Research

When I started to think about possible research questions I had two options. Either talk about global warming or any subject about education. I chose global warming at first; however, this topic was unknown for me because it showed many numbers and words that were unfamiliar to me. That's when I decided to go for something related with education. I thought about different issues that we live in educational institutions. The one that caught my attention the most was school shootings. I started my research without having a specific area to focus on related on school shootings. Then I thought about possible causes of this issue, and I came up with mental health.

Source #1

Schutten, Nathaniel M., et al. “Punishing Rampage: Public Opinion on Sanctions for School Shooters.” JQ: Justice Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 2, Mar. 2022, pp. 252–75. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/10.1080/07418825.2019.1707857.

Summary:

A survey was made among adults around America about how to sentence people who attempt or commit a school shooting. Shooter’s age, mental health, and results of the crime are taken into consideration. It was found that the gravity of the crime is the main factor for sentencing and rehabilitation preferences. However, the results also show that it depends on the shooter’s age because adults sentencing preferences tend to be more severe than for juvenile criminals.

Source #2

Katsiyannis, Antonis, et al. “Historical Examination of United States Intentional Mass School Shootings in the 20th and 21st Centuries: Implications for Students, Schools, and Society.” Journal of Child & Family Studies, vol. 27, no. 8, July 2018, pp. 2562–73. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/10.1007/s10826-018-1096-2.

Summary:

It is difficult to Inform about school violence; therefore, there is a review with the reason of giving a examination of mass school shootings that took place in the United States during the 20th and 21st centuries. Furthermore, schools and students’ implications are being discussed such as legislative initiatives, school-based prevention and positive behavior interventions.

Source #3

Vargas, T., et al. “Using Search Engine Data to Gauge Public Interest in Mental Health, Politics and Violence in the Context of Mass Shootings.” PLoS ONE, vol. 15, no. 8, Aug. 2020, pp. 1–14. EBSCOhost, https://doiorg.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/10.1371/journal.pone.0236157.

Summary:

Even though there’s potential to provide information about private perceptions, this information hasn’t been laid out to America people’s comprehension of gun violence along and politics along with mental health. It was shown that after the shooting events occurred, mental health and gun regulation, legal reform, and mass shootings searches increased. This also showed that people associate mental illness with violence and politics.

Source #4

Lee, Heejin, et al. “Attributions as Anchors: How the Public Explains School Shootings and Why It Matters.” JQ: Justice Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 3, Apr. 2022, pp. 497–524. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/10.1080/07418825.2020.1769710.

Summary:

Due to the witnessing of the consequences of multiple school shootings across the US, a survey was carried out to find out why the public thinks such tragic events like this happen, only to find out as a result, the attribution to guns and seeing the world as "a danger".

The following is a list of entities or groups that stand to benefit from or be harmed by the school shooting issue and why.

Students

Students are the ones more impacted after a school shooting. After being a witness of one of these events, students are most likely to end up traumatized. This will lead to living with the fear of being present on one of these tragedies. Furthermore, they could potentially be one of the victims of the shooter by getting injured or in the worst cases, murdered.

Community

A community that is impacted by an event like this get affected as well. Schools from the community are the more affected ones since it is the part where these shootings take place. The school staff can be victims from the shooter. Moreover, the reputation from the school and local police are affected by these tragedies if they fail to prevent or stop a shooting. Also, families from the community will be affected in different ways such as endure with the injure or lost of their children and living traumatized after the event.

Psychologists

Psychologists have a positive impact during these situations. After analyzing different school shootings, many shooters have been found to have a mental ill. Clearly, Psychologists can help with students’ metal health to prevent shootings to happen, and they also can help students, parents, and staff with traumas after the shooting. Psychologists are on demand on schools or medical related institutions just to help dealing with these tragedies.

Government

Government is also one of the main groups impacted negatively by school shootings. Every time a school shooting happens, the government is affected by public opinions on their effectiveness of preventing/stopping school shootings due to their gun laws. Government has the pressure of implementing laws that people demand.

Gun Store owners

Gun Store owners can be negatively impacted. After every government rule that has to do with gun control, firearms stores are negatively affected in sales because this rule reduces the population that are eligible to buy a firearm. If there are less people eligible to have a gun, means that less people will go to buy a firearm which means that the gun store will be affected by having less costumers, and therefore, less money.

An analysis of journalists and Healthcare Worker's stake in the pandemic

Source 1: Government

Redding, Richard E., and Sarah M. Shalf. “The Legal Context of School Violence: The Effectiveness of Federal, State, and Local Law Enforcement Efforts to Reduce Gun Violence in Schools.” Law & Policy, vol. 23, no. 3, July 2001, p. 297. EBSCOhost, https://doi- org.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/10.1111/1467-9930.00115.

Source 2: Psychologists

Daniels, Jeffrey A., et al. “The Impact of School Violence on School Personnel: Implications for Psychologists.” Professional Psychology: Research & Practice, vol. 38, no. 6, Dec. 2007, pp. 652–59. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/10.1037/0735-.

1). What is the stake in this issue for each of the two groups you have

read about?

The stake for government is the pressure given by the people of giving new laws to prevent school shootings. In general, dealing with laws or enforcements to stop shootings. Furthermore, the stake of a psychologist is to help people with their traumas created by a school shooting. Also, to help to prevent school shootings due to a patient with a mental ill.

2). What do they think and feel about the issue?

Both groups are willing to help to stop the problem. However, they are helping in different ways and with different outcomes. Government is helping by implementing rules and giving security for the people. But people demand more from the government. On the other hand, Psychologist are trying to help with the problem helping with mental health of students.

3). What kinds of things do people in these groups say about the issue?

In the government group they have a big dilemma on implementing law enforcement solutions for this problem. Thinking on stricter gun control laws. However, they have a constitutionally limitation to implement laws for this same subject. On the other hand, Psychologist are worried about the problem and are willing to help families and students to fight against traumas and mental health ills.

4). How would you describe relationships between these stakeholder groups? Allies? Enemies? Fellow travelers? Strangers to one another? Explain your answer.

I would describe the relationship between these stake holder groups as a employee- employer relationship. I say this because usually there are psychologist who work along with the government to help them to solve problems that involve mental health. They both are fellows because they often work together in these situations.

5). What kinds of arguments or claims do they make about the issue? (You may know this already as you have a reason to choose them in the first place).

People in the government group have helped with different policies that they have implemented, however, the people have been expecting more form both, Local and federal government since there have been shootings still happening. In Redding, Richard E., and Sarah M. Shalf article, they explain that “the federal government has a constitutionally limited role in enforcing laws involving primarily local interests, many weapons-offenses cases, especially those involving juveniles, are properly handled by state authorities rather than being prosecuted at the federal level” (310). This shows that having constitutional limitations is a factor for the federal government to not imply laws to totally stop shootings. Moreover, Psychologists claim that they can help people to go through this hard situation, but they need more training to know how to face this issue. “Psychologists employed in professional settings where the framework is in place for dealing with traumatic events should obtain training related to trauma interventions, understand their roles during and after a school crisis, and work to ensure they are ready to fulfill crisis-related responsibilities.” (Daniels, Jeffrey A; Bradley, Mary C; Hays, Mary).

6). Do they hold any biases? How so?

I would say that the government could have a bias not on the issue, but in the most controversial law to prevent school shootings. Depending on the beliefs of the people in charge of the government, it will be decided how strict the gun control act in each state can be. Furthermore, I don’t think Psychologist can have a bias on this issue since their only goal is to help people’s mental health.

7). Do these stakeholder groups live in a particular area, have common experiences, work in a specific profession, or have anything else in common?

They both can work together in certain fields, but other than working together, I would say that there is no other similarity between both. Obviously they both want to help somehow with the school shooting problem.

Why is it important to me?

This topic is important to me for many reasons.

Every time I watch news about this problem happening in different places, I can feel the pain from the families that were affected by the issue. This also impacted me mentally because while I was on high school, my friends and I feared from a shooting to happen in our school at any moment. And I think many people/students around the United States feel the same way my friends and I feel when it comes to this school shootings.

I think it is important to find more possible solutions finding the roots of why the problem happens. That's why I decided to focus in mental health.

Like I said before, I started my research with a question that needed to be more specific. I started looking for peer review journal papers so I could know more about the topic. That's when I decided to focus on mental health since according to public opinion was one of the reasons for school shootings. After that, I started looking for more articles/ journal papers related with school shootings and how this relates to mental health. I found my information using the ASU virtual library and EBSCO database. These two resources helped me a lot in order to find the information needed. And when choosing the articles, the abstract given was really helpful since it described what was the journal paper about in a short paragraph. For me the process was easy and very interesting because I was able to understand more about this issue.