COVID, Columbine, Copycats, and Counting School Shootings
With public schools closed due to COVID-19, it was a surprisingly busy week for school shooting news. Here’s what happened:
- 21nd anniversary of the Columbine High School Massacre (4/20)
- A Russian teen was arrested for plotting a Columbine copycat attack
- Joe Biden’s viral tweet with erroneous claims about school shootings
- Release of ‘School Shooter’ by XXXTentacion and Lil Wayne
- Virtual remembrance of the Virginia Tech shooting without a public gathering
Monday marks 21 years since the massacre at Columbine High School unfolded on live TV. It remains one of the most culturally significant acts of violence in American history. While Columbine made school shootings into a prominent issue, there has not been meaningful legislation or social reform since the attack. School shootings since Columbine at Sandy Hook, Red Lake, Granite Hills, Rancho Tehama, Santana, West Nickle Mines, Fort Gibson, Heritage, Parkland, Marshall, Sante Fe, STEM school, Saugus, and so many others have claimed 391 lives and wounded 809 others.
It’s ironic that Columbine became the most infamous school shooting incident because it was never intended to be a shooting. The two attackers intended to copycat the Oklahoma City Bombing with a more spectacular and deadly explosion that would level the entire school building. Unlike Timothy McVeigh, who was trained in the operation of explosives from his military service and had the resources to assemble a giant truck bomb, the Columbine attackers placed a crude assortment of improvised explosives around the school. When their bombs didn’t go off, plan B was to wander around the school firing at random students until they killed themselves.
Russian Teen Plots Columbine Copycat Attack
The lasting global impact of Columbine remains apparent this week with the arrest of a Russian teen plotting a copycat shooting on the anniversary date. Free Radio Europe reports “the boy was detained a day earlier after police searched his home and found a sawed-off shotgun, items resembling handmade explosive devices, and diaries with written plans to attack a local school.” Two months ago, two other Russian teens were arrested for plotting a school shooting and bombing. School shootings and thwarted plots had not been a common occurrence in Russia or the Soviet Union but are becoming more frequent in recent years.
Debunking Viral Tweets
With school closed, it was surprise to see a tweet about school shootings — or the apparent lack thereof — go viral on Monday.
Former Vice President Joe Biden was among the 169,600 people to retweet this shocking observation.
When gun violence at K-12 school is a systemic issue that extends beyond just the times when students are seated in their classrooms, this tweet was quickly debunked by Snopes based on data from the Center for Homeland Defense and Security.
As the Snopes article and the K-12 SSDB show, there was quite a bit of gun violence at schools across the country in March including:
- A shooting inside a Texas high school on March 2. According to The Dallas Morning News, authorities arrested a 17-year-old student on suspicion of “accidentally” firing a gun during morning class. No one was injured.
- A shooting at a Florida K-12 private school on March 5. A security guard at the school allegedly shot another staff member in the face while showing off his gun, according to The Miami Herald. The victim sought medical help.
- A shooting in Pennsylvania on March 10 in which a gunman opened fire at school bus carrying elementary students. Per The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the bus was driving to school when a bullet “went through one window and exited out the other side”. No one was injured.
- A incident on March 13 in which a security officer at a Tennessee elementary school discharged his gun inside his office. No one was struck. (Local coverage here.)
- The fatal shooting of a 19-year old man on a Texas high school football field on March 15. He was a former student of the high school. (Local coverage here.)
- A shooting on March 18 in the parking lot of a Louisiana high school that injured a 15-year-old male student. (Local coverage here.)
- A shooting on March 24 in the parking lot of a Louisiana elementary school that wounded a man. (Local coverage here.)
- A shooting on March 30 in the parking lot of a Georgia elementary school that injured three people. According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the victims sought medical help.
‘School Shooter’ — XXXTentacion and Lil Wayne Video
Two prominent rappers released their video for School Shooters dedicated to the victims of the Parkland shooting with lyrics and video scenes pointing to bullying, social isolation, depression, suicidal ideation, and violent masculinity as the motivation for the fictional school shooter.
School shooter, I just need mental help
Saved by the bell, I couldn’t hear the bell
Give me bad grades, I don’t give a F
Get in front of my classmates and kill myself
The video concludes with a call to #StopBullying and a link to www.stopbullying.gov. Three months ago, Eminem released “Darkness,” portraying his fictional interpretation of the Las Vegas Harvest Festival shooting and a link to register to vote. It’s clear that gun violence and school shootings are now culturally omnipresent enough to have embedded themselves in music and pop culture. Expect to continue seeing guns, shootings, and related themes occupy a place in the cultural lexicon of more and more performers and artists.
Remembering Virginia Tech
Even years after a school shooting, the anniversary is a very important day for community members, survivors, and their families to gather and honor the victims. With social distancing measures in place, the Virginia Tech community needed to improvise this week. According to the Roanoke Times:
Unlike previous anniversaries, Virginia Tech’s 13th Day of Remembrance didn’t include large-scale gatherings amid the coronavirus pandemic. The wreath-laying, usually taking place just before 9:43 a.m., happened at an undisclosed time to prevent crowds from coming to witness. Midnight candle lighting and extinguishing ceremonies were replaced by a solitary candle displayed at the memorial. The 3.2-Mile Run in Remembrance, which usually attracts upwards of 15,000 people to Blacksburg, has gone virtual.
On May 18, Sante Fe High School in Texas will face the challenge of having the second anniversary of the deadly attack it faced during a time with virtual classes and seniors — most of whom were students during the shooting — graduating via laptops from their living rooms.
It seems schools will remain closed through the rest of this academic year. It’s hard to predict what will happen in the fall and if students will be back in classrooms every day, solely virtual, or a new blend of each. While it’s impossible for another Columbine attack to happen without students inside the school building, social isolation during lockdown is fueling a mental health crisis across the country. Students will return to schools at some point with the accumulated psychological trauma of the past few months, creating a new burden on already limited mental health resources. Schools shootings are a persistent problem that we still struggle to find a solution for since Columbine and the “new normal” at schools after COVID is only going to further complicate this issue.
The K-12 School Shooting Database is a product of the Homeland Security Advanced Thinking Program (HSx) sponsored by the Center for Homeland Defense and Security. Follow us on twitter @k12ssdb.
David Riedman is a criminologist, co-founder of the K-12 SSDB, graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School, and Ph.D. student at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.
