Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings Newman, Katherine S. Perseus Books Group, Boulder, CO 20030 In 1997, Michael Carneal marched into his Kentucky school with a loaded rifle, quickly killing three students and wounding five others. The next year, Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson sat in a wooded hill overlooking their Arkansas schoolyard. With 200 people standing outside, they opened fire, killing three students and one teacher, and injuring ten others. A string of similar incidents transpired in the USA, including the massacre at Colorado's Columbine High School, whose horrifying image of the 'Trench Coat Mafia' stalking their classmates is now inscribed in popular culture. These crimes went against the tide of broader societal trends, however.

Holton Sousaphone Serial Number. As Katherine Newman notes, most varieties of reported crime have declined across North America, including those in schools. Yet, one species rose in the late 1990s: 'rampage' school shootings.

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Newman defines rampages as an extraordinary kind of attack. Unlike simple cases of seeking personal revenge, they involve an assault on randomly selected, multiple parties, and thus represent an offensive on the entire institution. This violence, Newman argues, was epidemic in the late 90s, and not a mere by-product of media hype. Lynda - Muse Essential Training By Justin Seeley. While acknowledging that American schools remain relatively safe places, six school shootings occurred 1998 alone, with several more plots being fortunately foiled in later years.

Newman and her research team investigated the Kentucky and Arkansas incidents, visiting those communities, and conducting 163 interviews with families, students, teachers, administrators, journalists, and professionals. The book devotes detailed chapters to each case, and then several more to construct a sociological theory for the 25 rampage shootings that occurred in the USA between 1974 and 2002.

In contrast to most popular explanations, no shooter suddenly 'snapped' in a psychotic rage. Rather, each perpetuator carefully planned their assault well in advance. Further, while American inner cities may be global symbols of violence and mayhem, almost all rampages occurred in small communities, those idealized by many as tight-knit, family-oriented, and relatively peaceable. Most shooters had histories of strained family lives, but few were products of single-parent homes. Newman thus set out to situate these facts in broad sociological context.

Her theory has several premises. First, school shootings are rare events. Millions of American teens endure all sorts of problems without resorting to violence. Fmea Software. The key is to recognize that shootings occur only when several factors converge, all being necessary but none sufficient.

Next, theories of violence derived from studies of impoverished inner cities do not apply well to school rampages, since only 2 of 25 incidents erupted in urban settings, and only a few involved racial minorities. Instead, rampages mostly erupted in relatively stable small towns with a variety of socioeconomic circumstances.

While such locales are typically praised for their thick personal ties, Newman sees a dark side to this social capital. Densely interconnected networks of friends and family can be suffocating for youthful misfits, especially when school-based pecking orders are the only status game in town. When unpopular youth lack refuges from homogeneous peer groups, they experience an unbearable social claustrophobia. Finally, the gendered dimensions of these crimes must be recognized.