On April 16, 2007, a Virginia Tech student killed 32 of his classmates and professors and then turned the gun on himself. The media focused their power and our attention on the campus, the students and faculty of Virginia Tech, and the gunman and his victims. But we have yet to understand fully what happened in Blacksburg. There is a Gunman on Campus brings our thoughts back to the shocking campus shootings and the public reactions to the event, shining needed light on what occurred at the university, how American society reacted, and how it all fits into contemporary culture.
In what has become the era of the mass shooting, we are routinely taken to scenes of terrible violence. Often neglected, however, is the long aftermath, including the efforts to effect change in the wake of such tragedies. On April 16, 2007, thirty-two Virginia Tech students and professors were murdered. Then the nation’s deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman, the tragedy sparked an international debate on gun culture in the United States and safety on college campuses. Experiencing profound grief and trauma, and struggling to heal both physically and emotionally, many of the survivors from Virginia Tech and their supporters put themselves on the front lines to advocate for change. Yet since that April, large-scale gun violence has continued at a horrifying pace. In After Virginia Tech, award-winning journalist Thomas Kapsidelis examines the decade after the Virginia Tech massacre through the experiences of survivors and community members who have advocated for reforms in gun safety, campus security, trauma recovery, and mental health. Undaunted by the expansion of gun rights, they have continued their national leadership despite an often-hostile political environment and repeated mass violence. Kapsidelis also focuses on the trauma suffered by police who responded to the shootings, and the work by chaplains and a longtime police officer to create an organization dedicated to recovery. The stories Kapsidelis tells here show how people and communities affected by profound loss ultimately persevere long after the initial glare and attention inevitably fade. Reaching beyond policy implications, After Virginia Tech illuminates personal accounts of recovery and resilience that can offer a ray of hope to millions of Americans concerned about the consequences of gun violence.
From the recent shootings at Virginia Tech University to the tragedies at Columbine and Oklahoma City, certain common traits can be traced through all of these events. In Guys and Guns Amok, media and cultural critic Douglas Kellner provides a fascinating diagnostic reading of these acts of domestic terrorism. Skillfully connecting each case with the current environment for male socialization and the search for identity in an American culture obsessed with guns and militarism, Kellner's work is a sobering reflection on these tragedies and the pervasive power of media and popular culture as well as a wake-up call for the future.
The Virginia Tech Massacre take readers on a journey examining the mental health vulnerabilities of youth transitioning to adulthood, the limitations of existing warning tools for violence, and local, regional, and national gaps in mental health service delivery across the United States. The book provides concrete and pragmatic recommendations for how to begin overhauling the delivery for mental health services.
Virginia Tech is America's Cursed College, home to horrifying events from hit-and-runs to students being shot in the woods; prison escapes to public self-mutilations; police officers being gunned down to public beheadings; and of course, the notorious mass shooting that killed 33 people. But why is Virginia Tech the most infamous university in the United States? What is the reason for Virginia Tech's many tragedies? Chuck Marsh has written the only book of its kind: a gripping and frightening account of the Hokie Horrors. The Many Deaths of Virginia Tech is a spellbinding chronicle -- an expose -- of an oversized American university locked in a death-struggle with itself -- or with unseen forces. This book takes the reader on a tour through the many crimes and calamities at Virginia Tech in the past decade: a no-holds-barred account of an out-of-control hunger for violence at an American university.
Ten years in the works, a masterpiece of reportage, this is the definitive account of the Columbine massacre, its aftermath, and its significance, from the acclaimed journalist who followed the story from the outset. "The tragedies keep coming. As we reel from the latest horror . . ." So begins a new epilogue, illustrating how Columbine became the template for nearly two decades of "spectacle murders." It is a false script, seized upon by a generation of new killers. In the wake of Newtown, Aurora, and Virginia Tech, the imperative to understand the crime that sparked this plague grows more urgent every year. What really happened April 20, 1999? The horror left an indelible stamp on the American psyche, but most of what we "know" is wrong. It wasn't about jocks, Goths, or the Trench Coat Mafia. Dave Cullen was one of the first reporters on scene, and spent ten years on this book-widely recognized as the definitive account. With a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen, he draws on mountains of evidence, insight from the world's leading forensic psychologists, and the killers' own words and drawings-several reproduced in a new appendix. Cullen paints raw portraits of two polar opposite killers. They contrast starkly with the flashes of resilience and redemption among the survivors. Expanded with a New Epilogue
This book examines the gun-related policy responses to three school shooting incidents in the United States. Gun violence prevention activists and others involved in policy making were interviewed for the book, and news media articles and policy documents were critically assessed. As a result, interpretations of the Second Amendment are shown to affect the acceptability of certain gun restrictions. News media content and policy documents, coupled with the thoughts of activists, also give an indication of why certain policy measures passed and others failed at the time of each of the case studies. This book should be of interest to social policy, politics, criminology and sociology students and academics, as well as those with a general interest in the topic.
Relates the stories and experiences of journalism students and the university community on the events of April 16, 2007, when a gunman terrorized the campus with a series of shootings, leaving thirty-two people dead.
