“I think in many ways people view mass shootings as a part of American society in the way baseball, apple pie and the Fourth of July are,” says Jaclyn Schildkraut, associate professor of criminal justice at the State University of New York at Oswego and an expert on mass shootings. “It’s just something that’s expected as ‘who we are as a country.’”
Schildkraut was raised in Parkland, Fla., the site of the 2018 shooting that left 17 people dead. She spent 14 years of her adult life in Orlando, site of what is now the second worst mass shooting in the U.S. — 49 people gunned down. She had just graduated high school at the time of the Columbine High School shootings in which 13 people died in what Schildkraut calls “a defining moment for my generation.”
It’s been 20 years since Columbine and the number and severity of these crimes has only escalated. Research has shown a contagion effect with one crime being a catalyst for the next. So how does that knowledge help experts prevent the next tragedies?
Source: The Hill
Author: Liz Langley