We’re nearing the one year anniversary of Virginia Tech. All college students have a lot on their minds. I don’t think it will happen with the security tightened at colleges. But what are the odds someone would?
Is there precedent for school shooters being motivated by a desire to commemorate the anniversaries of earlier school schooters, as opposed to copycats who act in the days or weeks following a well-publicized shooting?
If not, I’d say the odds are pretty much the same as any April, which, as you point out, is a stressful enough time for students.
Not that I’m going to work the equations, but at a guess the probability is the same for any month. Oh, I suppose it’s possible that there are times when the probability is higher (like in the stressful environment of finals, say), but my guess is that nutballs will fly off the handle at pretty much random intervals and go on shooting sprees whenever whatever it is that sets them off…well, sets them off.
-XT
Just out of curiosity, is this the sort of thing for which bookies offer odds?
(Wouldn’t surprise me.)
The Columbine shooting occurred on April 20, 1999.
The Virginia Tech shooting occurred on April 16, 2007.
You can check out this worldwide school shootings time line. Or this one. And this one.
You do the math.
I’m not seeing any patterns.
Yes you are. Look closer.
All of them occurred in the months that make up the school year. Hell of a pattern, eh? That’s just gotta be something more than random chance, wouldn’t you say?
To answer the OP, I would say that it is about the same as it has always been. Vague? Absolutely. But it’s about as precise an answer as you can reasonably expect.
April, more generally, Spring does seem to be the time for school shootings. The flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, the rounds are clicking in their chambers…
8 shootings in April, out of 55. That’s 14.5%, as opposed to the expected 8%.
February has as many, and March has more.
How do you get an expected 8%? You wouldn’t expect a school shooting in the summer holidays, remember.
Ah, well, everybody gets depressed in February, and April is the month for merry pranks!
Has anything been done to tighten security?
I haven’t heard of schools increasing their security presence greatly, or really doing anything beyond trying to implement notification systems that never work (when my school had a security scare in the fall I got an email to evacuate 6 hours after the incident).
I seriously thought there was going to be one today. You know, 411.
Ignorance is bliss.
You know, there would be far less school shootings if we just outlawed schools.
-Eben
IIRC, there was a lot of speculation swirling at the time that the Columbine shootings were meant to take place on or near the anniversaries of various tragic things, including the assault on and burning of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco (4/19/1993), the OKC bombing (4/19/1995), and Adolf Hitler’s birthday (4/20/1889). Whether or not a copycat shooter would choose a mid-late April date based on the VA Tech shooting, I’m not sure, but it seems as if there are certainly enough historical events to “commemorate” that fall in the same time period. It would be very sad if society had to constantly be wary of such dates every year, just because some nutjob might try to “outdo” the nutjobs before him or her.