be

the kind of guy I’d want to be with. Like, if I knew him, I just thought he was cool” (Gladwell).

School shootings are inherently random in victim pattern. Because of this limitation, we

must consider not how the victims were vulnerable, but how the perpetrators were vulnerable to

the influence of other shooters providing normally non-susceptible with a cultural script to

follow, enabling them to join even with a higher threshold.The school shooting phenomenon is

interesting in one aspect because the vulnerable population, potential school shooters, is

predominantly comprised of school-age white males. This is a group that, in all other aspects, is

immensely privileged and not statistically predisposed to violent crimes. The school shooting

crisis takes hold of isolated awkward young white men and introduces them to a culture of power

and violence, enticing them to join the revolution by committing mass murder. Although socially

awkward young men may not initially be predisposed to heinous acts like these, the culture of

permissiveness surrounding school shootings, especially the ‘legacy’ left behind by previous

school shooters allows these vulnerable students even with higher thresholds to participate in

violent acts like school shootings. Shooters are often isolated or seen with a few close friends,

get average or above average grades in school, and meticulously plan their attack for months or

years before it takes place, demonstrating high levels of intelligence and critical thinking.

Bannister 9

According to a PhD thesis dissecting six school shootings, published in 2008, “There is nothing

spontaneous about a rampage school shooting” (Kirkland).

The modern-day phenomena of school shootings can be conceptualized as a slow-moving

crisis - the underlying social current allowing these events to keep occurring - with disasters, or

peaks on the graph, demonstrating each individual shooting event. Throughout this paper, I will

explore the following question: why are seemingly ‘normal’ kids killing each other en masse?

School shootings are a human rights crisis - breaching the most basic of human rights as we

understand them - the right to life. Other basic infrastructural rights we take for granted - such as

the right to receive an education without fear for students’ safety are also compromised. The

consequences of school shootings are devastating and immediate. Children are ripped from their

parents in acts of senseless and cruel violence.

Why are seemingly ‘normal’ kids killing each other? This question can be explored using

Granovetter’s Theory of Thresholds. Granovetter set out to explore “[paradoxical] situations

where outcomes do not seem intuitively consistent with the underlying individual[’s]

preferences”. He used riots as a way to conceptualize how rational people may come to

participate in an anti-social event like a riot. He explains that the first instigator, someone who

would throw a rock through a window with minimal provocation, has a threshold of zero.

Another person, upon seeing someone throw a rock through a window, who picks up another

rock and joins in has a threshold of one. This continues until a perfectly sensible person who

would not otherwise join illegal or immoral activity, upon seeing ninety-nine people rioting,

would finally abandon their moral values and join the riot. This person has a threshold of one

hundred. Granovetter’s theory of thresholds can be applied to school shootings, another cultural

lapse in moral behavior (Gladwell). For example, the first instance of a major school shooting,

Bannister 10

Columbine, was perpetrated by two teenagers with clear psychopathic tendencies. They were

manipulative, obsessive, and cold-blooded. One witness described a particularly blood-chilling

event during the Columbine shooting: “[The gunmen] laughed as they turned the hallways into a

shooting gallery... there was a girl crouched beneath a desk, and the guy came over and said

‘peekaboo!’ and shot her in the neck” (Kennedy). These individuals had thresholds of zero and

one, respectively. For the purposes of this paper, I will explore the Columbine disaster as the first

of a slew of “modern” school shootings, which set the “cultural script” for subsequent school

shootings (Larkin).

In contrast with Granovetter’s theory of thresholds, a fact sheet disseminated to law

enforcement personnel by the FBI at an Active Shooter Symposium in March warned of

“copycat” events. The FBI warns law enforcement to “be conscious of the Werther Effect,

defined as a duplication or copycat of another suicidal act [with hostile intentions]. School

shootings are typically well-publicized, sensationalized events that can trigger an increase in

similar acts for... days or weeks after the attack” (Federal Bureau of Investigation). Although the

FBI identifies the potential for a chain reaction of active shooter events, they do not take into

consideration that, given the unique cases explored, copycat events are essentially non-existent in

active shooter events. Rather, each subsequent attack is another perpetrator “joining the riot”, or

abandoning societal norms to follow in the footsteps of, but not copy, the Columbine shooters of

1999. As the years have passed since Columbine, the subsequent perpetrators bear less

resemblance to the psychopathic Columbine shooters due to their higher moral threshold. The

Columbine shooters allowed kids with higher thresholds to join in, explaining why seemingly

“normal” kids are shooting up their schools.

Bannister 11

One drawback to the analysis in this paper is that Granovetter’s theory ensures a

sociological approach to the modern day active shooter crisis, but does not explore the media’s

influence on potential shooters. The Age of Information ensures their nearly uninterrupted access

to grisly information promulgated by the media. This paper looks at the active shooting crisis

through a sociological lense without taking into consideration how the media impacts would-be

shooters and persuades or dissuades them to take action. The biggest drawback to this paper is its

reliance on already published data without new data collection. This may lead to the perpetuation

of unreliable or inconsistent facts or data.

Although shootings have occurred throughout the world, such as a brutal attack on a

summer camp in Sweden, no country has had an outbreak of school shootings in the way the

United States has. School shootings in America have become an epidemic. Some speculate that

this is due to America’s lax gun laws and obsession with violence. Despite the rampage of school

shootings across the country, there has been astoundingly little legislation to prevent guns from

getting into the wrong hands. This is largely due to the polarization of the gun security issue by

American politicians, who use this topic to divide both party and people. Unfortunately, despite

an initial flurry of drafted legislation after each disaster, few bills were ever passed into laws -

after Sandy Hook for example, 24 bills were proposed, and only one passed - this law mandated

the registration of automatic weapons and limited the number of bullets in a magazine from

thirty to ten. Of the eight hundred bills proposed since Columbine, less than 10% were passed

into law (Diep). The United States remains in political gridlock due to the polarizing nature of

gun control in the country.

To eradicate the outbreak of active shooters in this country, we must take away

sensationalist media that promulgates the desires of the shooters - infamy and revenge, and lower

Bannister 12

the amount of grisly information available about shooters to raise the threshold of the vulnerable

population, in this case, young ostracized males. By avoiding the use of these criminals’ names,

we actively work against the glorification of such students, sending a message that we will not

accept these actions as a part of everyday life. Additionally, we must ensure that our schools take

into consideration the potential for shooters when designating the usage of physical space.

Creating a school environment with tight but non-invasive security measures, such as video

cameras and a “buzz in” locking system on all doors, it is possible to limit the potential effects of

a school shooter. Lastly, everyone - not just law enforcement personnel - should be trained to

recognize psychological and social warning signs and enact an effective preemptive response to

raise the threshold of potential shooters through early recognition and intervention. Many

shooters warn or involve at least one acquaintance before the shooting takes place. It is possible

to intercede before plans come to fruition through a “See Something, Say Something” model, if

the model is readily accepted throughout the community. Everyone must do their part to limit the

impacts of senseless violence on our society and on our children.

Active school shooting events are becoming increasingly common in the United States.

School shooters have progressed from mentally disturbed psychopathic individuals to quiet and

isolated students. This progression can be explained through the application of Granovetter’s

theory of thresholds and the critical analysis of the shooters’ tactics and personal lives. The

prevalence of school shootings in society, as well as our acceptance and promulgation of these

events in day-to-day life has created a social crisis, which is an underlying current permitting

school shootings to continue happening. Due to access to information via the internet and the

glorification or infamy of past school shooters, disasters such as individual shooting events can

and will continue to occur.

Bannister 13

Bannister 14

Works Cited

Gladwell, Malcolm. "Thresholds of Violence." The New Yorker. October 19, 2015. Accessed

March 22, 2016. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/thresholds-of-violence.

Preti, Antonio, MD. "School Shooting as a Culturally Enforced Way of Expressing Suicidal

Hostile Intentions." Journal of the American Academy of Psychology Online, December 2008.

Accessed March 22, 2016. http://www.jaapl.org/content/36/4/544.full.

United States of America. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Office for Victims of Crime. Resources

for Responding to Incidents of Mass Violence.

United States of America. Federal Bureau of Investigation. The School Shooter: A Quick

Reference Guide. Accessed March 22, 2016.

http://homelandsecurity.iowa.gov/documents/misc/FBI_School_Shooter_Guide.pdf

Kennedy, Helen. "Columbine Shootings Leave 39 Dead or Injured in 1999." NY Daily News.

April 21, 1999. Accessed March 22, 2016. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/high-

school-bloodbathgun-toting-teens-kill-25-article-1.822951.

"Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting: What Happened?" CNN. Accessed March 22, 2016.

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2012/12/us/sandy-hook-timeline/.

Bannister 15

Shapira, Ian, and Tom Jackman. "Gunman Kills 32 at Virginia Tech In Deadliest Shooting in

U.S. History." Washington Post. April 17, 2007. Accessed March 22, 2016.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/16/AR2007041600533.html.

Mongan, Philip C., and Melanie D. Otis. "Rampage School Shootings: A Content Analysis of

Media and Scholarly Accounts of Perpetration Factors Associated with the Phenomenon." PhD

diss., University of Kentucky, 2013. Accessed March 22, 2016.

http://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=csw_etds.

Dikel, William, MD. School Shootings and Student Mental Health - What Lies Beneath the Tip

of the Iceberg. Report. https://www.nsba.org/sites/default/files/School%20Shootings%20and

%20Student%20Mental%20Health.pdf

United States of America. Department of Justice. Bureau of Justice Assistance. Active Shooter

Response Training Initiative.

"Analysis of School Shootings." Analysis of School Shootings. December 9, 2014. Accessed

March 22, 2016. http://everytownresearch.org/reports/analysis-of-school-shootings/.

"Transcripts of the Basement Tapes." Columbine Research Project. Accessed April 25, 2016.

http://columbineresearchproject.jimdo.com/transcripts_of_the_basement_tapes.php.

Bannister 16

“How Many Gun Bills Pass After Mass Shootings?” Diep, F. 18 September 2013. Retrieved 26

April 2016. http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/how-many-gun-bills-actually-pass-

after-mass-shootings