Throughout history, guns have been used as tools for social control to instill terror within minoritized communities. Campus carry is a current gun law that now allows licensed concealed handgun holders to carry on public college campuses in 11 U.S. states, including Texas (National Conference of State Legislatures [NCSL], 2018). This qualitative…

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has indicated that schools are vulnerable to school shootings. Understanding the experience of school members who have experienced such tragedies provides important context for further developing much-needed preventive and responsive measures. Using narrative inquiry, we explored the experience of a…

According to recent research, gun violence at schools has become a public health issue. Teachers, administrators, students, and communities are trying to cope with the aftermath of gun violence at schools. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to identify coping mechanisms among teachers and administrators after experiencing…

Three weeks after the February 14, 2018, shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were killed and 17 more injured, the Florida state legislature passed a bill, which among other things, designated two new roles for each school district: a director of safe schools and a mental health coordinator. These…

At a small rural middle school in the southern United States, two students murdered a teacher, four students, and injured 10 during a shooting spree. This case represents the lived experiences of a school principal, counselor, and community that survived the deadly rampage. The case highlights the challenges that school leaders may face such as…

When the massacre of 32 students plus the suicide of the shooter occurred at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, this author watched the external events from the relative safety of her office located directly across the Drillfield from Norris Hall, where the shootings occurred. Subsequently, the author fell into a deep state of depression following…

In this article, the authors as assistant professors of teaching and learning at Northern Illinois University react to the campus killings. They share their stories and sentiments regarding the campus killings. They state that their prayers and condolences go out to their campus, to the families of the lost and wounded, and the family of the young…

This article reports how researchers at Virginia Tech, working in a variety of disciplines, are studying the long-term effects of the campus killings 10 months ago. After the killings, administrators at Virginia Tech realized that their normal institutional-review process for research proposals was not sufficient to deal with the likely onslaught…

At even the best-prepared universities, there is no playbook for handling the crush of tough decisions that comes after a mass shooting rocks an otherwise quiet campus. While colleges and universities have always had tragedies, recent occurences like the shootings at Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech have fundamentally changed the way…

This article presents a case study of a single incident involving a high school student who brought a "tennis ball" bomb to school. Although the district had recently created a safety plan, with a specific protocol for the discovery of a bomb in the building, the principal and the crises team ignored it. The principal did not refer to…