When i was in grade school some 20 years ago now we had the same issue but it was bomb threats back then.
People blame guns exclusively, but I think the real causes are:
1. Some kind of societal dysfunction that's leading deeper levels of anger and isolation in some people.
2. Massive national advertising campaigns by the media reminding angry, isolated teenagers that shooting up their school is an option they have.
You have. It's all the wall-to-wall publicity the shootings get.
#2 might have a connection to the popularization of 24-hour news channels, which experience a huge pressure to fill air time with something.
That said, I do agree the gp's explanation is simplistic. There's clearly some kind of quest for transcendence involved in school shootings (not unlike e.g. Islamic terrorism); recognition for the act is definitely one element of that, but I think there's got to be more.
I doubt they're covered to the same degree as in America (e.g. CNN reiterating every detail, over and over, for days).
I don't think America would have the school shooting problem is has if they were covered to the same degree as, say, Indian gang rapes are covered.
>1. Some kind of social dysfunction that's leading deeper levels of anger and isolation in some people.
This happens everywhere. You should ask yourself why school shootings aren't also a problem everywhere.
>2. Massive national advertising campaigns by the media reminding angry, isolated teenagers that shooting up their school is an option they have.
Maybe you should ask yourself why it's an option they have.
Because people in those other places have fewer rights.
Taking away rights and adding restrictions are a time-tested solution to many social problems. America should try it. Get rid of the First and Second Amendments, and you solve school shootings, extremism, Trump, the threat to democracy, all in one blow.
The problem isn't really that society fucks people up and doesn't bother to help them, the problem is those people aren't impotent enough.
Thanks for playing to type, I guess.
I don't understand how anyone could manage to misread my comment that badly.
No, it's obvious to gun owners as well. Obviously if one is concerned with "gun" violence, guns are a factor. The difference with gun owners is the perspective - a focus on other factors, a focus on overall violence/crime and not solely on the subset of gun violence, trying to find causation instead of correlation, regulations that would work while still providing protections, etc.
Probably the biggest issue preventing support for additional access restrictions is how shitty the justice system is and how the enforcing agencies routinely break the laws they are supposed to abide by. Things like ex parte hearings, lack of legal representation, lower standards of proof (and then judges violating the law by erring on the safe side), ammending previous agency regulations capriciously (and sometimes in volation of statute), etc. There's no genuine debate or search for compromise by either side. It's turned into a religious war.
It might even be how some riots boil up out of nowhere. Tends to happen alot with teen suicides too.
Decades ago, guns were even allowed in schools. As in, students could bring a gun to keep in their vehicle or even sometimes locker for use in after school activities like a hunters safety course, or various competitive shooting leagues.
There is of course the notable exception of the Dunblane massacre in 1996, which effectively lead to a ban on handguns. AFAIK we haven't had any school shootings since then
As I remember the guy who called in the threat did it from a convenience store pay phone where a cop was parked. They said they caught him minutes after he made the call.
When I went to High School the doors were left unlocked during school hours. It was normal for past students to "pop in" during the school day or in the afternoon for social visits to teachers. We had hall monitors who would question why you were roaming the halls if you looked young enough to be a student but a simple "I graduated last year and stopped in to catch up with my programming teacher" was all that was required all but one time I stopped in (they made me get a pass from the office all of once). I'm not saying "it was safer this way" but I often wonder if the increased security -- sometimes approaching "prison security" -- has the side-effect of some segments of the population "behaving accordingly."
There were school shootings "in my day" but those were limited to rough schools in the inner city. They were reported along-side all of the other crime happening "in the high-crime areas of the city", brushed off by most of us.
Weapon policy was much more lax when I attended school. I routinely carried a 3.5" pocket knife to school because I was irritated with dullness of the various wire cutters/tools in my electronics class. My electronics teacher regularly borrowed my knife without questioning "why in the hell a HS student is bring what looks like a switch-blade to school" (I was always seen as "one of the good kids", though).
We lived about ten miles from a large rural High School, as well. I remember picking up a cousin at his school around hunting season and being surprised, back then, to see pick-up trucks with gun racks proudly displaying scoped rifles in both the staff and student parking lots. This was, of course, "prior to Columbine" and I suspect they put a stop to that shortly thereafter.
With news attention on school shootings and not bombs, it makes sense that hoaxes tend to focus in that direction. School shootings get a lot of coverage with the focus then usually shifting to legislation aimed at restricting gun ownership[1]. The issue is that it's caused people to identify "the problem" as "school shootings" rather than "mass casualty events."
Bearing in mind that the perpetrators of these sorts of things are often of the mindset of "taking out as many people as possible while committing suicide", if it were actually possible to "ban all firearms" in the US, the problem would not be solved. As a High School kid who's parents do not/would never own a gun ... extremely conservative, yet pro-gun control parents[2] ... I had no access to a firearm and no clue how I would acquire one. However, the summer before my senior year in HS, myself and a few friends went off into the woods with a pipe bomb I had made out of things from my Dad's basement and "black powder" salvaged from Independence Day incendiaries. We wanted to make "the mother of all M-80s." The device was smaller than most handguns, easy to conceal and easy to ignite. It would have been devastating if exploded in a hallway.
To this day I have never seen such a powerful explosion in person. "Fingers plugging ears" was not enough to prevent dampening of our hearing by 90% instantly. Despite being an "empty pipe bomb" (lots of "powder" but no screws/bolts/other shrapnel), pieces of it flew -- easily -- twice as far as the distance we were standing from it. Had any of us been positioned at the right angle there would have been no time to react and I have no doubt anyone in the direct path would have been killed/injured in a manner at least as seriously as if they'd taken a large caliber bullet.
About the only solution I have heard that would make a difference is "more high schools with fewer students." The school I attended was designed with about a 750-total-student capacity in mind. My graduating class was 850. We were packed into hallways so tight that you basically squeezed your way to class with the running joke being that if you were too tired, just lift your feet off the ground and let everyone else take you there by force. Putting a high-trained police officer in that situation and asking them to "hit the shooter" would be practically impossible. Even assuming they hit the target, the bullet would travel through several other students before its settled into a wall/other sufficiently dense object capable of ending its journey.
[0] Something we didn't drill for back then except for tornado drills.
[1] Which, despite generally being a supporter of second amendment rights, I find myself supporting some of the more sensible approaches. Incidentally, I am not in support of "arming the teachers" -- the probability that adding another gun to the situation won't just result in more students being caught up in cross-fire isn't an adequate solution.
[2] I live in a blue collar community that fits well into the category of "Reagan Democrats" -- so much so that until my late teens I had no idea Republicans were pro-gun and Democrats were anti-gun. Every Democrat I knew was a card carrying member of a union (usually one specific union) and every one of them had a firearm collection of a small militia. Nobody in my family/extended family -- all conservatives -- owned a firearm.