Schools under Fire?

School Shootings and the Construction of a Cultural Discourse of Emergency

In the 1990s, America was faced with a new form of excessive violence. The hitherto unknown brutality of school shootings — indiscriminate mass killings committed by adolescents at schools — shocked suburban communities and, from the late 90s onwards, received growing regional, national, and even international attention. Quickly, the impression arose that contemporary Western societies were in fact faced with an emergent phenomenon of excessive violence. Public, medial, and political reactions to school shootings […]