Patterns+of+School+Shootings

This page will discuss the patterns (or lack thereof) associated with those who consider participating in acts of School Associated Violence

__**"Media Fuelling School Shootings" By the Vancouver Sun, Dated 2006 **__


 * The rash of extremely violent attacks on schools or workplaces are often copycat actions triggered by "social contagion" spread through the media.
 * Attacks tend to appear in clusters because the perpetrators, who usually suffer from mental illness, are "pushed over the edge" by watching other successful attacks, otherwise know as copycat crime.
 * The Media are simply the vehicle through which the information is transmitted. However,news agencies should be careful not to use loaded words for example "he was successful in killing three people" when reporting such incidents. Language that uses positive words can set up an unstable person to consider they too could be successful in taking a violent action

__**The Term Copycat defined **__


 * Copycats follow a regular pattern that repeats-these could be after a primary media event in a day, a week, two weeks, a month, a year, ten years- vulnerable humans have internal media clocks
 *  Most school shooting tend to occur primarily during two periods of the school year- at the beginning and near the end of the academic year.

This article explains how the media, although propagating fear and distress, are ironically supplying prospective criminals a chance to lay the groundwork of their inevitable crime. The media uses heavily loaded words and language that can potentially "activate" a dormant or unstable person within society to turn and commit these violent acts.

The patterns involved with shootings are in fact nonexistent. They are random acts of violence and can occur in any way, at any time, and in any place. The only prominent pattern that may possible exist is that of the "copycat crime".

By documenting these stories, however, the media uses their subjectivity and underlying installation of fear to the general public in an attempt to either frame these stories in a Thematic or Episodic Format; allowing us to place blame where blame is due. However when the crime is successful and the documentation proves this, it is possible that those who witness the success in question to be "pushed over the edge" and wish to achieve the same success that they recently saw.

__**A One month "copycat" pattern ( Loren coleman, MSW, 29th September 2006) **__


 * Thursday, August 24, 2006 - Essex, Vermont - two dead (two teachers) - three wounded (two teachers, plus the shooter who turned the gun on himself) - the shooter was a male, all victims were female.


 * Wednesday, August 29, 2006 - Hillsborough, NC - one dead (father of teenage shooter) - two wounded (two students) - shooter showed up in a trench coat, with guns, pipe bombs, in a copycat of Columbine


 * Wednesday, September 13, 2006 - Montreal, Quebec -Kimveer Gill, the 25-year-old shooter, a self-described atheist Goth with an Indian Sikh heritage, wearing a trenchcoat, dark clothing, and a Mohawk haircut, came to Dawson College, fully armed. He appeared to target what students call the "Jew Caf" and opened fire, killing Anastasia de Sousa, 18, and wounded 19 other students. Police fired upon him, and then Gill turned the gun on himself. Gill was obsessed by the Columbine massacre.


 * Thursday, September 14, 2006 - Green Bay, Wisconsin - Matt Atkinson, a 17-year-old senior, told an associate principal at Green Bay East High School on the day after the Montreal college shooting that a Columbine-like plot was being planned by two teens. It was said to be a "suicide-by-cop" plot. Police arrested the boys and then found sawed-off shotguns, automatic weapons, pistols, ammunition, several bombs, bomb-making materials, camouflage clothing, helmets, gas masks, and suicide notes. Brown County District Attorney John Zakowski said: "This was a Columbine waiting to happen."


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Thursday, September 21, 2006 - Montgomery, Alabama - Former student Willie Beamon, 18, told a female student his plans to go Robert E. Lee High school to start shooting.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Its clear here that the columbine massacre lead to copycat crimes due to the intense media attention that it recieved.

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