Weapons at School: Examining the Significance of Place

ABSTRACT

As demonstrated in extant research, there are significant distinctions across urban, suburban, and rural communities both in the experience of school violence and in the resources allocated toward safeguarding schools from violence. What remains unknown is how the relationship between weapons at school (i.e., possession of a weapon and attacks with a weapon) and school safety policies and practices (i.e., policy against weapons, punishment practices specifically for weapons, and teacher training) differs across school locales. This study draws from the nationally representative 2015–2016 School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) to address two questions about the relationship between weapons at school and school safety policies and practices across different school locales. First, do rates of weapons at school and school safety policies and practices vary across school locales? Second, if there are distinctions, how is the relationship between weapons at school and school safety policies and practices moderated by place?

KEYWORDS:

• Weapons
• safety
• location
• inequality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anthony A. Peguero

Anthony A. Peguero is an associate professor of sociology and criminology at Virginia Tech.  Dr. Peguero is also the Director of the Laboratory for the Study of Youth Inequality and Justice (YIJ) and research affiliate of the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention (CPSVP).  His research interests involve youth violence, socialization and marginalization, schools, and the adaptation of the children immigrants.  He is also a member of Racial Democracy, Crime, and Justice Network (RDCJN) and Latina/o/x Criminology (LC) which hold the goals of advancing research on the intersection of race, crime and justice.

Lisa Yost

Lisa Yost is a doctoral student in the Sociology Department at Virginia Tech. She has been a research assistant with the Laboratory for the Study of Youth Inequality and Justice (YIJ) since 2018. She is currently writing her dissertation on cyberbullying among U.S. adolescents. She is also interested in investigating online extremism, political polarization, rural crime, youth violence, and online violence through social media.

Melissa Ripepi

Melissa Ripepi is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Sociology at Virginia Tech where she is a graduate research associate for the Laboratory for the Study of Youth Inequality and Justice. Prior to that, she earned her B.A. from Virginia Tech’s College of Architecture in Urban Affairs and Planning with a concentration in public policy. Her research interests are in social stratification and inequality; race, ethnicity, and immigration; schools; and youth violence.

Kecia Johnson

Kecia Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Mississippi State University.  Her research interests are in criminology, deviance and race/ethnicity and gender.  Recently, as co-director of the Mississippi Food Insecurity Project (MFIP), Dr. Johnson is currently interested in understanding the racialized and gendered aspects of the local food environment.