You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Original article
School shootings during 2013–2015 in the USA
  1. Bindu Kalesan1,
  2. Kinan Lagast2,
  3. Marcos Villarreal3,
  4. Elizabeth Pino4,
  5. Jeffrey Fagan2,6,
  6. Sandro Galea5
  1. 1Center for Translational Epidemiology and Comparative Effectiveness Research, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
  2. 2Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA
  3. 3University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine, Dallas, Texas, USA
  4. 4Department of Medicine, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
  5. 5School of Public Health, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
  6. 6Columbia Law School, New York, New York, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Bindu Kalesan, Center for Translational Epidemiology and Comparative Effectiveness Research, Boston University, 801 Massachusetts Ave Room 475, Boston, 02118 MA, USA; kalesan{at}bu.edu

Abstract

Background Data on the factors associated with school shootings in the USA are limited. The public conversation has often suggested several factors that may be linked to these events, however with little empirical support. Aiming to fill this gap, we describe the characteristics of school shooting incidents in the USA between 2013 and 2015 and explore whether four factors that represent domains of firearm policy, educational policy and epidemiological risk factors for intentional firearm injuries-background check (BC) policies, per capita mental health expenditures (MHE), K-12 education expenditure (KEE) and urbanicity—were associated with school shootings during this period.

Methods We searched LexisNexis, a newspaper and broadcast media databases for school shooting incidents from 1 January 2013 to 31 December 2015. Presence of BC laws was extracted from legal information in LexisNexis. State-level covariates of per capita MHE (2013), KEE (2013) and urbanicity (2010) rates were obtained from publicly available data sources. We used negative binomial regression models accounting for clustering by state to explore unadjusted associations between the BC laws, state-level covariates and school shootings to report IRR and 95% CI.

Results We documented 154 school shootings (35, 55 and 64 each year). In unadjusted models, BC for firearm purchase (IRR=0.55, 95% CI 0.39 to 0.76), ammunition purchase (IRR=0.11, 95% CI 0.05 to 0.27), log per capita MHE (IRR=0.58, 95% CI 0.37 to 0.90), log per-capita KEE (IRR=0.09, 9% CI 0.02 to 0.29) and urbanicity (IRR=0.97, 95% CI 0.96 to 0.99) were associated with school shooting.

Conclusions School shootings are less likely in states with BC laws, higher MHE and KEE, and with greater per cent urban population.

https://doi.org/10.1136/injuryprev-2016-042162

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Twitter Follow Bindu Kalesan at @MadisonsIntent

    • Contributors MV, BK and SG conceived the study. Data were obtained by MV and KL. Data analysis was performed by BK and EP. All authors wrote and finalised the manuscript.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement All data are available publicly as aggregate estimates.