McKenna Oakley
Words by McKenna Oakley
At 11:57 a.m. this past April 17, a shooter opened fire on my college campus.
I’m an English major at Florida State University, and before that Thursday became the worst day of my life, it was shaping up to be pretty sweet.
I had woken up early to rehearse a class presentation I had later that morning. Fueled by my usual breakfast and a cup of offensively-strong coffee, I felt ready to get after the “A.”
The first student to present, I was overly enthusiastic, waving my hands at the screen to distract from my shaking knees. On the walk back to my seat, my phone buzzed with a notification from my professor: “In-Class Presentation: 100%.”
Giddy and relieved, I sat back and day-dreamed about the sugary cold-brew I’d grab from the Student Union Starbucks to celebrate.
That’s when the first shot was fired outside the Student Union.
The emergency alert consumed the projector screen, becoming an image that is now uncomfortably permanent in my memory — one that still doesn’t feel real. It sounds tired, but if there were better words, I’d use them.
As my legs throbbed and hands trembled, I followed my peers and professor out of the classroom to the nearest parking garage, eager to get off campus as quickly as possible. Once the adrenaline subsided, terror set in.
Where were my friends?
For the next few hours, I texted everyone I knew in a panic I had never experienced before. And I wasn’t the only one. Almost immediately, the stream of “Where are u?? Are u ok??” texts began to flood my phone. All day, I’d receive messages and calls, from distant relatives to high school acquaintances. Group chats especially were ablaze as everyone tried to track down where their friends were last seen. No one wanted to say what we were all thinking.
What if they were at the Union?
I was lucky. My classroom was far from the scene, and I was able to quickly and safely evacuate. Many weren’t so lucky, trapped near the gunfire and awaiting armed police escort — two of my friends amongst them. One friend was trapped in a classroom whose door did not lock and opened from the outside, eliminating any chance of barricade. I wanted to call her but was paralyzed by the realization that I couldn’t.
What if a phone ring gave her and her peers’ location away to a shooter?
Another friend was heading toward the Union when the first shot rang out. She immediately turned and ran for her life. It’s hard for her to talk about, but she told me that the saying is true: when it’s gunshots, you’ll know.
Thanks to the responsiveness and bravery of the Florida State Police Department and Tallahassee law enforcement, the shooter was apprehended within three minutes. But at the time, we didn’t know that.
Well-intentioned rumors boomeranged, and widespread panic seared through my community in a way I’d only ever seen in the movies — and pray to never see again.
In the days following, though, the outpouring of support testified to our school’s resilience. Flowers, teddy bears, baseball caps and handmade signs blanketed the brick beyond our Student Union, forming a watercolor of memorial to reconcile a site of so much horror. It returned to our community as a place of healing and hope, and candlelight vigils adorned our evenings as remembrance for the two lives lost.
But we’re still left with this: it took only three minutes to change so many lives forever. Two members of the community murdered, six more injured, and the rest heartbroken, angry and stunned.
We learned the worst cliché to be true that day: You never think it’ll be your school.
But for more and more of us, it is.
Shootings as an Increasing American Crisis
Mass shootings — from schools to convenience stores — have been growing steadily since 1966. According to data compiled by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the past decade has witnessed especially notable spikes. While you may have noticed the uptick in news coverage, this statistic from an “American Journal of Public Health” study brings the issue into sharp focus: roughly 31% of globally reported mass shootings occur in the US. This begs a critical question: Is the issue an American one?
There are many competing theories. Considering gun violence overall is on an upward trajectory in the United States, some argue the broad access to firearms and the volume of such weapons in circulation are contributing factors. In 2020, according to the BBC News article “Why number of U.S. mass shootings has risen sharply,” U.S. gun sales reached a record high of 23 million — a 65% increase from the year before.
So are more regulatory gun laws the answer? A study conducted by “The American Journal of Surgery” titled “Trends in mass shootings in the United States (2013–2021): A worsening American epidemic of death” insinuates stricter legislation leads to fewer monthly mass shooting-related deaths.
If this is true, the decision passed by the Florida House of Representatives this past March to lower the minimum age to purchase long guns from 21 to 18 seems ill-timed and ill-advised. The decision reverses the precautions originally placed to raise the minimum age to 21 after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Though the Senate version of this bill, HB 759, is yet to gain significant traction, its introduction in the House reflects the potential direction of Florida gun laws.
“Folio” reached out to our local State Representative Angie Nixon, who represents District 13 in Jacksonville, to gain a clearer sense of where Florida’s gun policy may realistically lead.
Guns in the Hands of Youth — Where Florida Law Currently Stands
According to Representative Nixon, the current political climate of the Florida legislature favors greater leniency in gun laws. She predicts the lowered minimum age for purchasing long guns to soon clear the Senate.
“I think there’s a strong possibility it will pass,” said Nixon. “It’s disturbing and upsetting that instead of working to ensure our children and young adults are safe, parents, like myself, have to worry about whether our kids will potentially be slaughtered just for attending classes.”
Nixon characterizes some of her colleagues in the House and Senate as pandering to “extremist” gun accessibility agendas — meaning the precedent for loose regulations could extend to handguns, too. Considering handguns are used in approximately 75.1% of reported mass shootings in the United States, per data provided by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, this issue is of great concern to those advocating for an end to school-based gun violence.
However, the issue of school shootings alludes to causes greater than preventive legislation and the overall back-and-forth of our country’s politics.
The Issue Isn’t Just Political
Despite legislative efforts to shape the future of gun ownership in the US, the problem is ultimately cultural. Lawmakers may respond to the violence and include them as bullet points in broader campaigns, but suited donkeys and elephants aren’t handing out guns with sticky notes that say “open fire.”
Setting aside contentious headlines, what compels individuals to commit acts of mass violence? The theories corroborated by research may surprise you. The two most popular beliefs — that violent video games or mental illness are responsible — are not backed by the evidence.
To gain insight into these misconceptions — and to better understand what research does tell us —“Folio” reached out to some experts in the field.
One is Angela Mann, a licensed school psychologist and professor at the University of North Florida. Her research centers on factors that contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline — essentially, what keeps students in school and what keeps them safe there. According to her, the findings are clear.
“Creating inclusive, welcoming school climates is a really critical part of school safety,” Mann says.
She emphasizes the importance of social-emotional learning and counseling as means to prevent violent behavior, as it teaches students conflict resolution and positive emotional regulation. Following the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, there was an initial push to expand these sort of school-based mental health services. Unfortunately, Mann reports, the momentum has quieted. There remains a significant shortage of school counselors, psychologists, and other staff to provide this critical support.
Furthermore, she describes the ongoing attempts to compose a profile for the “typical” mass shooter as counterproductive and actually inhibiting effective prevention measures.
“Looking at some of the data around school shooters, what we know is there unfortunately isn’t a complete profile,” Mann says. While certain demographic patterns seem to be recurring, such as most shooters being white, young and male, Mann stated the research does not provide enough characteristics to reliably predict perpetrators.
A report conducted by the U.S. Secret Service titled “Protecting America’s Schools: A U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Targeted School Violence” supports this notion. Though the report notes that many shooters have identified themselves as experiencing some sort of social “grievance,” like bullying, these experiences are too common to perform as accurate predictors.
Similar to the pitfalls of labeling a broad group like students who feel socially excluded as potential perpetrators, Mann warns against attributing mass shootings to mental illness.
“Sometimes there’s a narrative about mental health being an issue. Amongst the school safety community, there’s a real push back against that because there are lots of people that have mental health concerns and don’t act in these ways,” Mann said.
Mann ultimately cautions against behavioral profiling that strays the focus from investing in long-term solutions, like increasing mental health resources in schools.
For more information on the topic, “Folio” also spoke with Stephen Brock, a professor at California State University in Sacramento and a leading expert in school crisis response. As a former president of the National Association of School Psychologists, his research focuses on helping schools cope with the aftermath of violent events. His proximity to the issue familiarizes him with the factors that may have contributed to them in the first place — firearms accessibility being one of them.
Could Stricter Gun Laws Make a Difference?
“There is a link between access to firearms and firearms violence,” Brock said — which we all may have been able to guess.
Brock informed us that violent acts are also often times impulsive. The greater the delay between a person’s impulse and their ability to access a firearm — especially considering many youths obtain guns from friends or relatives — the more lives are saved.
Yet, both Brock and Mann agree that labelling any single factor as the cause of mass violence is premature. “The research is very difficult to do — to prove a causal connection — because you have to deliberately manipulate variables,” Brock said. While associations can favor causation, there is no lab protocol for running an experiment on a societal epidemic. These aren’t the sorts of variables you can fix.
There is a current theory that offers a promising angle, though. And it involves the media — including publications like “Folio.” It’s called the contagion effect theory, first proposed by the “American Journal of Public Health” in a study titled “Mass Shootings: The Role of the Media in Promoting Generalized Imitation.”
…So Does the Media Hold the Key?
Contagion effect theory suggests that the prolific media coverage of school shootings and similar acts of mass violence increases the probability of these acts being imitated.
To put it simply, the more attention given to the shooter and the details of the attack, the more likely others will imitate them. Despite the negative coverage, shooters are still granted a perverse notoriety. With the repeated play-by-play accounts of their shootings, individuals are left with a model to mimic, and the media’s “feedback” on their “performance” even provides them with standards to compare themselves to.
When asked their opinions on this theory, Mann and Brock concurred that there is a connection between the media and the rise in violence. Mann noted that shooters often cite previous incidents with extensive media coverage as their inspiration. Clearly, we need a new approach.
Rethinking How We Report Mass Shootings
We can start with how we talk about the tragedies, especially in the press.
Just think of the word “Columbine.” It has become cemented in American vernacular, evoking instant recognition and operating as a shorthand for mass violence. The 1999 shooting and attempted bombing at Columbine High School left a dark footprint on our culture, and its frequent reference in conversations, online forums, music and films has unfortunately created an aura of legacy for the deranged individual.
In response to such dangerous effects that can be fueled by the press cycle, the Center for Journalism Ethics has begun to develop new guidelines on reporting that minimize the attention given to shooters. In their recent article “Balancing truth and trauma, media ethics in school shooting coverage continue to evolve,” they encourage journalists to exclude shooters’ names, photos and manifestos.
There is also a move to exercise more discretion when interviewing witnesses on-site. Survivors’ disorientation and shock complicate notions of informed consent, and capturing someone’s raw reaction to trauma can also contribute to the spread of misinformation. Movements like No Notoriety are already advocating this effort to prevent shooters from finding a platform in the media, endorsing the idea that responsible coverage really can make a difference.
As someone who witnessed the impacts of media on my campus firsthand — and as a writer myself — I can say I wholeheartedly agree, especially with respect to the adverse effects that media involvement can have on survivors and grieving communities.
When you’re bringing a bouquet to a memorial and seeking a moment of silence with your peers to try to find a semblance of comfort amidst something unimaginable, the last thing you want is a camera in your face. Or to spot a reporter joking with their colleagues in your periphery.
I heard several of my friends say that day, “Why don’t they just get their picture and leave?”
So How Do We “Get Our Picture and Leave” as a Society?
How do we leave these tragedies in the past and approach a safer future?
The call for responsible reporting applies to every publication — including us here at “Folio.” You’ll notice I don’t mention the name of the shooter, their motives or offer a play-by-play of the attack. Instead, I write about what matters: I detail how it affected my friends and me, how I saw my community come together, and how it bred an urgency in all of us to find answers.
In the face of increasing violence, we must give platform to the voices of those who have been hurt — if they wish to speak — and leverage this emotion for change.
To my fellow journalists, report with empathy. Make every decision with discretion, even if it is a split-second one. The survivors you interview have been making split-second decisions, too — but theirs were life-or-death. It is not enough to document the violence and seek answers. We also have to protect those living through the trauma.
To our local and federal lawmakers, with respect for the rights afforded to citizens by the Constitution, consider how we may exercise these freedoms with wisdom and care. Especially with so many of our nation’s youths already being adversely affected.
To those shaping educational policy and funding, consider mental health services for students as vital and not optional. Designate qualified staff as support and invest in the next generation.
To everyone else, dig deeper than the sensationalized headlines and the familiar boogeyman. Don’t feed the frenzy. Mourn with the victims and reject media that immortalizes the killers.
In fact, forget them altogether. Everyday, I choose to forget mine.
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