Professor Julie Webber spoke with NPR’s Todd Zwillich about gun violence on school properties that seems increasingly common. In The Takeaway segment airing on January 25, Webber argued that while spikes in gun violence give the impression that gun violence is more common, particularly in schools, long term trends since the early 1990s show that this is not the case.
Moreover, according to Webber, most gun violence in schools is suicide and interpersonal (revenge) violence, whereas the more “spectacular” events that terrorize the general student population of a school (such as Columbine) are fairly rare. Yet, she argues, these spectacular events tend to stand in for “the whole” in the media and thus in the minds of the general public. It’s unfortunate, Webber says, in that the problem posed by the more commonplace gun violence is overshadowed and deserves more attention.
Webber has recently published a book on school violence titled Beyond Columbine: School Violence and the Virtual.
