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The myth of the school shooter profile
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| Parent(s) |
Issue
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Apr 18, 2007 06:45pm |
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| Category | Commentary |
| News Date | Wednesday, April 18, 2007 05:25:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | So far, the media has been pretty responsible in avoiding myth-creation in the Virginia murders--they've come a long way since Columbine. But it's been frustrating to watch one major myth continue: that there a profile exists of the typical school shooter. What's worse, the cornerstone of this myth--that the shooters are all loners--is also wrong.
The most heinous example came on The CBS Evening News, where Wyatt Andrews' piece perpetuating the myth was built around the very study that debunked it. Wyatt began by saying that Cho Seung-Hui "fits almost to a tee, a U.S. Secret Service profile of the typical school shooter."
That's funny. The central idea of the Secret Service study was that no such profile exists--and it says so, explicitly and unequivocally, right in the overview: "There is no accurate or useful 'profile' of students who engaged in targeted school violence" (which is how they define school shooters--p. 11). How much clearer could they get?
No, seriously. I don't know what report Wyatt was reading, but the one he cited has a little section on the attackers social relationships on p. 20, where it says "The largest group of attackers for whom this information was available appeared to socialize with mainstream students or were considered mainstream students themselves (41 percent, n=17).
Later in that section it specifically addresses loners: "One-third of attackers had been characterized by others as 'loners,' or felt themselves to be loners (34 percent, n=14). One-third--meaning two-thirds did not. So most school shooters are not loners, outnumbering those who are two-to-one--yet Wyatt insists the report made the opposite conclusion. |
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