This essay mirrors the structure found in my thesis film—a series of small vignettes—but does not emulate one for the other and vice versa. The essay is an experiment that seeks to allow rather than define and imagines a world already in place rather than built by the accumulation of reading and writing this text; the vignettes serve as a witness to this world rather than symbols building up a system of signs. I’m interested in expanding the conversation around political personhood towards a receptive stance; a politics of receptivity. This doesn’t serve as a counter to any narratives around a politics of action, activism and social justice, especially one that is needed now more than ever with the current political climate. Instead the text pays close attention to the daily, the individual, and the banal, not as an apathetic or reactionary stance, but as one charged with potential. In casting off an overarching relationship to narrative and resolve in the text, which does not deny narrativity found in the moments and individual vignettes, I posit a self of inconclusive gestures, pregnant moments and the feeling of something meaningful happening in a world of interviews, speculative text messages, portraits of binge watching tv, video essays, and case studies. The potential pitfalls and failures of a piece of this nature is to read each vignette as a simple projection of a stable self, that a stable I is seeing himself in all that is around. And while this writing encourages one to hold up a mirror and see oneself in a vignette it is also a piece that explores these affective limitations and symbolic acts of violence. There is the critique that non-narrative potential filled space creates a problematically uncomplicated relationship to the subject matter and viewer. This is a notion further developed in Maggie Nelson’s book, The Art of Cruelty that thinks through arts capability to enact change through often violent or problematic means. In discussing the work of artist Alfredo Jaar in which he rebukes Newsweek’s headlines with his own headlines about the Rwandan genocide, she writes, “since the artist has predetermined what it is, exactly, that we should have been looking at… what is the use of our looking at all?” (Nelson 26). By avoiding the possibility of critique or question to the piece by supplying the question and answer, Jaar’s work, she argues, becomes problematically tame. The receptive stance taken aims to keeps questions at the forefront rather than answer them. It is a writing that tries to keep the question, “What is left? What is still there after?” churning, full of potential and charged. It’s a piece that presumes a self always in the wake of, as Bergson writes with beautiful images of cones in his book Matter and Memory. It is a piece that also assumes a self that is always becoming, as Spinoza suggests with his famous line, “No one has determined what the body can do”. (Spinoza 87). Despite the contradiction of a self pulled to and from, past and future, this piece presumes that selfhood is formed on the basis of both simultaneously. Similar to how CA Conrad articulates his rituals creating space for himself, the text permits associations and cross readings in order to find some kind of residue to reside in. While this residual space from the accretion of texts rubbing up against each other is one in which I’m identifying a receptive selfhood, this space is one that also radically permits another. Kathleen Stewart articulates a similar position in her fantastic ethnographic study of coal mining communities in West Virginia, A Space on the Side of the Road. In it she writes, “In the effort to track something of the texture, density, and force of a local cultural real through its mediating forms and their social uses, it tears itself between evocation and representation, mimesis and interpretation.” It here could be both the text and an understanding of selfhood. This polemic of constructing a self through an affective refuge of experiences is one that is not a transaction. The vignettes, unless themselves an exchange, are complete onto themselves. They are curated and designed, but through their excess, unresolved nature and individuality they stand alone, while their impact secretes. I cannot say how the wake of the piece will be felt or what action comes from political passivity. But, as the Vipassana teacher Michele McDonald teaches, I know that in order to act first one has to understand where we are acting from. In this way the piece performs a similar purpose to Raymond William’s, Structures of Feelings that maps out affective terrains. This piece attempts to map, but never seeks to pin point or locate. There is no single source to find for one’s internal landscape, but there might be a way to witness where and how impact occurs in the radically passive personhood, the same way focusing on the breath allows one to witness when and how awareness shifts to thought, sensation or emotion; it’s about a continuous how, rarely about fixing a why. In lieu of the film one can think of the text as a bin system for video editing software. The folder in which this text is archived would be titled, potential. The text moves similarly to scrubbing through material. Then there is | |. I’m hesitant to pin down and strictly label the significance of | | but maybe thinking of it as a direction; | | is a whispered, “now,” or a pinched now, or a hand on the back with a warm now, but most importantly it is a continued now that respects critical/emotional distance. This sign is riddled throughout the text- in some moments performing an experience of time, time passing, or time severed, or performing the self addressing self through the correction of speech and grammar. At times it reveals an emotional temporal sense where the subjective experience extends or shrinks the actual.

abstract: Public mass shootings occur at a rate in the U.S. that is higher than any other developed country. These event initiate wide spread media attention. The media attention these events achieve have shown to impact the public behavior (e.g., increased firearm sales). However, the impact public mass shootings have on firearm storage and carry habits of the public is not well understood. Using data collected from the Transportation Security Administration, this study examines how mass shootings have led to moral panics occurring within the U.S. through the examination of the firearm carrying habits among the population immediately following mass shootings. The results indicate that loaded firearms with rounds in the chamber detected by the TSA have significantly increased since 2012. Further, firearms detected immediately following a public mass shooting had a higher proportion of firearms loaded with a round in the chamber relative to 7 days prior to the shooting. Moreover, the increase in proportions of firearms found loaded with a round in the chamber exponentially decays as days past the initial shooting, these events occur at a higher rate than the decay rate can normalize these occurrences. I conclude that in the wake of these shootings a moral panic ensues that is partially responsible for the change in the general public’s arming configuration habits. Further research is needed in to determine the impact on crime, and public health related issues due to this change in the public’s firearm carrying habits. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Criminology and Criminal Justice 2018

The purpose of this study was to determine hospital preparedness for an internal mass casualty/active shooter event at Tennessee hospitals. Data were collected during May of 2019 by surveying the CEOs of the 86 acute care hospitals in Tennessee. The survey solicited responses about training, preparedness, and internal evaluation of procedures. CEOs of 28 (32.5%) of Tennessee’s acute care hospitals responded to the survey. Just over half (53.6%) of those responding indicated that they believed their facility was prepared or well prepared for an active shooter event. The mean responses of CEOs who had experienced an active shooter event were significantly lower than those CEOs who had not. Seventy-two percent of CEOs indicated that policies and procedures for active shooter/mass casualty events were updated at least every other year.

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Recent research following mass shooting events has examined those individuals directly affected by the violence and the impact of the shooting on the whole community. This chapter reviews literature regarding the prevalence of adjustment difficulties among individuals in mass‐shooting‐ affected communities. Emerging research supports that a number of individuals with less severe or even no direct exposure to a mass shooting event may experience adjustment difficulties, including anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, and, further, that chronic adjustment difficulties can develop. The chapter discusses predictors of adjustment difficulties following mass shootings including the role of preshooting vulnerability, shooting‐related exposure and loss, and postshooting experiences. It considers the possibility that mass shooting events may represent opportunities for positive changes in individuals’ functioning. Finally, the chapter explores research regarding how the community itself may be altered by a mass shooting including changes in community solidarity, identity, and sense of safety within the community.

Mass murder in the United States is increasing, yet understanding of mass murderers is still relatively limited. Many perpetrators compose manifestos, which include journals, blogs, letters, videos, and other writings. Previous research has indicated that personal messages are of great social and psychological importance; however, there remains an important gap in the current literature regarding studies specific to these manifestos. As such, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to provide greater understanding of mass murderers' motives and mindsets through psycholinguistic analysis of their recorded words. The constructivist conceptual framework enabled gathering, analyzing, interpreting, and reporting thematic language from a purposeful sample of 12 American mass murderer manifestos, all of which were freely available online. The 6 research questions aligned with 6 psycholinguistic themes: ego survival and revenge; pseudocommando mindset: persecution, envy, obliteration; envy; nihilism; entitlement; and heroic revenge fantasy. Descriptive and analytical coding allowed for the identification of sentences and passages representative of each theme. Findings revealed a high degree of support for nihilism and ego survival and revenge, moderate support for heroic revenge fantasy and pseudocommando mindset, and limited support for entitlement and envy. These findings contribute to the existing literature, enhancing social change initiatives through increased understanding of mass murderers' communications and prompting further needed research. With greater awareness comes the potential for early identification and intervention, which may favorably impact psychology and law enforcement professionals and at-risk individuals.

Statistics show that the number of mass shootings and involved fatalities have drastically increased over the last five years. The framing of these attacks in the mass media has a substantial impact on the public opinion on the causes of shootings, possible prevention methods and gun control in general. Following study aims to uncover potential ideological influences of political tendencies of liberal and conservative newspapers on the media coverage of the most recent mass shooting in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. A qualitative content analysis with a general structural analysis of 39 articles from the liberal newspaper The New York Times and the conservative newspaper The Washington Times and a more detailed Critical Discourse Analysis of the frames of blame, prevention methods and gun control were conducted. Findings show that The Washington Times´media coverage on blame attributions and prevention methods mainly included frames of mental health. The focus in The New York Times´ coverage is clearly on gun issues and the demand for gun restrictions. The topic gun control is positively framed by The New York Times. The Washington Times, however, framed gun control in connection with conspiracy theories and thus portrayed it in a more negative light. The findings prove an influence of the newspapers´ political tendencies and ideologies on the media coverage of the Florida mass shooting.

Gun violence is a pandemic problem in the United States, resulting in over two thirds of all homicides each year. Consequently, gun related policies have been fiercely debated within the political spectrum, with the 20th century seeing a dramatic increase in gun control legislation. Gun-free zones are designated areas that strictly prohibit all private citizens from carrying a firearm, even those with concealed weapon permits. The statistics indicate that numerous instances of gun related mass shootings have occurred within the confines of these gun-free zones (schools, movie theatres, government installations, etc.). However, little research exists to understand whether citizens actually feel any safer when they are in a gun-free zone. The purpose of this study was to explore citizens’ perceptions about gun control policies, specifically about using gun-free zones, who resided in the five states with the highest rates of gun violence per capitain descending order, these included Virginia, Florida, Texas, Nevada, and Connecticut. Moreover, these five states were the locations of the top five deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history to date. The researcher also discovered how residents felt about pro-gun areas, where responsible citizens could legally carry firearms, as well as determine whether gun-free zones influenced their likelihood of visiting a prescribed location. Finally, the study sought to understand residents’ perceptions regarding using gun-free zones pertaining to their impact on reducing incidents of mass shootings. The researcher filled the gap in the literature regarding knowledge pertaining to citizens’ perceptions about using specific gun control measures, such as gun-free zones, and the influence that the historical evidence had on their perceptions. The answer to RQ1 (do residents associate using gun-free zones with feelings of safety or feelings of concern?) was that participants were twice as likely to associate using gun-free zones with feelings of concern rather than feelings of safety. The answer to the first part of RQ2 (whether participants believed that gun-free zones reduced gun-related violence) was no, based on a 2-to-1 ratio. Responses to the impact of gun control measures on reducing gun violence were closely matched to perceptions of the role of gun-free zones in reducing gun violence. The answer to the second part of RQ2 (do residents believe that gun-free zones lower the occurrences of mass shooting incidents?) was no, again based on a 2-to-1 ratio. The answer to the third and final part of RQ2 (whether participants’ perceptions correlated to the historical/empirical evidence of the location of mass shootings as primarily inside of or outside of gun-free zones) was yes for participants from Florida, Texas, Nevada, and Connecticut and no for participants from Virginia.

The ‘91 Roos is a sports documentary focused in Killeen, Texas. exploring the 1991 Killeen Kangaroos high school football team and their journey to their city's one and only state championship in football. Killeen is a small central Texas town that is directly adjacent and provides support to Ft Hood, one of the world's largest military bases. With the Persian Gulf War raging in 1991, soldiers that lived in Killeen were being sent off to fight, leaving the city almost like a ghost town. In October 1991, the Luby's Massacre occurred in Killeen, bringing the already depleted city further down by tragedy. At the time, this was the worst mass shooting in US history. This high school football team went on a fairy tale type of run during their 1991 season, resulting in winning a state title and bringing big hope back to a small town in need. Using direct interviews, narration and archival footage, this film provides an emotional yet inspirational look at a small town football team and their improbable season.

This research sought to explore media framing theory, first introduced by Erving Goffman, which asserts that the media portray certain items in a way that affects awareness, salience and tone of those items. There has long been debate about media framing especially as it pertains to the framing of violent events. Mass shootings are of particular interest because of the graphic and often senseless nature of the crime. This study looked particularly at the 2011 Tucson, Arizona mass shooting. A content analysis of articles between February 7, 2010, and November 8, 2011, was conducted to explore media framing of gun control after the Tucson, Arizona mass shooting involving U. S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords. Results showed an equal amount of articles with a negative or neutral tone, with the tone shifting to being more frequently neutral after the shooting. The topic shifted toward legislation, adding further support to media framing theory. These findings have impacts for media and public relations.