The Columbine (School Shooting): Essence, Legal Qualifications, Forensic Diagnostics2

The the paper is devoted to the results of a comprehensive legal and linguistic study of the "Columbine" ("school shooting") subculture from the standpoint of criminology, criminal law, forensic science and forensic speech studies. Despite some conventionality of the well-established term "school shooting" borrowed from the English language, the author proceeds from the fact that any form of violent actions in educational institutions committed by a student (group of students) or an outsider in relation to teachers and students using weapons and improvised means should be understood as school shooting.

Empirically, the study is based on the publications of Russian and foreign scientists, the results of semi-automated monitoring of social networks for the promotion of school shooting, as well as materials of criminal cases held in the archives of the investigative departments of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Volgograd, Moscow, Saratov, Tyumen, Chelyabinsk regions, Krasnoyarsk Territory and Republic of Khakassia. The author concludes that the the Columbine subculture is extremist-terrorist in its essence. The paper summarizes the most characteristic ideological attitudes of this subculture, signs of a person's involvement in the targeted community, examines the problems of the legal characterisation of school shooting acts and proposes criminalistic diagnostic complexes to examine extremist speech actions aimed at promoting Columbine. These complexes give a law enforcement officer clear criteria for recognizing information materials as extremist, as well as for holding liable or discharging an individual under Art. 205.2, 280, 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation depending on the presence or absence of mass executions propaganda aimed to intimidate the population in order to influence the authorities or other extremist motives.

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