Political Elements in Post-Columbine School Shootings in Europe and North America

Leena Malkki

Terrorism and Political Violence, 2014, vol. 26, issue 1, 185-210

Abstract: School shootings have traditionally been interpreted as non-political acts. Empirical evidence, however, suggests that not all shootings are necessarily so different from political violence, at least in the shooter's own opinion. The article analyses 28 school rampage shootings in Europe, the U.S., and Canada from 1999–2011 to determine common and prevalent political elements in the shootings. The shootings are divided into three categories: shootings with overtly political communication (four cases), shootings with references to previous school rampage shootings (13 cases), and isolated incidents (11 cases). While it is possible to question whether the shootings were genuinely politically motivated, it is clear that the majority of school shooters link their deed to the agenda and beliefs presented by the Columbine shooters, which has created a sense of tradition, continuity, and imagined community among the shooters and their admirers, not unlike in cases of terrorism and political violence that are referred to as leaderless resistance.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09546553.2014.849933 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ftpvxx:v:26:y:2014:i:1:p:185-210

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ftpv20

DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2014.849933

Access Statistics for this article

Terrorism and Political Violence is currently edited by James Forest

More articles in Terrorism and Political Violence from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().