Is School Gun Violence Unique? A Multilevel Comparison of School Shootings and Youth-Perpetrated Street Gun Violence

• In Event: New Research on the Predictors of School Crime

Abstract

Despite garnering widespread public attention over the last several decades, school shootings are a relatively understudied phenomenon. Moreover, these events have been framed as a unique form of violence in which disgruntled suburban white boys kill indiscriminately in their schools, even though recent studies using broader definitions have found some commonalities with community gun violence. Using data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), this study nests 28,861 firearm aggravated assaults perpetrated by youth within 1,098 counties and 45 U.S. States from 2015 to 2019. Hierarchical logistic regression models with fixed effects for year are used to compare the odds of a shooting happening in a school (N = 752) relative to public places (N = 28,109). The results show minimal differences between the two types of gun violence, while it is possible the few differences are being shaped by the school context. These findings suggest that school shootings may be more like street gun violence than originally thought, which has several implications for research and policy.

Authors

• Kyle G. Knapp, Florida State University

• Emma Fridel, Florida State University