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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hi, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbaumb here, I've got a serious one for you today.

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Speaker 1: We're talking about mass shootings in the United States and

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Speaker 1: why they seem to be happening so frequently at schools.

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Speaker 1: We're not getting graphic, but listener discretion is advised. On

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Speaker 1: Valentine's Day this year, seventeen people, including students and teachers,

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Speaker 1: were killed by a nineteen year old former student at

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Speaker 1: Marjorie Stone and Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. This

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Speaker 1: was the tenth mass school shooting in the United States

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Speaker 1: in the past five years. A mass shooting is generally

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Speaker 1: defined as one where at least four people are killed

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Speaker 1: in a single incident, and once again Americans are left

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Speaker 1: asking ourselves why. Lost in the noisy debate over gun

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Speaker 1: control and mental health screening is another confounding question, why schools.

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Speaker 1: Why does so many troubled young men choose schools as

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Speaker 1: the place to act out their violent and vengeful fantasies,

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Speaker 1: And what, if anything, could schools do to avoid becoming

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Speaker 1: the next Columbine Sandy Hook or Stoneman Douglas. We spoke

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Speaker 1: with Brian Warnick, a professor of educational ethics and Policy

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Speaker 1: at the Ohio State University, who co authored a paper

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Speaker 1: on the meaning and motivations behind targeted school shootings. Even

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Speaker 1: though many associate gun violence in America with poor inner

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Speaker 1: city communities, mass school shootings almost always occur in upper

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Speaker 1: middle class suburban schools. That's where the status tournament takes place,

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Speaker 1: explains Warnick. He said, suburban schools do a lot of

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Speaker 1: things to select winners and losers in ways that go

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Speaker 1: beyond academics. Think the adelation of athletics and the crowning

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Speaker 1: of homecoming kings and queens. He continued, the way we

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Speaker 1: see it, when schools set themselves up as judges in

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Speaker 1: the social status tournament, the resentment will sometimes be directed

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Speaker 1: against these school itself. He notes that in the book

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Speaker 1: Hollywood Goes to the Movies, sociologist and author Robert Bollman

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Speaker 1: says that while Hollywood films set in urban schools focus

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Speaker 1: on heroic teachers and academic achievement, films set in suburban

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Speaker 1: settings focus on student journeys of self discovery in the

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Speaker 1: same vain. Many suburban school shooters see what they are

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Speaker 1: doing is acts of self expression, Warnick said, there's a

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Speaker 1: different value system at play in suburban schools. It's called

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Speaker 1: expressive individualism. What we see in movies and TV is

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Speaker 1: students engaged in this process of self discovery, breaking through

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Speaker 1: norms of the school, breaking through social cliques. Self discovery

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Speaker 1: and individual expression aren't necessarily bad things, says Warnick, But

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Speaker 1: for certain troubled young men who harbored deep resentment of

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Speaker 1: the system that rejected them, there's no better way to

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Speaker 1: express their true, tortured selves than through a dramatic act

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Speaker 1: of violence. And the higher the body count, the more

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Speaker 1: powerful the message will be. We also spoke with Cheryl Johnson,

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Speaker 1: a professor of criminal justice at Cincinnati's Xavier University, where

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Speaker 1: she has studied whether increased security measures, namely armed guards

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Speaker 1: on campus, locked down buildings, and metal detectors, are an

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Speaker 1: effective means of preventing school shootings. She found that although

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Speaker 1: beefed up security made to terr overall crime and violent

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Speaker 1: crime in schools, there's little evidence to show that those

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Speaker 1: measures alone can thwart a mass shooting. First, school shootings

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Speaker 1: are just too statistically rare to gauge the efficacy of

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Speaker 1: different security methods, and second, there's anecdotal evidence that even

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Speaker 1: the best security methods can fail. There were armed school

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Speaker 1: guards a Columbine, the Sandy Hook shooters shot through glass

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Speaker 1: panes to bypass locked doors, and in two thousand five,

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Speaker 1: a student in Red Lake, Minnesota, passed through his school's

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Speaker 1: metal detector before killing an unarmed guard who tried to

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Speaker 1: stop him, along with seven other people, including himself. There's

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Speaker 1: also concern that militarizing schools with armed guards and security

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Speaker 1: checkpoints contributes to the idea that the school is an

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Speaker 1: unsafe place where violence is almost expected. Johnson's seventeen paper,

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Speaker 1: obviously written before the February Parkland incident, pointed out that

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Speaker 1: the raw number of homicides at u S schools each

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Speaker 1: year since Columbine in had actually decreased or remained stable

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Speaker 1: over the years. One of the best ways to prevent

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Speaker 1: school shootings, both Johnson and Warnick agree, is to encourage

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Speaker 1: people to beak up when they suspect that a classmate, friend,

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Speaker 1: or family member is contemplating something terrible. A day before

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Speaker 1: the Parkland shooting, a grandmother in Washington State called nine

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Speaker 1: one one when she found her eighteen year old grandson's

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Speaker 1: handwritten plans for a gruesome school attack involving homemade explosives.

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Speaker 1: Johnson said, that's a school shooting we're not talking about today,

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Speaker 1: citing a report from the Secret Service and the Department

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Speaker 1: of Education that of school shootings, at least one other

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Speaker 1: person knew about the plans. In fifty two or more

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Speaker 1: people had information about the attacks before they occurred. Warnick said,

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Speaker 1: usually when school shootings are prevented, it's when students trust

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Speaker 1: the teachers enough to share that information with them. If

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Speaker 1: we could really build up schools as places of trust

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Speaker 1: where children feel like they have adults who care about them,

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Speaker 1: that would facilitate the communication that's been proven to prevent

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Speaker 1: school shootings. Of course, speaking up hasn't always been foolproof.

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Speaker 1: We now know that the FBI received a tip about

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Speaker 1: the Parkland shooter dating back to September seventeen for making

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Speaker 1: this sturbing comments on YouTube, but he was never detained

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Speaker 1: or even questioned. A second person contacted the FBI on

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Speaker 1: January to report their concerns and to warn them about

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Speaker 1: the shooters guns and desire to kill, but the FBI

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Speaker 1: has admitted that the proper protocols to follow up were

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Speaker 1: left on followed instead of school districts spending money on

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Speaker 1: expensive and unproven security solutions. Brian Warnick suggests they hire

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Speaker 1: more teachers and counselors to shrink class sizes and encourage

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Speaker 1: more meaningful interactions between staff and struggling students. He'd also

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Speaker 1: like to see more creative outlets like art, literature, and

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Speaker 1: music classes, which often get cut from tight budgets for

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Speaker 1: safe individual expression. Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse

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Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Klang. For more on this and

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Speaker 1: other current topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com