Introduction to Special Issue: The Legacy of Columbine—Implications for Policy After 20 Years

Abstract

This introduction provides an overview to the special issue, which marks the twentieth anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School by considering the effect on policy addressing school violence and mass shootings. We asked each of the contributors to consider changes in their area of interest over the past two decades as well as future research and policy issues. The resulting five contributions take various forms: three are traditional scholarly articles, one is a personal commentary, and one is an afterword that combines a scholarly format with professional reflection. In our introduction, we summarize each one. As each article identifies the need for continued work in this area, and we conclude by providing a few examples of this research.

Preventing school violence: A review of school threat assessment models.

“…A series of school shootings in the United States during the 1990s, including the shooting at Columbine High School, raised public concern about the safety of schools (Addington & Muschert, 2019). However, research has shown that school shootings and other school-related violent deaths are rare albeit tragic incidents (Irwin et al, 2021; Langman, 2016), that schools are one of the safest places for youth (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2008; Nekvasil et al, 2015), and that school violence has been consistently declining since 1992 (Irwin et al, 2021).…”