The School Shootings Report, written by Freydis

Synopsis

This is a research report about school shootings and it covers a time period from around 1997 to the present, focusing on shooting incidents, particularly deadly ones, carried out on school grounds both in the United States and around the world. Of course, school violence is a continually occurring problem in various degrees throughout the world but shootings are consistently reported on precisely because they are unusual and extreme events. Violence, particularly gun violence, is almost always picked up by the mass media and reported upon and thus school shooting incidents serve as a useful indicator for research purposes of the more dangerous forms of campus violence. These extreme incidents raise many questions about society, culture and the individual immersed within it all. What cultural factors do these incidents have in common? What common characteristics in personal backgrounds do the school shooters share? What motivates them to act out, physically injuring and even killing people around them?

The intent behind this research report is to discover the consistent elements within these seemingly disparate incidents of school violence by comparing and contrasting the people, places and events within them. In that regard the accuracy of the reporting for school shootings, as it is for most any other contentious and emotionally charged event, is both unreliable and inconsistent. However, through the construction of a composite consisting of multiple news sources it is possible to get the key facts pinned down to a reasonable degree of accuracy. I have not been able to capture every single incident that fits the main criteria but I have made an effort to collect as many as possible within the limits of the reporting that reaches the world through the Internet and before the event is collectively forgotten, because with the exception of Columbine incident, most all of these school shootings drop out of the range of public awareness as soon as the reporting stops. So, reaching rational and objective conclusions concerning the causes and solutions to school shootings is especially difficult without a substantive chronology of the key people and events related to school shootings, hence this report you are reading now.

Introduction

School shootings are not a simple issue with a single solution. This violence is rooted in psychological imbalances within the students themselves, poor parenting and a decay in significance of traditional institutions along with the guilt forces they rely on for effectiveness - to name a just a few. Every psychologist, every news anchor or opinion columnists, and every politician has an idea of what must be done. Yet few of these ideas have any element of common sense and even fewer offer any strategic solutions. In a nation nearly devoid of critical thought ‘viable’ solutions manifest as banning trench coats, backpacks, black clothing and expelling students for nail clipper ‘weapons’ (Pensacola, Florida June 1999) or jailing 7^th graders that write Halloween essays with violent overtones (Ponder, Texas October 1999). In this reactionary environment panic, paranoia and irrational thought pour down like monsoon season.

Much of these reactionary plans are quickly implemented because legal issues within public schools have always been fraught with uncertainty, indecision and a liberal dose of authoritarianism. Locker searches, clothing codes, and exorcising everything questionable or objectionable pretty much defines the legal standards and acceptable limits on school powers of authority and supported by Supreme Court decisions. But what may seem surprising is that despite the already authoritarian atmosphere in public schools, the cameras and the security guards, shootings and violent actions continue.

The Parents

Actually the statistics show that these events are becoming less frequent but more high profile. Gangs beating up other kids for trendy shoes or lunch money just doesn’t carry the same headline grabbing material as a multiple shooting massacre. But whatever the statistics say public schools are very violent places, much in the same way that prisons are violent and dangerous places despite the omnipresence of authority. Intimidation, extortion, sexual harassment, assaults, drugs, and guns are just the tip of the iceberg for unapproved extracurricular activities that happen on campus every day across the country. This is not unusual, even the teachers get implicated in it. Parents must be totally oblivious of this because every time this hits the news they act like it was totally unknown to them before! Are they just covering their glaring inadequacies with ignorance or are they really that tuned-out? These must be the same parents that are unaware of their cute kid building pipe bombs in the garage or using the backyard as a firing range.

Part of the problem arises from the fallacy that since kids do these things, it must be inherently less harmful, less serious, ‘it’s just play’. But now that deadly force is involved, whoa it’s a different story. I guess assault and robbery is ok every now and then but a shooting isn’t, or perhaps it’s just because the news media has picked up on it in a thinly veiled effort to extenuate a gun control agenda? The last one seems the most likely because gang violence using guns, knives and clubs is so common in urban areas that it doesn’t even illicit news coverage, but it is certainly no less deadly.

Besides prescription drugs no preventative effort is being made to help students with psychological and emotional needs before they blow up into crisis and the teens see no alternative but violence to solve their accumulating internal and external problems. Unless you include metal detectors and ID cards as preventative solution, and if that’s the case you obviously haven’t learned anything on the issue yet. The United States has no public social services available to middle class families and only limited support for the poor. Parents rely increasingly on the public schools as educator, doctor and caregiver. Paradoxically school funding and training are woefully inadequate to deal with these additional roles, hell they have enough problems just trying to teach! Declining funds per student has also forced many schools to integrate ‘challenged’ kids i.e. the mentally retarded and even the autistic in with regular classes compounding the tasks of a traditional teacher but saving dollars for the school district. The school nurse is not a psychologist; likewise few parents can afford to have their child psychologically evaluated, even if they have the foresight to identify problems early on. Consequently, to say that Ritalin and other psychotropic medications are over-prescribed would be a serious understatement.

Psychotropica

Parents are a big problem in this issue; some don’t care what their kids do and the rest are just oblivious. Parents are all too often just self-centered babies that never grew up themselves. They don’t want to discipline the brats or even appear as the ‘bad-guy’ by saying NO or denying them toys or food or not doing homework for them. Maybe it shouldn’t be too surprising that these 1960’s losers turn to drugs as the panacea for every childhood problem. The kids depressed, they’re too excited, they’re not paying attention, they’re not following teachers instructions, they don’t look right or act right, easy just dope ‘em up! And then we’re supposed to act surprised when they start shooting up the schools. Every school shooting has had one or more suspects mentally imbalanced due to psychotropic medications at the time of the shooting. The Jonesboro kids were on Ritalin, Kip Kinkel was fried too, and Eric Harris had Luvox (a powerful drug often prescribed for obsessive-compulsive disorder) in his brain, according to the autopsy. Harris, after lying on his Marine Corps application (wanted to fight in Kosovo) was rejected April 15 when the Marine recruiter interviewed his family and found out about the prescription drug’s. This was a significant blow to his self-image and probably did more than anything else to push him over the edge and into a shooting rampage shortly thereafter.

Between 1990 and 1995, use of methylphenidate more than doubled, according to a 1996 study at Johns Hopkins University. By mid-1995, it found, nearly 3 percent of American children and youths, or about 2.5 million, were taking it. And that number appears to have kept rising, so that by now, it may have hit 3.75 million, according to a rough estimate by Dr. Lawrence Diller, author of "Running on Ritalin" (Bantam, 1998).

"I think they give out more psychotropic medication than a psych hospital did when I did psych," she said. "Not just Ritalin but heavy-duty psychiatric medications." From NYT Jan. 28, 1999

"We do know, for example, that the 13-year-old in Jonesboro was being treated. Apparently they were saying he had been sexually abused as a child. They were saying he was now a sexual abuser. He had a hyperactivity type label put on him as well -- or 'attention deficit disorder.' So we had several different things working with him. There is no chance under the sun, moon, or stars that this kid was not on drugs," described Clarke.

Many of these kids have been on prescription medications from the day they first enter school and even earlier, literally their entire lives. Not only that but the schools and doctors alter and increases the drugs as they get older and more tolerant switching from Ritalin to Prozac to Luvox etc. Incidentally Prozac is not approved by the FDA for pediatric use but evidently that hasn't stopped any prescriptions. The use of these drugs is a relatively recent event, especially on the widespread almost universal scale that has been reached. The increase in suburban and rural school violence is directly related to the increase in psychotropic drug prescriptions to students in the public schools over the past 10 years. And tragically as long as the news media and many analysts focus on the side effects and accessories like guns or ‘Goth clothing’ nothing will be done about it. The use of these dangerous chemicals will increase as will school shootings. No one really knows what long term effects these drugs will have on brain chemistry and future adult behavior. The kids going through school now are the first generation fried on State administered mind altering chemicals and as they reach adolescence and the emotional and physical difficulties associated with it, unanticipated and unpleasant reactions are inevitable. Many things have been used as safe and effective but after several years they find out the long term costs of such chemicals; dioxins, DDT, asbestos the list is endless. And if that wasn’t bad enough the behavioral symptoms these drugs are supposed to cure are so vague that nearly any kid can qualify, it’s largely up to parental approval. Lazy parents have a troublesome kid (and what kid isn’t at times?), the school recommends this wonder drug, the parents say ‘why not’ and little Johnny gets his fix from the school nurse every day until he graduates. Any chemical that alters behavior will have have after-effects that will magnify mental imbalances - even after the prescription is discontinued. These reactions are difficult to predict but the fluctuations from extreme emotional peaks to troughs can be magnified by sudden and significant personal events like the Marine's rejection of Harris. These extreme points are when violent outbreaks are most likely to occur.

Too many people who should no better fall into the trap of believing ‘oh its the media, violent culture, TV and video games and guns that drive these perfectly sane, normal happy kids to do bad things’. That’s total bullshit, uh I mean specious reasoning because many more children play ultra-violent video games or watch R rated movies and even use guns but they don’t shoot up schools or kill their parents. These factors certainly may contribute to violence but they are not sole causes. A genuine cause is the fact they are so fried and parentally unguided from day one that they don’t know what the hell they’re doing and its not even they’re fault because the people who should be looking out for them are lazy and want a quick easy out so they just dope 'em up and then wonder what went wrong later..

A great deal has been written about all of these [school shooting] cases. There have, however, been no indications that all of these children watched the same TV programs or listened to the same music. Nor has it been established that they all used illegal drugs, suffered from alcohol abuse or had common difficulties with their families or peers. They did not share identical home lives, dress alike or participate in similar extracurricular activities. But all of the above were labeled as suffering from a mental illness and were being treated with psychotropic drugs that for years have been known to cause serious adverse effects when given to children. Insight Magazine June 28, 1999.

Students are in a crucible 24/7, under stress academically to get good grades and enormous social pressures, especially the ones that are ostracized or unpopular. Top that off with the usual litany of biological stresses then mix in a cornucopia of drugs to their brain and what do you get? Maybe now we're beginning to see the long-term consequences of a young life hooked up to a black rainbow of behavior altering drugs.

Evaluations

But we’ve shed enough tears for little Johnny, turns out he’s actually one sick case. Any psychologist will tell you that about the only sure sign of a future serial killer / psychotic is when they torture animals. Many of these cases do exactly that; anyone that tortures animals is about the lowest form of life I can think of, and from what I’ve found on the biographies of these school shooters that seems a pretty accurate description. If they hadn’t killed a few classmates they would be on death row in 10 or 20 years anyway.

Little Johnny was not a nice kid despite what his parents may say of him; and this is clearly borne out by classmate testimonials, psychological evaluations and court proceedings.

Kinkel:
"Megan Conklin, a junior who took the same school bus with Kinkel, said after the shooting, "He said on the bus that he was mad and he was going to do something stupid. He's a mean kid. He'd said some horrible things to me before." Several students said Kinkel had been upset over teasing from older students, and that he had a temper and a troubled past. The police said that the boy had once been questioned by officers in a neighboring county for throwing rocks at cars from a freeway overpass."
Not to mention that he was caught with a stolen pistol in his locker or that he bragged about torturing animals.

Edinboro event:
Lucas and Mills [his friends] said Wurst had a troubled home life. They said he had recently argued with his parents over his poor grades.

From the trial of the Pearl High School shooting:
"In his closing arguments, Assistant District Attorney Tim Jones described Woodham as "mean" and "hateful." CNN
The investigator also read portions of a manuscript, ostensibly written by the Woodham youth and labeled a manifesto by prosecutors, that described the gruesome torture of his dog, Sparkle, by Woodham and an accomplice. Eklund said he believed that the accomplice was Boyette. Last April, according to the document, the two teen-agers repeatedly beat the dog with a club, wrapped it in garbage bags, torched it with a lighter and flammable fluid, listened to it whimper and tossed it in a pond. Oct. 15, 1997 NYT

And from Paducah Kentucky:
"Bond said, "He acted just like he had been caught with some minor offense." ...He [the Principal] said the teen-ager calmly inserted earplugs, then drew the pistol from a backpack and opened fire. " From the AP

Those victimized hero’s of Columbine:
In February they completed a "diversion program" for first-time juvenile offenders, after their arrest for breaking into a van and stealing electronic equipment, the Jefferson County District Attorney said. April 22, 1999 NYT

Kid's say the darndest things...
Harris wrote: "My belief is that if I say something, it goes. I am the law. If you don't like it, you die. If I don't like you or I don't like what you want me to do, you die."
He added, "Dead people can't do many things, like argue." And "Don't let me catch you making fun of someone just because they are a different color," May 1, 1999 NYT

Johnson from Jonesboro:
"He said, 'Everyone that hates me, everyone that I don't like, is going to die,' " recalled Dustin Campbell, also 13, who considered himself a "sometimes friend" of Mitchell. From NYT March 26, 1998.

Conyers Georgia statements:
"He kind of had a natural high, pulling the trigger, like it was some kind of game to him, like he was having a good time." ABC news
One student who said he took a class with the suspect said he was disruptive, often forcing the teacher to repeat instructions. Another student, Chris Dunn, said he had seen guns at the student’s home but never heard him mention plans to shoot anyone at school. He did notice the boy’s grades had been falling. "He wasn’t even trying anymore, which I was kind of concerned about," Dunn said. From MSNBC but credited to AP & Reuters

Alienation is not the sole cause either, many of these students use their separateness and alienation as a badge of honor. By wearing strange clothing and saying weird things they gain a solidarity amongst their clique and delineate themselves from the rest of the school, it’s as simple as ‘we are better than they all are’. "They were just a little weird," said Dara Ferguson, a 17-year-old junior and a cheerleader. "They wanted to be different." As was said of the Columbine High teens."

What we have here is a common theme of revenge against school, authority figures, parents, jocks and basically anyone that utters something the shooter doesn’t like. Just go back and read what Eric Harris wrote or Kip Kinkel. These teens have a stunted mentality that has been debased to the point where nothing else matters except what "I" want, ‘I should have absolutely everything I want right now and anyone that says otherwise or gets in my way I kill'. Are these teens nihilistic revenge seekers without remorse or awareness of good and evil? Or just schizoid, pharmacological basket cases waiting like time bombs to go off when sufficient provocation coincides with their drug induced emotional nadir?

Cultural Turmoil

How does someone reach that point, a level of total selfishness and self-interest where they care nothing about other people, society, church or country? It certainly starts with their parents, the original role models for ethics and morality. But everyone is influenced by collective social standards and expectations too. If you think about it America doesn’t really have too many expectations as far as civic duties go, no compulsory military service, no compulsory community service no compulsory anything except paying taxes and doing time from K-12. You don’t have to believe in a specific State religion, the Queen’s not going to give you a morality lecture, you don’t have to be part of the official Party for promotions, it’s an environment totally devoid of values like an undefined field without beginning or end, future or past, purpose or reason; welcome to America. All the traditional institutions of authority from Nixon’s White House to Janet Reno’s Justice Department to Jim and Tammy Baker’s Church have been discredited and I’m sure you can think of many more examples. The things that used to have value and significance no longer do, today little if anything has value besides the basics or survival like money, food, friends, clothing, or housing. Teens just like adults realize this and they realize the nature of the social order they live in. Adults have certain faculties and common sense that adolescents and juveniles just have not developed yet; they react to the same situation in less predictable and less mature ways. As they float in the sea of nothingness that is everyday American life they react in ways that are dangerous and foolish to themselves and others. They lose fear of authority because everywhere they look it’s either hollow or has been discredited. The public school teacher isn’t going to do anything to stop them, the Principal can only give them detention or perhaps suspension which is almost a gift to some kids. The Parents don’t care or don’t know what the kid does ‘that’s the schools responsibility’ , the police at worst send them to juvenile hall for a night and usually just release ‘em back to Mommy and Daddy for punishment (yeah right). A significant portion of growing up is learning that actions have consequences, but in this type of an environment what are kids really learning? Knowing nothing but ineffectual and inept authority they will say ‘I can do whatever I want, they can’t stop me, they can’t hurt me’.

It used to be reasoning would never even progress that far because of childhood discipline; enforcement of the rules and boundaries of conduct would keep unruly kids from crossing the line. And even if that didn’t work guilt was the next speed bump. Kids felt remorse when they stole or broke the rules because ‘it was a sin’ or it discredited the family or something along those lines. Guilt just like Church no longer works to force kids to do ‘the right thing’, largely because both the parents and the kids don’t really know what that ‘right thing’ is anymore.

< VIEW THE EVENT MATRIX >

Event Timing

The New Cultural Symbol

School shootings have become so common that these events have achieved a level of cultural symbolism all their own. And it isn’t very surprising that they do continue to occur since the source of the problem has not gone away – a society that generates large scale economic redundancy as well as personal isolation and alienation amidst an artificial and extremely hostile environment towards mental health. All of this is occurring amidst a mainstream culture that has its language and symbols defined by a commercial mass-media that perpetuates false expectations to motivate rampant consumerism. Fear, insecurity, and inadequacy are powerful marketing forces that have unintended psychological consequences on the unsuspecting public.

The homogenization of culture means that it doesn’t matter whether the school shooting occurs in Canada, Australia or the United States because it is the same mental-cultural environment with similar symbols and expectations being perpetuated by the same profit-motivated commercial forces.

The Revenge Motivation

Revenge seems to be a common thread that runs through all of these events. School shootings are primarily acts of revenge. Revenge is rooted in a sense of real or perceived injustice towards the perpetrator of the shooting and injustice is the feeling that ‘I should have something that I don’t'. Many school shootings are fomented by a desire for revenge against society and a simmering anger over being denied an entitlement such as respect or personal recognition.

Extensive research has shown that the teenage brain is not nearly as developed as an adult brain and because of this emotion, reason, and a proper sense of self and others are often in an acute state of imbalance. A sense of personal injustice to a teenager may stem from what an adult would consider to be a minor or inconsequential event, yet to a teenager this situation could be of extreme significance. Similarly, the way teenagers respond to violence is also of notable difference to the way adults respond to it. Put these two things together and mix them with the ever present general state of confusion and angst as the young person struggles to construct and define their sense of personal identity, and a very volatile cocktail is formed.

Teenagers are more selfish than adults because they use a different part of their brain to make decisions compared to adults, new research suggests.

The work has implications for the types of responsibility given to adolescents, Blakemore says: “Teenager’s brains are a work in progress and profoundly different from adults. If you’re making decisions about how to treat teenagers in terms of the law, you need to take this new research into account.” [1]

The psychological motivation for acting out in a violent way, such as through a shooting at school, is rooted in more than just the struggle to form an identity amidst a hostile culture of commercialized consumerism and social atomization. The reason it requires more is because even when these young people achieve a sense of acceptance and belonging in a clique it’s still not enough to stop them, as in the Montreal case in September 2006.

If they already have a group to belong to and a semblance of unique personal identity then does this new separate identity exaggerate their opposition mentality and drive them to attack a society seen as hostile towards them? Or is it all just a selfish and desperate attempt to sate a bruised ego by gaining attention and personal recognition even if they have to die to get it? Or maybe they are just so apathetic about existence and future prospects that they lack interest and concern for life in general and those around them. Lacking any sense of continuity and historical context, cut adrift and alienated, this seems a plausible explanation.

All of the teenage school shooters have been deeply influenced by mass media, usually in the form of video games and movies – and both media forms tend to be very vivid, intense and increasingly photo-realistic. As the artificial media increasingly comes to define the public’s sense of natural reality the negative consequences of this will only become more apparent and deadly. Teenagers growing up in the late 20th century and today in the 21st are immersed in an extremely hostile environment for the mind. This mental environment is especially hazardous for the young mind that is not fully developed and also lacking in the experience needed for balance and proportional decision-making. 16.09.06

1. 'Why adolescents put themselves first', New Scientist, September 8, 2006.

Two categories of school shootings: Class A / Class B

At this point I think it is important to distinguish between two categories of school shootings. The first class of school shootings are the ones perpetrated by students at their own school and against other students of faculty. I’m going to call these events ‘Class A’ school shootings. Class A events are the primary focus of research in this ongoing report.

The second category are the school shootings done by outsiders (non-students or faculty) who come to a school ground, for various reasons, with the intent of perpetrate a crime. I’m going to call these ‘Class B’. In the future if these events become too numerous I may have to remove them from the report, or put them in a separate location.

Risk Factors

Post-event interviews of students and faculty regularly express stunned surprise that a shooting occurred at their school with typical statements like ‘we thought it was a joke’ or, ‘it didn’t seem real’. Yet as the reader can see here school shooting events cut across most all social boundaries transcending race, class, religion and age, and have occurred across the globe from Australia to Finland. A student shooting can occur at your school - don’t expect that it won’t and don’t wait for it to happen!

Although Class A school shootings have many elements in common several critical factors significantly increase the likelihood of a violent outburst at school. After studying numerous examples of these events I, Freydis, have developed these ten primary risk factors useful in identifying a potential school shooter:

What’s going on here and what do we do about it?!

The past month has had the most school shootings for as long as I’ve been tracking them. Clearly something in the effort to stop them is not working. Even though every school administrator has to be aware of the chances of a school shooting or similar violent attack occurring on their school grounds, these events continue to happen with increasing frequency!

Many schools have enacted ‘gun free zones’ on, and around, campus but signs and rules are not going to stop anyone determined to use a gun in a school. It’s quite possible that these kinds of superficial responses to school violence actually make things worse because they just create a false sense of security. The ‘drug free zones’ around schools don’t really stop drug dealing but they do give judges the capacity to grant more severe penalties when the case goes to court. Yet a legal penalty is useless against a gunman that kills himself, or is killed, in the attack. Similarly, security cameras when and if they are in the right position to record events, are great for just that but they can’t stop any crime. Security cameras are only useful in prosecuting the crime after it has occurred.

If an effort isn’t delivering results it usually means it’s time to start doing something different. For instance, what if the teachers carried a firearm and were trained in how to use it? Other methods of self-defense desperately need to be explored and implemented. Personal self-defense classes should be offered in every school for all the students, teachers and administrators. Some kind of mental and physical training is  definitely needed here so teachers and students can fight back, or at least increase their chances of surviving a school shooting or other violent event by knowing how to react. It’s especially tragic to see students in a class of questionable life-utility totally helpless when attacked and even murdered, when they could have been taking a self-defense course that would have given them the right frame of mind to deal with a violent attack  while giving them a useful skill for the rest of their lives. Now that's a novel notion for a modern school.

Education Methods Deserve Enormous Blame For School Violence

I know this is a stunning news flash for most of you (that's sarcasm) but women and men are not the same and they aren’t interchangeable units - the have different ways of learning that are particularly pronounced at young ages. You can’t just toss out some books and lecture for eight hours a day and not expect the boys to go crazy from boredom.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is just a slightly exaggerated symptom of normal male behavior. When an increasingly large percentage of the boys have to be drugged-up just to get them to sit through an average school day without causing disruptions then it should be obvious to even a half-wit that something is not right with that educational equation. Boys cannot be expected to sit in an uncomfortable chair for eight hours every school day and listen to droning lectures from teachers without reacting in a negative fashion. Mix in drugs to keep them sedated, violent pop-cultural imagery, plus chronic social pressures, and it’s no surprise that kids like Pekka-Eric in Finland flip out lusting for revolution in the classroom.

The girls aren’t getting much out of contemporary education methods either but crudely speaking women can be programmed, read this book and listen to this lecture then take this test, but men have to be trained, show then do then test. Yet it’s just so much cheaper and quicker to teach the female way than it is to do it the male way because the school system can buy a few books and hire some hack to talk to the kids all day and they don’t have to do any of the necessary but slightly more expensive hands-on, out of the classroom type experience-based education. Consequently school becomes a prison sentence for the boys who just get increasingly angry and agitated as it goes on and a gossip session for the girls waiting for the bell to ring. 09.11.07

The Psychology of School Shootings

Every Class A school shooting is basically about two things: power and revenge – the gun grants power to those that feel powerless, while pulling the trigger on someone confers revenge.

When kids suffer abuse at home from parents and siblings, then they go to school and suffer bullying from peers and an endless series of dictates from teachers, they begin to feel trapped because no matter where they are they can’t avoid abuse. And when they see that the authority at home is part of the problem and authority at school is either unconcerned or inept at helping them they gradually realize that authority is fundamentally hypocritical since it is not based on benevolent guidance as officially stated but is instead is based on controlling and exploiting the less powerful. Consequently these kids begin to perceive the world as the ‘strong’ towering over and abusing the ‘weak’.

Feeling trapped and powerless they naturally search for a way out. The easiest and most effective way to acquire power is to get a gun. Kids easily believe that using a gun is an effective method for resolving their problems because every movie and television show they watch depicts the world through this foolish one-dimensional lens of power expression and problem resolution via deadly violence. And these kids believe that it’s acceptable to act-out their drama as a school shooting because that’s what other students have done before.

This is the psychological basis for a school shooting. The only piece remaining is a sufficient triggering event to push them over the edge. 11.11.07

Same Violence, Different Weapon

The British government has announced plans to search every student for weapons in order to stop a knife-violence 'epidemic'.

The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, will put the battle against illegal weapons at the top of her agenda when she unveils her Tackling Violence Action Plan tomorrow. The blueprint for tackling knife-related violence will include a radical move to give police hundreds of metal detectors to catch young people carrying hidden weapons in schools, clubs and pubs. ...

It has now emerged that the number of people sentenced for having an article with a blade or point on school premises has risen from just 12 in 1996 to 45 in 2005 – peaking at 106 in 2004. From: Body search plan to fight knife crime in schools, by Brian Brady, The Independent, February 17,  2008.

So instead of making any attempt to find out why kids are acting out in violent ways, or funding any program to prevent violence in the first place, the British government, already having banned pointy objects with obvious success (that's sarcasm), is going to buy thousands of metal detectors and hire more police instead! Well, I'm sure this plan will have just as much effectiveness at stopping violence with knives as it has been at stopping violence with guns, and every other weapon, elsewhere. 18.02.08

Northern Illinois University, February 14, 2008 - Class A Event

Who: Steven Kazmierczak, 27, a dean’s award winning sociology graduate from Northern Illinois University.

Where: Cole Hall, Northern Illinois University, 25,000 student population.

When: 3:06 p.m. Thursday February 14 (Valentine’s Day) 2008.

Weapons: Remington 12-gauge shotgun, .22-caliber pistol, 9 mm Glock pistol, Hi-Point .380 pistol, and possibly a 45-caliber Glock semi-automatic handgun. 48 pistol casings and six expended shotgun cartridges reportedly found at scene.

Killed: Ryanne Mace, 19; Gayle Dubowski, Catalina Garcia, and Daniel Parmenter, all of whom were aged 20; and Julianna Gehant, 32, (five killed and sixteen wounded).

Event: Reportedly wearing black clothing, jeans, t-shirt, and carrying his weapons in a guitar case and hidden under his jacket a tall, thin Steven Kazmierczak entered Cole Hall auditorium at Northern Illinois University where class was being held and, armed with one shotgun and at least three handguns, opened fire on the audience from the stage, injuring 16 random people, killing five, and then himself. "It didn't seem like he was aiming. He just raised a gun and shot immediately," said Paul Sundstrom, a student who was sitting in the class with his brother Kevin when the gunman opened fire. [2]

Kazmierczak rented a motel room for three nights before the shooting at a Travelodge in DeKalb. He paid in cash and signed his name only as "Steven", according to the hotel manager. Items found in his room included empty cartons of cigarettes, containers of energy drinks, and cold medicine. More energy drinks were found in the refrigerator. [3] Kazmierczak likely planned his shooting-spree at least five days in advance. He left no known notes behind, said Donald Grady, the police chief at the university. He had no known relationships with any students or teachers inside the class. He had no previous run-ins with the police. [1]

Background: Kazmierczak seems to have had a fairly normal childhood but a few events are of note. Mr. Kazmierczak grew up on a tree-lined street of ranch-style homes in the suburbs of Chicago with a sister and parents who retired to Lakeland, Fla., in recent years, records show. His mother, Gail, died in 2006, at age 58. [1] His mother died from ALS, a form of motor neuron disease.

At one point Kazmierczak was in a mental health center. A former employee at a Chicago psychiatric treatment center said Kazmierczak had been placed there after high school by his parents. He used to cut himself and had resisted taking his medications … Kazmierczak spent more than a year at the Thresholds-Mary Hill House in the late 1990s, former house manager Louise Gbadamashi told The Associated Press. His parents placed him there after high school because he had become "unruly" at home, she said. ... He also had a short-lived stint as a prison guard that ended abruptly when he didn't show up for work. He was in the Army for about six months in 2001-02, but he told a friend he'd gotten a psychological discharge. [3]

Judging from the interviews Steve made a positive impression on those around him. He had been pursuing a masters degree in sociology at the University of Illinois in nearby Urbana-Champaign and self-described his academic interests as “corrections, political violence, and peace and social justice”. Also, Kazmierczak had served as a member of the NIU Academic Criminal Justice Association, was a teaching aid during his undergraduate years and in 2006 even received a Dean's Award from the sociology department. [2]

Kazmierczak was meeting cultural standards of behavior, getting good grades, was academically involved, had a girlfriend and employment at least intermittently. Nonetheless he had some underlying trouble that was being repressed. He liked violent gore-horror themes and films; he had some elaborate tattoos to show it. One interview claimed that he “was abusive, had a temper," she said. "He didn't actually hit her; he would push her [his girlfriend] around." [3]  Steven’s family stated that his behavior had become erratic recently after he stopped taking medication used to regulate an unspecified psychological disorder. No other overt indicators of impending violence have been reported besides that and his recent weapons purchases. Kazmierczak said nothing when he fired on the class and left behind no known written material or statements of any kind.

Survival is easy. Success is impossible.

It’s worth mention that the shooting occurred on Valentine’s Day and that Kazmierczak recently broke-up with his longtime girlfriend, although he was still sharing an apartment with her. This shooting could have been triggered by relationship trouble combined with preexisting psychological problems. Nonetheless Steven didn’t fit the stereotype as an ‘angry loner’ and his recent life did not appear to be particularly rough, certainly not to enough to initiate a sudden leap into mass-murder and violent suicide. So, why resort to such drastic actions, and so suddenly without even any effort to fix the things going wrong? This question can be asked of many other school shooting events. Are some people just too sensitive and too weak to deal with social difficulty and life trouble? Is it easier to pick the quick solution just like in the movies? In modern life survival is easy but success is impossible because of the skewed standards and expectations imposed upon us through an incessant avalanche of advertising pushing commercial values that profit from imparting a false sense of inadequacy.

For millions of people modern life is increasingly like a waking dream. The stereotypical school shooting event has permeated cultural consciousness to such an extent that it has become a symbolic act, a reflexive action even that plays out in the subconscious mind of millions -- the school shooting dream -- and if the connection to waking reality is broken such an event can be acted out for real by the mentally unstable. 18.02.08

1. Gunman Showed Few Hints of Trouble, by Monica Davey, New York Times, February 16, 2008.
2. Who Was the Illinois School Shooter?, by Emily Friedman, ABC News, Feb. 15, 2008.
3. Gunman's Contradictions Confound Police, by Ashley M. Heher and Caryn Rousseau, AP, February 17, 2008.

Jokela High School, Tuusula Finland, November 7, 2007 - Class A Event

Who: Pekka-Eric Auvinen (18), dubbed the You-Tube killer by mass-media for his videos posted on that website under multiple aliases such as Sturmgeist89 and naturalselector89 (account banned).

Where: Jokela High School in Tuusula with 400 students between ages 12 and 18, located in a small town 30-40 miles from Helsinki.

When: Wednesday November 7, 2007 at approximately 11:45 am. The shooting was probably timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution.

Weapon(s): Semi-automatic .22 Sig Sauer Mosquito pistol named Catherine by Auvinen, 69 bullets fired, police reportedly found 320 more bullets with him, also he had an flammable liquid that he tried set fire to a second floor corridor with.

Killed: School principal Helena Kalmi (61), nurse (42), five boys aged between 16 and 18, and a 25-year-old single mother. Twelve others injured. Except for the principal, the targets appear to be random. Eyewitness claims Auvinen forced Kalmi onto her knees and then shot her. “Helsingin Sanomat has been told that there had been an argument between Auvinen and the principal before Wednesday.” [6]

Event: Much of the event timeline remains undisclosed at this time. We know that Pekka-Eric Auvinen used his .22 caliber pistol to shoot multiple people and after about twenty minutes he shot himself in the head in a toilet stall beside the school cafeteria. About 90 minutes later police found him and took him to the hospital where he died eight hours later.

Background: Very little has been published on Pekka-Eric Auvinen's background but we have been told that he has a younger brother and that Auvinen's father worked on the Finnish railways for decades, is also a guitarist, and his wife is a vocalist.

Depressed in Finland

Pekka-Eric Auvinen was taking anti-depressant medications. “In a video that he placed on YouTube, Sturmgeist89 displays packages of Cipralex, Zoloft, Luvox, and Prozac pills.” The drugs were prescribed for depression. “The National Agency for Medicines recommends against prescribing SSRIs for people under the age of 18, because of the self-destructive or hostile emotions that they have been known to provoke.” [5] Fellow student Tuomas Hulkkonen states the he knew the gunman well and that he had been acting strange lately, "He withdrew into his shell. I had noticed a change in him just recently, and I thought that perhaps he was a bit depressed, or something. But I couldn't imagine that in reality he would do anything like this."

His 18 year-old (or 20 depending on source) girlfriend Tana Scheel recently left him, "He was my boyfriend. I have received many emails and phone calls claiming it is my fault and that I am a murderer because I rejected him. But many people are rejected without going out and murdering.”[4] She also claims that banning his YouTube accounts, "... would have done nothing but take away his ability to express himself through his videos, one thing which made him happy and curbed his homicidal tendencies." [7]

Gun Culture

“People using guns are hunters. They live in rural areas. It’s part of the life over there.”  [2] Auvinen had no previous criminal record and had no difficulty legally obtaining his handgun. He was a member of a hunting club and was practiced enough to direct most of his shots at the head and upper body of his victims during his 20-minute rampage. "With 1.6 million firearms in private hands, the Nordic nation is an anomaly in Europe, lagging behind only the US and Yemen in civilian gun ownership. According to a government study in 2002, only 14% of homicides in Finland are gun-related. [2] Finland has a strong history of armed self-defense, most notable in the collective Finnish effort to repel the invading Soviet Army over 60 years ago.

Misanthropic Malcontent

"Name: Pekka-Eric Auvinen Age: 18 Male from Finland. I am a cynical existentialist, antihuman humanist, antisocial socialdarwinist, realistic idealist and godlike atheist." Pekka-Eric's own words were decidedly aggressive yet equally unfocused. He wrote of his rampage in advance, "Targets: Jokelan Lukio (High School Of Jokela), students and faculty, society, humanity, human race.” [3] It seems that, online at least, Pekka-Eric was a hyper-aggressive and often bullying person that made more enemies than friends. He fixated upon weakness and believed that they should be killed by the strong. “This is my war: one man war against humanity, governments and weak-minded masses of the world! No mercy for the scum of the earth! HUMANITY IS OVERRATED! It's time to put NATURAL SELECTION & SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST back on tracks!” – Pekka from his ‘Manifesto.doc' [3] Pekka is clearly angry but why is less clear particularly because his expression doesn't explain the problems he rails against nor do they explain how killing students and faculty at his High School will resolve the issues he is most concerned about. He reportedly admired Stalin and Hitler indicating limited Ideological and historical understanding but rather a craving for power and desire to be a dictator. And now we are beginning to see the source of Pekka’s discontent, he felt powerless and/or controlled by others and his sudden, violent outburst was a desperate, and probably delusional, effort to express himself as a potent authority, hence his personal statement, "I am the law, judge and executioner. There is no higher authority than me." [1]

This is your teenage brain on drugs, any questions?

Witnesses describe him as running through the school hallways shouting "Revolution!" and shooting people. Indeed, despite his pleas to the contrary Pekka-Eric is convincing as being mentally unstable. He did take anti-depressant drugs, probably more than one kind, but we don't know the quantities or the timing.

Unfortunately many key details on this event remain unknown, for instance, how well was the shooter doing at his school work? What kind of home-life did he have? What did friends and other students see and think of him? Was he really bullied by other students and if so, why? Lacking these important pieces of information drawing any substantive conclusions remains difficult for this school shooting event. 

1. YouTube massacre: Schoolboy gunman posts threat on the internet then kills eight, by David Williams, Daily Mail (UK), 8 November 2007.
2. School massacre makes Finns defensive about gun culture, uncredited, Breaking News.ie, November 9, 2007.
3. [Copies of Pekka’s videos and documents maintained by an online friend]
4. Finnish School Shooter Was Bullied, by Peter Dejong, AP, November 8, 2007.
5. Jokela gunman said he used antidepressants, uncredited, Helsingin Sanomat, November 9, 2007.
6. School massacre: Ninth graders saw killing of school principal, uncredited, Helsingin Sanomat, November 9, 2007.
7. Ex defends school killer online, by Chloe Lake, news.au.com, November 13, 2007.

SuccessTech Academy in Cleveland, Ohio, October 11, 2007 - Class A Event

Who: Asa H. Coon, age 14

Where: SuccessTech Academy (High School) in Cleveland, Ohio. With an academic emphasis on technology and entrepreneurship, the school is a five-story converted office building with about 240 students, 85 percent are black, the remainder mostly Hispanic or white, and all are considered poor according to federal poverty guidelines. Although the school is equipped with metal detectors and 26 cameras, security was intermittent and, apparently, easily defeated.

When: Wednesday Afternoon, October 10, 2007

Weapons: One .22 caliber revolver, one .38 caliber revolver, one box of ammunition for each pistol, and three folding knives.

Killed: Asa H. Coon (suicide)
Injured: The first person shot by Coon was Michael Peek, age 14, who had punched Coon in the face right before the shootings began. Darnell Rodgers, 18, black, was grazed by a bullet on the right elbow. David Kachadourian, age 57, white, math teacher, was shot in the back. Michael Grassie, 42, a multicultural studies teacher, was the most seriously injured victim having been shot in the chest.

Event: Coon had been suspended for fighting on Monday and the same day his older brother, Stephen Coon, age 19, was arrested in connection with an armed robbery. The week before Asa had made threats to blow up the school and stab students but no one paid attention.

Coon began on the ground floor after changing clothes in a bathroom. The first shooting happened immediately after Coon left the bathroom when another student punched him in the face and he shot back. Coon went up through the first two floors of administrative offices to the third and fourth floor of classrooms. Coon proceeded to shoot one other student, grazing his elbow, and two teachers but only the teacher Michael Grassie seems to have been sought out by Coon. Coon fired eight shots, and shot himself in the head when the police arrived at the school.

Background: Even though the school was small it was nonetheless overcrowded and the teaching was impersonal. "I had him since the start of the school year. So that's been about a month and a half. So not a real long time. And the class is real large, so it's hard to know students individually very well or interact with them very much one-on-one.” – David Kachadourian, math teacher shot by Coon.

Asa Coon is a poster chi