Gun Control and School Shootings

The Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families (CJC) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan program of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park. CJC is funded by The Annie E. Casey Foundation.

On November 20, 2006, the CJC released a document titled Backgrounder: Gun Control and School Shootings.

The document's lead paragraph reads:

"Could meaningful gun-control laws and regulations reduce school-related shootings? It is a challenging topic to report, given that gun laws and regulations are made at the federal, state and municipal levels. Plus, the issue packs a lot of political heat. For those reasons and more, gun-control proposals – and sometimes the lack of them – need journalists’ scrutiny, especially around the issue of school shootings."

The CJC publication is richly hyperlinked to its referrent documents. It covers topics such as:

• Shooters and weapons
• Whither gun laws?
• What can schools do?

For people interested in better understanding school shootings, the people who do them, and some possible solutions, this is worth reading.