Guests:
* David Russell is an associate professor of sociology at Appalachian State University. His research uses multiple methods to explore topics across the areas of medical sociology, aging and the life course, and stress and mental health.
* Jon Gordon is an assistant professor of sociology at Appalachian State University and an ethnographer whose research focuses on violence, gender, and criminalized organizations in marginalized urban communities.
* Kelly M. Thames is an associate professor of sociology at Appalachian State University. Her research interests include criminological and sociological theory, social control, and inequality.
Host: David Riedman, creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database.
Paper: The New Social Roots of School Shootings: A Refined Constellation Theory of Rampage Attacks
Abstract: School shooting scholars call for a comprehensive approach that can integrate idiosyncratic studies, solve definition dilemmas, and foster programmatic clarity. The authors argue that Newman and colleagues’ approach to rampage school shootings can be adapted to any subset of shootings. Using an original dataset, the authors assess constellation theory (CT)—Newman and colleagues’ comprehensive framework—and show how refined CT factors help define and explain rampage attacks amid broad shifts in gun appropriations, social media engagement, punitive school security, and adolescent mental health decline. The findings suggest that (1) duration, lethality, and shooter fatality distinguish rampage attacks as a subset; (2) shooter life histories display a majority of indicators across all CT factors, and the mean proportion of factor indicators is positively and significantly correlated with lethality; and (3) psychosocial support infrastructures represent inflection points in surveillance system failures that create time for other CT factors to gain salience in shooters’ biographical trajectories. This study provides insight into the mechanisms driving rampage shootings and develops Newman and colleagues’ approach as a generative analytic strategy for school shooting research.
David Riedman is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database, Chief Data Officer at a global risk management firm, and a tenure-track professor. Listen to my weekly podcast—Back to School Shootings—or my recent interviews on Freakonomics Radio, New England Journal of Medicine, and my article on CNN about AI and school security.
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