School Shootings

The following is a research page seeking to analyze the causes of school shootings, which will merge in information from this Wikipedia page to list historic cases of shootings. While cases may also be merged in from these pages, cases will not be included unless targeting civilians generally rather than in the context of personal duels or gang disputes.

While there are early cases of shootings in schools, prior to 1966 they typically involved one-on-one disputes between students, teachers, or parents, rather than reckless terrorist attacks targeting people indiscriminately.

Observations
There was never a school shooting in U.S. history prior to 1966, and the only other shootings other than two in 1966 were committed by law enforcement (four cases) until 1974. The first elementary school shooting occurred in 1979 which was followed by another in 1984 and two more in 1988.

Hypothesis
I hypothesize that there is a link between school shootings and their depiction/glorification in the media, or more broadly depiction of massacres in general. Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released in 1974 which perfectly correlates to an increase in massacre prevalence.

The only two school massacres that occurred prior to 1974 were in 1966, aside from four perpetrated by U.S. law enforcement, following which massacres steadily became commonplace. As such, this page will also document media releases that encouraged/glorified massacres, especially school massacres, in examining a potential link between the two.