Gender Lesson 5: masculinity and replicating Mahler's research

If you did not get to finish the reading,  here is an annotated version of the Mahler article.  Please read it now.

After reading the article, answer question 1 below.  Here is the Google Form for answering the questions this lesson.
1.  What is Mahler (and Kimmel)'s overall claim?



After understanding Mahler and Kimmel's claim and evidence,  we will attempt to replicate and update their qualitative research.   Their qualitative analysis of existing data on school shooters examined random school shootings in major print media outlets (Time, Newsweek, US News, USA Today, NY Times, LA Times). Below are two lists of school shootings to get started.

First, choose at least one of the random school shooters after 2001.

• Wikipedia list of school shootings since 2000 
• MotherJones data set of all mass shootings (under the "location" column, see schools) 

Second, after choosing a shooter to research, use major news outlets to gather data about some of the school shooters from 2001-present.
Make a note of the shooter's:

• gender 
• race
• state (red or blue in 2001) 
• community: urban, suburban, rural
• other qualitative info about them such as music, video games, movies, parent status, mental illness, social status/teased, et al...

You may want to use the ILC newspaper search to find info about the shooters, or Google their names.  Here are a few other websites to help you find info:
GunViolence.org
Everytown research
Mass Shooting Tracker
TheTrace compiles articles and data related to shootings at thetrace.org
NRA gun law tracker

Maps for comparing red/blue states:

Results of 2000 election.

The map above shows current laws for carrying firearms.

2.  What shooter(s) did you research?

3.  What was the shooter's race?

4.  What was the shooter's gender?

5.  What community setting did the shooting occur in?

6.  Was the shooting in a red state or blue state?

7.  What other details about the shooter were revealed?

After you have entered the data above for at least one school shooter, hypothesize whether Mahler and Kimmel's research still holds up.

8.  Do you think that since 2001, Mahler and Kimmel's claim is still true about who shoots up schools and why?


9.  Answer any of the following questions about this lesson.

• Does your data correlate with what the rest of the class found?
• What do you think of the findings?
• Is this data interesting/insightful?  Why/why not?
• Can you see the connection between masculinity and violence?
• Do you think that the average American would have trouble understanding the connection?  Why?
• What questions do you still have?

Finally,  try to apply the research to other random shootings besides schools.  Search the websites that you used earlier.  Again, you may want to use the ILC newspaper search to find info about the shooters, or Google their names.  Here are a few other websites to help you find info:
GunViolence.org
Everytown research
Mass Shooting Tracker
TheTrace compiles articles and data related to shootings at thetrace.org
NRA gun law tracker

Find one example of a random shooting that did not occur at a school.

10.  Does Mahler and Kimmel's research apply to NON-SCHOOL random shootings?