title: School shooting

text: Data from the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, covering decades of US school shootings, reveals that 68% of shooters obtained weapons from their home or the home of a relative. Since 1999, out of 145 US school shootings committed by children/adolescents, 80% of the guns used were taken from their homes or relative's home. The availability of firearms has direct effect on the probability of initiating a school shooting. This has led many to question whether parents should be held criminally negligent for their children's gun-related crimes. By 2018, a total of four parents were convicted of failing to lock up the guns that were used to shoot up US schools by their children. Such incidents may also lead to nationwide discussion on gun laws.


title: School shooting

text: The FBI offer a guide for helping to identify potential school shooters, "The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective".


title: School shooting

text: "The parents set few or no limits on the child's conduct, and regularly give in to his demands. The student insists on an inordinate degree of privacy, and parents have little information about his activities, school life, friends, or other relationships. The parents seem intimidated by their child. They may fear he will attack them physically if they confront or frustrate him, or they may be unwilling to face an emotional outburst, or they may be afraid that upsetting the child will spark an emotional crisis. Traditional family roles are reversed: for example, the child acts as if he were the authority figure, while parents act as if they were the children."


title: School shooting

text: "Parents do not supervise, limit or monitor the student's television watching or his use of the Internet. The student may have a TV in his own room or is otherwise free without any limits to spend as much time as he likes watching violent or otherwise inappropriate shows. The student spends a great deal of time watching television rather than in activities with family or friends. Similarly, parents do not monitor computer use or Internet access. The student may know much more about computers than the parents do, and the computer may be considered off limits to the parents while the student is secretive about his computer use, which may involve violent games or Internet research on violence, weapons, or other disturbing subjects."


title: School shooting

text: This last passage includes the archaic notion that violent video games leads to school shootings. The FBI offer three cautions with their guide, 1) No trait or characteristic should be considered in isolation or given more weight than the others, 2) One bad day may not reflect a student's real personality or usual behavior, and 3) Many of these traits and behaviors are seen in adolescents with other, non-violent, issues.


title: School shooting

text: Daniel Schechter, Clinical Psychiatrist, wrote that for a baby to develop into a troubled adolescent who then turns lethally violent, a convergence of multiple interacting factors must occur, that is "every bit as complicated...as it is for a tornado to form on a beautiful spring day in Kansas". Thus, reinforcing the issue that school shooters do not necessarily come from "bad" parents. No more than they could come from attentive, educated, negligent, single, married, abusive, or loving parents.


title: School shooting

text: Dorothy Espelage of the University of Florida observed that 8% of bullying victims become "angry, and aggressively so." She added, "They become very angry, they may act out aggressively online. They may not hit back, but they definitely ruminate."


title: School shooting

text: "Bullying is common in schools and seemed to play a role in the lives of many of the school shooters". A typical bullying interaction consists of three parts, the offender/bully, a victim, and one or more bystanders. This formula of three enables the bully to easily create public humiliation for their victim. Students who are bullied tend to develop behavioral problems, depression, less self-control and poorer social skills, and to do worse in school. Once humiliated, victims never want to be a victim again and try to regain their image by joining groups. Often, they are rejected by their peers and follow through by restoring justice in what they see as an unjust situation. Their plan for restoration many times results in violence as shown by the school shooters. 75% of school shooters had been bullied or left behind evidence of having been victims of bullying .


title: School shooting

text: The Uvalde shooter who killed 21 people was frequently bullied in 4th grade at Robb Elementary school.


title: School shooting

text: Although the vast majority of mentally ill individuals are non-violent, some evidence has suggested that mental illness or mental health symptoms are nearly universal among school shooters. A 2002 report by the US Secret Service and US Department of Education found evidence that a majority of school shooters displayed evidence of mental health symptoms, often undiagnosed or untreated. Criminologists Fox and DeLateur note that mental illness is only part of the issue, however, and mass shooters tend to externalize their problems, blaming others and are unlikely to seek psychiatric help, even if available. According to an article written on gun violence and mental illness, the existence of violence as an outlet for the mentally ill is quite prominent in some instances (Swanson et al., 2015). The article lists from a study that 12% of people with serious mental illness had committed minor or serious violence within the last year, compared to 2% of people without illness committing those same acts. Other scholars have concluded that mass murderers display a common constellation of chronic mental health symptoms, chronic anger or antisocial traits, and a tendency to blame others for problems. However, they note that attempting to "profile" school shooters with such a constellation of traits will likely result in many false positives as many individuals with such a profile do not engage in violent behaviors.


title: School shooting

text: McGinty and colleagues conducted a study to find out if people tended to associate the violence of school shootings with mental illness, at the expense of other factors such as the availability of high-capacity magazines. Nearly 2,000 participants read a news piece on a shooting in which the shooter is diagnosed as having a mental illness and who used high capacity magazines. One group read an article that presented only the facts of the case. A different group read an article about the same shooting, but in it the author advocated for gun restrictions for people with mental illness. Another group read about the shooting in an article that suggested the proposal to ban large-capacity magazines, which acted to advocate that shootings could stem from a societal problem rather than an individual problem. The control group did not read anything. Participants were then all asked to fill in a questionnaire asking about their views on gun control and whether they thought there should be restrictions on high-capacity magazines. 71% of the control group thought that gun restrictions should be applied to people with mental illness, and nearly 80% of participants who read the articles agreed. Despite the fact that the article exposed the readers to both the mental illness of the shooter, and the fact that the shooter used high-capacity magazines, participants advocated more for gun restrictions on people with mental illness rather than bans on high-capacity magazines. This suggests that people believe mental illness is the culprit for school shootings in lieu of the accessibility of guns or other environmental factors. The authors expressed concern that proposals to target gun control laws at people with mental illness do not take into account the complex nature of the relationship between serious mental illness and violence, much of which is due to additional factors such as substance abuse. However, the link is unclear since research has shown that violence in mentally ill people occurs more in interpersonal environments.


title: School shooting

text: It is also mentionable that school size can play a role on the presence of shooter mental health concerns. In a presented study from researchers Baird, Roellke & Zeifman from the Social Science Journal, it is presented that school size and level of attention given to students can precede violent actions, as students who commit mass shootings in larger schools are likely to have transitioned from smaller schools. This adds important nuance to the idea that larger schools are more prone to mass violence by showing that the stress associated with losing the personal support given in a smaller community is a weight on students.


title: School shooting

text: A 2016 opinion piece published by U.S. News & World Report concluded that 22% of mass murders are committed by people who suffer from a serious mental illness, and 78% do not. This study also concluded that many people with mental illnesses do not engage in violence against others and that most violent behavior is due to factors other than mental illness.


title: School shooting

text: In a 2015 "New Republic" essay, "Columbine" author Dave Cullen describes a subset of school shooters (and other mass murderers) known as "injustice collectors", or people who "never forget, never forgive, [and] never let go" before they strike out. The essay describes and expands on the work of retired FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole, who has published a peer-reviewed journal article on the subject. It also quotes Gary Noesner, who helped create and lead the FBI's hostage negotiation unit, and served as Chief Negotiator for ten years.


title: School shooting

text: It has long been debated whether there exists a correlation between school shooting perpetrators and the type of media they consume. A popular profile for school shooters is someone who has been exposed to or enjoys playing violent video games. However, this profile is considered by many researchers to be misguided or erroneous. Ferguson (2009) has argued that a third variable of gender explains the illusory correlation between video game use and the type of people who conduct school shootings. Ferguson explains that the majority of school shooters are young males, who are considerably more aggressive than the rest of the population. A majority of gamers are also young males. Thus, it appears likely that the view that school shooters are often people who play violent video games is more simply explained by the third variable of gender.


title: School shooting

text: The idea of profiling school shooters by the video games they play comes from the belief that playing violent video games increases a person's aggression level, which in turn, can cause people to perpetrate extreme acts of violence, such as a school shooting. There is little to no data supporting this hypothesis (Ferguson, 2009) but it has become a vivid profile used by the media since the Columbine Massacre in 1999.


title: School shooting

text: A summation of past research on video game violence finds that video games have little to no effect on aggression. (Anderson, 2004; Ferguson, 2007 & Spencer, 2009) Again, this supports the idea that although it is a popular opinion to link school shooters to being violent video gamers; this misconception is often attributable to third variables and has not been supported by research on the connection between aggression and gaming.


title: School shooting

text: Shooting massacres in English-speaking countries often occur close together in time. In the summer of 1966, two major stories broke: Richard Speck murdered eight women on a single night in Chicago, and Charles Whitman shot and killed 15 people from a clocktower at the University of Texas in Austin. Neither was seeking fame, but with the new television news climate, they received it anyway. Seeing this, 18-year-old Robert Benjamin Smith bought a gun, and on November 12, 1966, he killed four women and a toddler inside the Rose-Mar College of Beauty in Mesa, Arizona. "I wanted to get known, just wanted to get myself a name," explained Smith. He had hoped to kill nearly ten times as many people, but had arrived at the beauty college campus too early. Upon his arrest, he was without remorse, saying simply, "I wanted people to know who I was." Towers, et al. (2015), found a small, but significant temporary increase in the probability of a second school shooting within 2 weeks after a known school shooting, which was only slightly smaller than the probability of repeats after mass killings involving firearms.


title: School shooting

text: However, much more work is needed with greater scope on investigations, to understand whether this is a real phenomenon or not. Some attribute this to copycat behavior, which can be correlated with the level of media exposure. In these copycat shootings, oftentimes the perpetrators see a past school shooter as an idol, so they want to carry out an even more destructive, murderous shooting in hopes of gaining recognition or respect. Some mass murderers study media reports of previous killers.


title: School shooting

text: Recent premeditative writings were presented according to court documents and showed Joshua O'Connor wrote that he wanted the "death count to be as high as possible so that the shooting would be infamous". O'Connor was arrested before he was able to carry out his plan. Infamy and notoriety, "a desire to be remembered" has been reported as the leading reason for planned shootings by most perpetrators who were taken alive either pre or post shooting.


title: School shooting

text: One of the infamous books, the 1977 novel "Rage" by Stephen King (written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman), was linked to five school shootings and hostage situations that took place between 1988 and 1997; the most recent of these, Heath High School shooting in 1997, was ultimately influential in King's decision to pull the book out of print for good.


title: School shooting

text: School shootings are a "modern phenomenon". There were scattered instances of gunmen or bombers attacking schools in the years before the Frontier Middle School shooting in Moses Lake, Washington in 1996, "but they were lower profile", according to journalist Malcolm Gladwell in 2015. In the United States specifically, the most recent trend has been downward following the spikes of the 1990s, yet at the same time they are trending towards a higher likelihood of being premeditated and executed with a strict plan in mind.


title: School shooting

text: A study by Northeastern University found that "four times the number of children were killed in schools in the early 1990s than today".


title: School shooting

text: On August 27, 2018, NPR reported that a U.S. Education Department report, released earlier in the year, for the 2015–2016 school year said "nearly 240 schools ... reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting". However, when NPR researched this 'claim', it could confirm only 11 actual incidents.


title: School shooting

text: This article is listed in chronological order and provides additional details of incidents in which a firearm was discharged at a school in Canada, including incidents of shootings on a school bus. Mass killings in Canada are covered by a List of massacres in Canada.


title: School shooting

text: School shootings are a "uniquely American crisis", according to "The Washington Post" in 2018. School shootings are considered an "overwhelmingly American" phenomenon due to the availability of firearms in the United States. Kids at U.S. schools have active shooter drills. According to "USA Today", in 2019 "about 95% of public schools now have students and teachers practice huddling in silence, hiding from an imaginary gunman."


title: School shooting

text: Between the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado and the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, there were 31 school shootings in the United States and 14 in the rest of the world combined. Between 2000 and 2010, counting incidents from 37 countries in which someone was injured or killed on school grounds, with two or more victims, and not counting "single homicides, off-campus homicides, killings caused by government actions, militaries, terrorists or militants", the number of such incidents in the United States was one less than in the other 36 countries combined; in the vast majority of the United States incidents, perpetrators used guns.


title: School shooting

text: The United States Federal government tracks school shootings, and as noted above, a U.S. Education Department report, released earlier in the year, for the 2015–2016 school year said "nearly 240 schools ... reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting". NPR independently evaluated this claim and only confirmed 11 of the 240 cited incidents. Addressing school shootings in the United States was made more difficult by the passage by United States Congress of the Dickey Amendment in 1996, which mandated that no Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funds "may be used to advocate or promote gun control", although this does not mean the CDC has stopped researching gun violence. Instead, Congress relies on independent research done by non-partisan organizations for getting data on gun violence in the United States.


title: School shooting

text: Between the Columbine massacre and the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting in Texas, more than 214,000 students experienced gun violence at 216 schools, and at least 141 children, educators and other people were killed and another 284 were injured. 38% of the students who experienced school shootings were African American although African American students were 16.6% of the school population. Schools in at least 36 states and the District of Columbia have experienced a shooting.


title: School shooting

text: Many school shootings in the United States result in one non-fatal injury. The type of firearm most commonly used in school shootings in the United States is the handgun. Three school shootings (the Columbine massacre, the Sandy Hook massacre, and the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Florida), accounted for 43% of the fatalities; the type of firearm used in the most lethal school shootings was the rifle. High-capacity magazines, which allow the perpetrator to fire dozens of rounds without having to reload, were used in the Columbine and Sandy Hook shootings.


title: School shooting

text: 70% of the perpetrators of school shootings were under the age of 18, with the median age of 16. More than 85% of the perpetrators of school shootings obtained their firearms from their own homes or from friends or relatives. Targeted school shootings, those occurring for example in the context of a feud, were about three times as common as those that appeared indiscriminate. Most perpetrators of school shootings exhibited no signs of debilitating mental disorder, such as psychosis or schizophrenia, although most mass killers typically have or exhibit signs of depression. On the other hand, Eric Harris was almost certainly a psychopath as noted by the FBI. Between the Columbine massacre and 2015, "more than 40 people" were "charged with Columbine-style plots;" almost all were white male teenagers and almost all had studied the Columbine attack or cited the Columbine perpetrators Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as inspiration.


title: School shooting

text: At least 68 schools that experienced a school shooting employed a police officer or security guard; in all but a few, the shooting ended before any intercession. Security guards or resource officers were present during four of the five school shooting incidents with the highest number of dead or injured: Columbine, the 2001 Santana High School shooting in California, the 2018 Marshall County High School shooting in Kentucky, and Stoneman Douglas.


title: School shooting

text: There were 11 firearm-related events that occurred at a school or campus in the first 23 days of 2018. As of May 2018, more people, including students and teachers, were killed in 2018 in schools in the United States than were killed in military service for the United States, including both combat and non-combat military service, according to an analysis by "The Washington Post". In terms of the year-to-date number of individual deadly school shootings incidents in the United States, early 2018 was much higher than 2017, with 16 in 2018 and four in 2017, through May; the year-to-day through May number of incidents was the highest since 1999. As of May 2018, thirteen school shootings took place on K–12 school property in 2018 that resulted in firearm-related injuries or deaths, including 32 killed and 65 injured, according to "Education Week". 22 school shootings where someone was hurt or killed occurred in the United States in the first 20 weeks of 2018, according to CNN.


title: School shooting

text: As of May 2022, the ten deadliest school shootings in the United States since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado in which 13 were killed were the:


title: School shooting

text: Other school shootings occurring in the United States include the 1966 University of Texas tower shooting in Austin in which 16 were killed; the 2001 Santana High School shooting in Santee, California, in which two were killed; the 2018 Marshall County High School shooting in Benton, Kentucky, in which two were killed; and the 2021 Oxford High School shooting in Oxford Township, Michigan, in which four were killed.


title: School shooting

text: During 1996, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) together with the US Department of Education and the United States Department of Justice, published a review of deaths related to schools occurring as a result of violence, including explicitly "unintentional firearm-related death", for the academic years 1992–1993 and 1993–1994. A second study (Anderson; Kaufman; Simon 2001), a continuation from the 1996 study, was published December 5, and covered the period 1994–1999.


title: School shooting

text: A United States Secret Service study concluded that schools were placing false hope in physical security, when they should be paying more attention to the pre-attack behaviors of students. Zero-tolerance policies and metal detectors "are unlikely to be helpful," the Secret Service researchers found. The researchers focused on questions concerning the reliance on SWAT teams when most attacks are over before police arrive, profiling of students who show warning signs in the absence of a definitive profile, expulsion of students for minor infractions when expulsion is the spark that push some to return to school with a gun, buying software not based on school shooting studies to evaluate threats although killers rarely make direct threats, and reliance on metal detectors and police officers in schools when shooters often make no effort to conceal their weapons.


title: School shooting

text: In May 2002, the Secret Service published a report that examined 37 U.S. school shootings. They had the following findings:


title: School shooting

text: There have been many representations of American school shootings in films and TV shows produced by both United States and international production companies. While films "Elephant, We Need to Talk about Kevin, Beautiful Boy, and Mass" are solely focused on the either the act or the aftermath. Many of the shows such as "Criminal Minds, , Law and Order, and One Tree Hill" investigate the crime for an episode or use it as a plot point for about half a season.


title: School shooting

text: Californian punk rock group The Offspring has created two songs about school shootings in the United States. In "Come Out and Play" (1994), the focus is on clashing school gangs, lamenting that "[kids] are getting weapons with the greatest of ease", "It goes down the same as a thousand before / No one's getting smarter / No one's learning the score / A never-ending spree of death and violence and hate". In the 2008 song "Hammerhead", a campus gunman thinks he is a soldier in a warzone.


title: School shooting

text: One of the more provocative songs to come out of the Parkland, Florida high school shooting was "thoughts & prayers" from alternative artist/rapper grandson (born Jordan Benjamin). The song is a critique of politicians sending out their "thoughts and prayers" to the victims of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting and other mass shootings, accompanied by what he perceives as a consistent resistance to gun control laws.


title: School shooting

text: "I Don't Like Mondays" by Irish new wave band The Boomtown Rats was directly inspired by the 1979 Cleveland Elementary School shooting


title: School shooting

text: The song "Pumped Up Kicks" by the band Foster the People, was inspired by the Columbine High School massacre.


title: School shooting

text: School shootings and other mass killings have had a major political impact. Governments have discussed gun-control laws, to increase time for background checks. Also, bulletproof school supplies have been created, including backpacks, desks, bullet-resistant door panels, and classroom whiteboards (or bulletin boards) which reinforce walls or slide across doors to deflect bullets. The National Rifle Association of America has proposed allowing teachers to carry weapons on school grounds as a means of protecting themselves and others as a possible solution. In 2018, 14 states had at least one school district in which teachers were armed, with another 16 states permitting districts to arm teachers subject to local policy. Most states also require the gun carriers to receive advance permission from the districts' superintendents or trustees. "In New York State, written permission from the school is required in order to carry a firearm on school grounds."


title: School shooting

text: Due to the political impact, this has spurred some to press for more stringent gun control laws. In the United States, the National Rifle Association is opposed to such laws, and some groups have called for fewer gun control laws, citing cases of armed students ending shootings and halting further loss of life, and claiming that the prohibitions against carrying a gun in schools do not deter the gunmen. One such example is the Mercaz HaRav Massacre, where the attacker was stopped by a student, Yitzhak Dadon, who shot him with his personal firearm which he lawfully carried concealed. At a Virginia law school, there is a disputed claim that three students retrieved pistols from their cars and stopped the attacker without firing a shot. Also, at a Mississippi high school, the vice principal retrieved a firearm from his vehicle and then eventually stopped the attacker as he was driving away from the school. In other cases, such as shootings at Columbine and Red Lake High Schools, the presence of an armed police officer did little to nothing to prevent the killings.


title: School shooting

text: The Gun-Free Schools Act was passed in 1994 in response to gun related violence in schools, so many school systems started adopting the Zero-Tolerance Law. The Gun-Free Schools Act required people to be expelled from the school for a year. By 1997, the Zero-Tolerance for any type of weapon was implemented by more than 90 percent of U.S. public schools.


title: School shooting

text: Analysis of the Columbine school shooting and other incidents where first responders waited for backup has resulted in changed recommendations regarding what bystanders and first responders should do. An analysis of 84 mass shooting cases in the US from 2000 to 2010 found that the average response time by police was 3 minutes. In most instances that exceeds the time the shooter is engaged in killing. While immediate action may be extremely dangerous, it may save lives which would be lost if people involved in the situation remain passive, or a police response is delayed until overwhelming force can be deployed. It is recommended by the US Department of Homeland Security that civilians involved in the incident take active steps to evacuate, hide, or counter the shooter and that individual law enforcement officers present or first arriving at the scene attempt immediately to engage the shooter. In many instances, immediate action by civilians or law enforcement has saved lives.


title: School shooting

text: The Massengill Report was an after-action report created in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting, which brought national attention to the need for colleges and universities to take concerning behavior and threats seriously. It has led to the creation of hundreds of behavioral intervention teams which help access and co-ordinate institutional responses to behavioral concerns on college and university campuses.


title: School shooting

text: There has been considerable policy discussion about how to help prevent school and other types of mass shootings. One suggestion that has come up is the idea to allow firearms in the classroom. "Since the issue of arming teachers is a relatively new topic, it has received little empirical study. Therefore, most of the literature does not come from peer-reviewed sources but rather published news reports. In addition, most of these reports are not objective and clearly appear to support a specific side of the debate." So far, data has been inconclusive as to whether or not arming teachers would have any sort of benefit for schools. For years, some areas in the US have allowed "armed classrooms" to deter (or truncate) future attacks by changing helpless victims into armed defenders. Advocates of arming teachers claim that it will reduce fatalities in school shootings, but many others disagree.


title: School shooting

text: Many teachers have had their concerns with the idea of armed classrooms. "One teacher stated that although she is pro-gun, she does not feel as though she could maintain gun safety on school grounds (Reuters, 2012). Teachers expressed the fear that bigger students could overpower them, take the weapon, and then use it against the teacher or other students." Some members of the armed forces have also had concerns with armed classrooms. Police forces in Texas brought up the potential for teachers to leave a gun where a student could retrieve and use it. "They are further concerned that if every teacher had a gun, there would be an unnecessarily large number of guns in schools (even including elementary schools). This large number of guns could lead to accidental shootings, especially those involving younger children who do not understand what guns do."


title: School shooting

text: In a 2013 research report published by the Center for Homicide Research, they find that many also reject the idea of having armed classrooms due to what is termed the "weapons effect", which is the phenomenon in which simply being in the presence of a weapon can increase feelings of aggression. "In Berkowitz & LaPage's (1967) examination of this effect, students who were in the presence of a gun reported higher levels of aggressive feelings towards other students and gave more violent evaluations of other students' performance on a simple task in the form of electric shocks. This finding points to possible negative outcomes for students exposed to guns in the classroom (Simons & Turner, 1974; Turner & Simons, 1976)."


title: School shooting

text: In 2008, Harrold Independent School District in Texas became the first public school district in the U.S. to allow teachers with state-issued firearm-carry permits to carry their arms in the classroom; special additional training and ricochet-resistant ammunition were required for participating teachers. Students at the University of Utah have been allowed to carry concealed pistols (so long as they possess the appropriate state license) since a State Supreme Court decision in 2006. In addition to Utah, Wisconsin and Mississippi each have legislation that allow students, faculty and employees with the proper permit, to carry concealed weapons on their public university's campuses. Colorado and Oregon state courts have ruled in favor of Campus Carry laws by denying their universities' proposals to ban guns on campus, ruling that the UC Board of Regents and the Oregon University System did not have the authority to ban weapons on campus. A selective ban was then re-instated, wherein Oregon state universities enacted a ban on guns in school building and sporting events or by anyone contracted with the university in question.


title: School shooting

text: A commentary in the conservative "National Review Online" argues that the armed school approach for preventing school attacks, while new in the US, has been used successfully for many years in Israel and Thailand. Teachers and school officials in Israel are allowed and encouraged to carry firearms if they have former military experience in the IDF, which almost all do. Statistics on what percentage of teachers are actually armed are unavailable and in Israel, for example, the intent is to counter politically motivated terrorist attacks on high value, soft targets, not personal defense against, or protection from, unbalanced individual students.


title: School shooting

text: The National Rifle Association has explicitly called for placing armed guards in all American schools. However, Steven Strauss, a faculty member at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, offered a preliminary calculation that placing armed guards in every American school might cost as much as $15 billion/year, and perhaps only save 10 lives per year (at a cost of $1.5 billion/life saved).


title: School shooting

text: Because of the increase in guns in the United States, many schools and local communities are taking it into their own hands by providing young students with early gun safety courses to make them aware of the dangers these objects actually are, also to prevent school shootings. According to Katherine A. Fowler, PhD, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An average 1,297 children die (two children per 100,000) and 5,790 are treated for injuries caused by guns each year, the study reported. Six percent of these deaths were accidental, 38% were suicides, 53% were homicides and the remaining 3% were from legal intervention or undetermined reasons. Guns injured children at a rate of 8 per 100,000 children, but this rate is likely considerably higher because of unreported injuries.


title: School shooting

text: A preventive measure proposed for stopping school shooting has been focused on securing firearms in the home. A shooting in Sparks, Nevada on October 21, 2013, left a teacher and the shooter, a twelve-year-old student, dead with two seriously injured. The handgun used in the shooting had been taken from the shooter's home. Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Red Lake High School in Red Lake, Minnesota in 2005, and Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky in 1997 also involved legal guns taken from the home.


title: School shooting

text: A 2000 study of firearm storage in the United States found that "from the homes with children and firearms, 55% reported to have one or more firearms in an unlocked place". 43% reported keeping guns without a trigger lock in an unlocked place. In 2005 a study was done on adult firearm storage practices in the United States found that over 1.69 million youth under age 18 are living in homes with loaded and unlocked firearms. Also, 73% of children under age 10 living in homes with guns reported knowing the location of their parents' firearms.


title: School shooting

text: Most states have Child Access Prevention Laws—laws designed to prevent children from accessing firearms. Each state varies in the degree of the severity of these laws. The toughest laws enforce criminal liability when a minor achieves access to a carelessly stored firearm. The weakest forbid people from directly providing a firearm to a minor. There is also a wide range of laws that fall in between the two extremes. One example is a law that enforces criminal liability for carelessly stored firearms, but only where the minor uses the firearm and causes death or serious injury. An example of a weaker law is a law that enforces liability only in the event of reckless, knowing or deliberate behavior by the adult.


title: School shooting

text: In 2019, the United States Secret Service released an analysis of targeted school violence, concluding the best practice for prevention was forming a "multidisciplinary threat assessment team, in conjunction with the appropriate policies, tools, and training". An earlier report published in 2018 concluded there was no single profile of a student attacker, and emphasized the importance of the threat assessment process instead. The threat assessment process described includes gathering information about student behaviors, negative or stressful events, and what resources are available for the student to overcome those challenges.


title: School shooting

text: In 2015 Southwestern High School in Shelbyville, Indiana, was portrayed as possibly the "safest school in America". The school has been used as a "Safe School Flagship" of possible countermeasures to an active shooter.


title: School shooting

text: Other countermeasures include tools like doorjambs, rapidly-deployable tourniquets, and ballistic protection systems like the CoverMe-Seat.


title: School shooting

text: In 2019, Fruitport High School in Michigan became the first school in the U.S. to be rebuilt with concrete barriers in hallways for students to hide from bullets. The BBC also reports the “hallways are curved to prevent a shooter from having a clear line of sight during any potential attack.” Classrooms have been redesigned so students can hide more easily. Costing $48 million to rebuild, Bob Szymoniak, Fruitport High School's superintendent, believes these alterations will become part of the structure of all U.S. schools. "These are design elements that are naturally part of buildings going into the future."


title: School shooting

text: The STOP School Violence Act is pending legislation to provide funding grants to schools to be used for implementing security measures.


title: School shooting

text: After experiencing the threat of a school shooting, as well as the changes in the school via countermeasures, students continue to experience the trauma. In several peer‐reviewed articles on mental health consequences of school shootings by Lowe & Galea, it is shown that mass shootings can bring on the onset of PTSD and continued depression. In the cities that are home to these kind of events, the town can experience continued paranoia and an exaggerated sense of fear. Lowe & Galea continue to say that continued research is necessary to pinpoint the exact mental symptoms that occur in the victims of school shootings.


title: North American X-15

text: The North American X-15 is a hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft. It was operated by the United States Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as part of the X-plane series of experimental aircraft. The X-15 set speed and altitude records in the 1960s, reaching the edge of outer space and returning with valuable data used in aircraft and spacecraft design. The X-15's highest speed, , was achieved on 3October 1967, when William J. Knight flew at Mach6.7 at an altitude of , or 19.34miles. This set the official world record for the highest speed ever recorded by a crewed, powered aircraft, which remains unbroken.


title: North American X-15

text: During the X-15 program, 12pilots flew a combined 199flights. Of these, 8pilots flew a combined 13flights which met the Air Force spaceflight criterion by exceeding the altitude of , thus qualifying these pilots as being astronauts; of those 13flights, two (flown by the same civilian pilot) met the FAI definition () of outer space. The 5Air Force pilots qualified for military astronaut wings immediately, while the 3civilian pilots were eventually awarded NASA astronaut wings in 2005, 35years after the last X-15 flight.


title: North American X-15

text: The X-15 was based on a concept study from Walter Dornberger for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) for a hypersonic research aircraft. The requests for proposal (RFPs) were published on 30December 1954 for the airframe and on 4February 1955 for the rocket engine. The X-15 was built by two manufacturers: North American Aviation was contracted for the airframe in November 1955, and Reaction Motors was contracted for building the engines in 1956.


title: North American X-15

text: Like many X-series aircraft, the X-15 was designed to be carried aloft and drop launched from under the wing of a B-52 mother ship. Air Force NB-52A, "The High and Mighty One" (serial 52-0003), and NB-52B, "The Challenger" (serial 52-0008, a.k.a. "Balls 8") served as carrier planes for all X-15 flights. Release of the X-15 from NB-52A took place at an altitude of about and a speed of about . The X-15 fuselage was long and cylindrical, with rear fairings that flattened its appearance, and thick, dorsal and ventral wedge-fin stabilizers. Parts of the fuselage (the outer skin) were heat-resistant nickel alloy (Inconel-X750). The retractable landing gear comprised a nose-wheel carriage and two rear skids. The skids did not extend beyond the ventral fin, which required the pilot to jettison the lower fin just before landing. The lower fin was recovered by parachute.


title: North American X-15

text: The X-15 was the product of developmental research, and changes were made to various systems over the course of the program and between the different models. The X-15 was operated under several different scenarios, including attachment to a launch aircraft, drop, main engine start and acceleration, ballistic flight into thin air/space, re-entry into thicker air, unpowered glide to landing, and direct landing without a main-engine start. The main rocket engine operated only for a relatively short part of the flight but boosted the X-15 to its high speeds and altitudes. Without main engine thrust, the X-15's instruments and control surfaces remained functional, but the aircraft could not maintain altitude.


title: North American X-15

text: As the X-15 also had to be controlled in an environment where there was too little air for aerodynamic flight control surfaces, it had a reaction control system (RCS) that used rocket thrusters. There were two different X-15 pilot control setups: one used three joysticks, the other, one joystick.


title: North American X-15

text: The X-15 type with multiple control sticks for the pilot placed a traditional center stick between a left 3-axis joystick that sent commands to the Reaction Control System, and a third joystick on the right used during high-G maneuvers to augment the center stick. In addition to pilot input, the X-15 "Stability Augmentation System" (SAS) sent inputs to the aerodynamic controls to help the pilot maintain attitude control. The Reaction Control System (RCS) could be operated in two modes – manual and automatic. The automatic mode used a feature called "Reaction Augmentation System" (RAS) that helped stabilize the vehicle at high altitude. The RAS was typically used for approximately three minutes of an X-15 flight before automatic power off.


title: North American X-15

text: The alternative control setup used the MH-96 flight control system, which allowed one joystick in place of three and simplified pilot input. The MH-96 could automatically blend aerodynamic and rocket controls, depending on how effective each system was at controlling the aircraft.


title: North American X-15

text: Among the many controls were the rocket engine throttle and a control for jettisoning the ventral tail fin. Other features of the cockpit included heated windows to prevent icing and a forward headrest for periods of high deceleration.


title: North American X-15

text: The X-15 had an ejection seat designed to operate at speeds up to and/or altitude, although it was never used during the program. In the event of ejection, the seat was designed to deploy fins, which were used until it reached a safer speed/altitude at which to deploy its main parachute. Pilots wore pressure suits, which could be pressurized with nitrogen gas. Above altitude, the cockpit was pressurized to with nitrogen gas, while oxygen for breathing was fed separately to the pilot.


title: North American X-15

text: The initial 24 powered flights used two Reaction Motors XLR11 liquid-propellant rocket engines, enhanced to provide a total of of thrust as compared to the that a single XLR11 provided in 1947 to make the Bell X-1 the first aircraft to fly faster than the speed of sound. The XLR11 used ethyl alcohol and liquid oxygen.


title: North American X-15

text: By November 1960, Reaction Motors delivered the XLR99 rocket engine, generating of thrust. The remaining 175flights of the X-15 used XLR99 engines, in a single engine configuration. The XLR99 used anhydrous ammonia and liquid oxygen as propellant, and hydrogen peroxide to drive the high-speed turbopump that delivered propellants to the engine. It could burn of propellant in 80seconds; Jules Bergman titled his book on the program "Ninety Seconds to Space" to describe the total powered flight time of the aircraft.


title: North American X-15

text: The X-15 reaction control system (RCS), for maneuvering in the low-pressure/density environment, used high-test peroxide (HTP), which decomposes into water and oxygen in the presence of a catalyst and could provide a specific impulse of . The HTP also fueled a turbopump for the main engines and auxiliary power units (APUs). Additional tanks for helium and liquid nitrogen performed other functions; the fuselage interior was purged with helium gas, and liquid nitrogen was used as coolant for various systems.


title: North American X-15

text: The X-15 had a thick wedge tail to enable it to fly in a steady manner at hypersonic speeds. This produced a significant amount of base drag at lower speeds; the blunt end at the rear of the X-15 could produce as much drag as an entire F-104 Starfighter.


title: North American X-15

text: Before 1958, United States Air Force (USAF) and NACA officials discussed an orbital X-15 spaceplane, the X-15B that would launch into outer space from atop an SM-64 Navaho missile. This was canceled when the NACA became NASA and adopted Project Mercury instead.


title: North American X-15

text: By 1959, the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar space-glider program was to become the USAF's preferred means for launching military crewed spacecraft into orbit. This program was canceled in the early 1960s before an operational vehicle could be built. Various configurations of the Navaho were considered, and another proposal involved a Titan I stage.


title: North American X-15

text: The first X-15 flight was an unpowered glide flight by Scott Crossfield, on 8June 1959. Crossfield also piloted the first powered flight on 17September 1959, and his first flight with the XLR-99 rocket engine on 15November 1960. Twelve test pilots flew the X-15. Among these were Neil Armstrong, later a NASA astronaut and the first man to set foot on the Moon, and Joe Engle, later a commander of NASA Space Shuttle missions.


title: North American X-15

text: In a 1962 proposal, NASA considered using the B-52/X-15 as a launch platform for a Blue Scout rocket to place satellites weighing up to into orbit.


title: North American X-15

text: In July and August 1963, pilot Joe Walker exceeded in altitude, joining NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts as the first human beings to cross that line on their way to outer space. The USAF awarded astronaut wings to anyone achieving an altitude of , while the FAI set the limit of space at .


title: North American X-15

text: On 15November 1967, U.S. Air Force test pilot Major Michael J. Adams was killed during X-15 Flight 191 when X-15-3, , entered a hypersonic spin while descending, then oscillated violently as aerodynamic forces increased after re-entry. As his aircraft's flight control system operated the control surfaces to their limits, acceleration built to vertical and lateral. The airframe broke apart at altitude, scattering the X-15's wreckage across . On 8May 2004, a monument was erected at the cockpit's locale, near Johannesburg, California. Major Adams was posthumously awarded Air Force astronaut wings for his final flight in X-15-3, which had reached an altitude of . In 1991, his name was added to the Astronaut Memorial.


title: North American X-15

text: The second plane, X-15-2, was rebuilt after a landing accident on 9November 1962 which damaged the craft and injured its pilot, John McKay. The new plane renamed X-15A-2, had a new 28 -in. fuselage extension to carry liquid hydrogen. It was lengthened by , had a pair of auxiliary fuel tanks attached beneath its fuselage and wings, and a complete heat-resistant ablative coating was added. It took flight for the first time on 25June 1964. It reached its maximum speed of in October 1967 with pilot William "Pete" Knight of the U.S. Air Force in control.


title: North American X-15

text: Five principal aircraft were used during the X-15 program: three X-15 planes and two modified "nonstandard" NB-52 bombers:


title: North American X-15

text: Additionally, F-100, F-104 and F5D chase aircraft and C-130 and C-47 transports supported the program.


title: North American X-15

text: The 200th flight over Nevada was first scheduled for 21November 1968, to be flown by William "Pete" Knight. Numerous technical problems and outbreaks of bad weather delayed this proposed flight six times, and it was permanently canceled on 20December 1968. This X-15 (56-6670) was detached from the B-52 and then put into indefinite storage. The aircraft was later donated to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum for display.


title: North American X-15

text: During 13 of the 199 total X-15 flights, eight pilots flew above , thereby qualifying as astronauts according to the US Armed Forces definition of the space border. All five Air Force pilots flew above 50miles and were awarded military astronaut wings contemporaneously with their achievements, including Adams, who received the distinction posthumously following the flight191 disaster. However the other three were NASA employees and did not receive a comparable decoration at the time. In 2004, the Federal Aviation Administration conferred its first-ever commercial astronaut wings on Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie, pilots of the commercial SpaceShipOne, another spaceplane with a flight profile comparable to the X-15's. Following this in 2005, NASA retroactively awarded its civilian astronaut wings to Dana (then living), and to McKay and Walker (posthumously). Forrest S. Petersen, the only Navy pilot in the X-15 program, never took the aircraft above the requisite altitude and thus never earned astronaut wings.


title: North American X-15

text: Of the thirteen flights, only flights 90 and 91, piloted by exceeded the Kármán line, the internationally recognized altitude used by the FAI to denote the edge of space.


title: François Mitterrand

text: François Marie Adrien Maurice Mitterrand (26 October 19168 January 1996) was President of France, serving under that position from 1981 to 1995, the longest time in office in the history of France. As First Secretary of the Socialist Party, he was the first left-wing politician to assume the presidency under the Fifth Republic.


title: François Mitterrand

text: Reflecting family influences, Mitterrand started political life on the Catholic nationalist right. He served under the Vichy Regime during its earlier years. Subsequently he joined the Resistance, moved to the left, and held ministerial office several times under the Fourth Republic. Mitterrand opposed Charles de Gaulle's establishment of the Fifth Republic. Although at times a politically isolated figure, he outmanoeuvered rivals to become the left's standard bearer in the 1965 and 1974 presidential elections, before being elected president in the 1981 presidential election. He was re-elected in 1988 and remained in office until 1995.


title: François Mitterrand

text: Mitterrand invited the Communist Party into his first government, which was a controversial decision at the time. In the event, the Communists were boxed in as junior partners and, rather than taking advantage, saw their support erode. They left the cabinet in 1984. Early in his first term, he followed a radical left-wing economic agenda, including nationalisation of key firms and the introduction of the 39-hour work week, but after two years, with the economy in crisis, he somewhat reversed course. He instead pushed a socially liberal agenda with reforms such as the abolition of the death penalty, and the end of a government monopoly in radio and television broadcasting. His foreign and defense policies built on those of his Gaullist predecessors, except as regards their reluctance to support European integration, which he reversed. His partnership with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl advanced European integration via the Maastricht Treaty, and he reluctantly accepted German reunification. During his time in office, he was a strong promoter of culture and implemented a range of costly "Grands Projets". He was the first French President to appoint a female Prime Minister, Édith Cresson, in 1991. Mitterrand was twice forced by the loss of a parliamentary majority into "cohabitation governments" with conservative cabinets led, respectively, by Jacques Chirac (1986–1988), and Édouard Balladur (1993–1995). Less than eight months after leaving office, he died from the prostate cancer he had successfully concealed for most of his presidency.


title: François Mitterrand

text: Beyond making the French Left electable, François Mitterrand presided over the rise of the Socialist Party to dominance of the left, and the decline of the once-mighty Communist Party. (As a share of the popular vote in the first presidential round, the Communists shrank from a peak of 21.27% in 1969 to 8.66% in 1995, at the end of Mitterrand's second term.)


title: François Mitterrand

text: François Marie Adrien Maurice Mitterrand was born on 26 October 1916 in Jarnac, Charente, the son of Joseph Mitterrand and Yvonne Lorrain. His family was devoutly Catholic and conservative. His father worked as an engineer for the Compagnie Paris Orléans railway. He had three brothers, Robert, Jacques, and Philippe, and four sisters, Antoinette, Marie-Josèphe, Colette, and Geneviève.


title: François Mitterrand

text: Mitterrand's wife, Danielle Mitterrand ("née" Gouze, 1924–2011), came from a socialist background and worked for various left-wing causes. They married on 24 October 1944 and had three sons: Pascal (10 June – 17 September 1945), Jean-Christophe, born in 1946, and Gilbert, born on 4 February 1949. He also had two children as results of extra-marital affairs: an acknowledged daughter, Mazarine (born 1974), with his mistress Anne Pingeot, and an unacknowledged son, Hravn Forsne (born 1988), with Swedish journalist .


title: François Mitterrand

text: François Mitterrand's nephew Frédéric Mitterrand is a journalist, Minister of Culture and Communications under Nicolas Sarkozy (and a supporter of Jacques Chirac, former French President), and his wife's brother-in-law Roger Hanin was a well-known French actor.


title: François Mitterrand

text: François Mitterrand studied from 1925 to 1934 in the Collège Saint-Paul in Angoulême, where he became a member of the Jeunesse Etudiante Chrétienne (JEC), the student organisation of "Action catholique". Arriving in Paris in autumn 1934, he then went to the École Libre des Sciences Politiques until 1937, where he obtained his diploma in July of that year. François Mitterrand took membership for about a year in the "Volontaires nationaux" (National Volunteers), an organisation related to François de la Rocque's far-right league, the "Croix de Feu"; the league had just participated in the 6 February 1934 riots which led to the fall of the second "Cartel des Gauches" (Left-Wing Coalition).


title: François Mitterrand

text: Contrary to some reports, François Mitterrand never became a formal member of the "French Social Party" (PSF) which was the successor to the Croix de Feu and may be considered the first French right-wing mass party. However, he did write news articles in the "L'Echo de Paris" newspaper, which was close to the PSF. He participated in the demonstrations against the ""invasion métèque "" in February 1935 and then in those against law teacher Gaston Jèze, who had been nominated as juridical counsellor of Ethiopia's Negus, in January 1936.


title: François Mitterrand

text: When François Mitterrand's involvement in these conservative nationalist movements was revealed in the 1990s, he attributed his actions to the milieu of his youth. He furthermore had some personal and family relations with members of the Cagoule, a far-right terrorist group in the 1930s.


title: François Mitterrand

text: François Mitterrand then served his conscription from 1937 to 1939 in the 23rd régiment d'infanterie coloniale. In 1938, he became the best friend of Georges Dayan, a Jewish socialist, whom he saved from anti-Semitic aggressions by the national-royalist movement "Action française". His friendship with Dayan caused Mitterrand to begin to question some of his nationalist ideas. Finishing his law studies, he was sent in September 1939 to the Maginot line near Montmédy, with the rank of Sergeant-chief (infantry sergeant). He became engaged to Marie-Louise Terrasse (future actress and television presenter Catherine Langeais) in May 1940, when she was 16, but she broke it off in January 1942. Following an observation of Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War II, François Mitterrand became an agnostic.


title: François Mitterrand

text: François Mitterrand's actions during World War II were the cause of much controversy in France during the 1980s and 1990s.


title: François Mitterrand

text: François Mitterrand was at the end of his national service when the war broke out. He fought as an infantry sergeant and was injured and captured by the Germans on 14 June 1940. He was held prisoner at Stalag IXA near Ziegenhain (today part of Schwalmstadt, a town near Kassel in Hesse). François Mitterrand became involved in the social organisation for the POWs in the camp. He claims this, and the influence of the people he met there, began to change his political ideas, moving him towards the left. He had two failed escape attempts in March and then November 1941 before he finally escaped on 16 December 1941, returning to France on foot. In December 1941 he arrived home in the unoccupied zone controlled by the French. With help from a friend of his mother he got a job as a mid-level functionary of the Vichy government, looking after the interests of POWs. This was very unusual for an escaped prisoner, and he later claimed to have served as a spy for the Free French Forces.


title: François Mitterrand

text: François Mitterrand worked from January to April 1942 for the (Legion of French combatants and volunteers of the national revolution) as a civil servant on a temporary contract. François Mitterrand worked under Jean-Paul Favre de Thierrens who was a spy for the British secret service. He then moved to the "Commissariat au reclassement des prisonniers de guerre" (Service for the orientation of POWS). During this period, François Mitterrand was aware of Thierrens's activities and may have helped in his disinformation campaign. At the same time, he published an article detailing his time as a POW in the magazine "France, revue de l'État nouveau" (the magazine was published as propaganda by the Vichy Regime).


title: François Mitterrand

text: François Mitterrand has been called a "" (an expression used by the historian Jean-Pierre Azéma to describe people who supported Marshal Philippe Pétain, the head of the Vichy Regime, before 1943, but subsequently rejected the Vichy Regime).


title: François Mitterrand

text: From spring 1942, he met other escaped POWs , Max Varenne, and Dr. , under whose influence he became involved with the resistance. In April, François Mitterrand and Fric caused a major disturbance in a public meeting held by the collaborator Georges Claude. From mid-1942, he sent false papers to POWs in Germany and on 12 June and 15 August 1942, he joined meetings at the Château de Montmaur which formed the base of his future network for the resistance. From September, he made contact with Free French Forces, but clashed with , General Charles de Gaulle's nephew (and de Gaulle's candidate to head-up all POW-related resistance organizations). On 15 October 1942, François Mitterrand and Marcel Barrois (a member of the resistance deported in 1944) met Marshal Philippe Pétain along with other members of the "Comité d'entraide aux prisonniers rapatriés de l'Allier" (Help group for repatriated POWs in the department of Allier). By the end of 1942, François Mitterrand met Pierre Guillain de Bénouville, an old friend from his days with La Cagoule. Bénouville was a member of the resistance groups "Combat" and "Noyautage des administrations publiques" (NAP).


title: François Mitterrand

text: In late 1942, the non-occupied zone was invaded by the Germans. François Mitterrand left the Commissariat in January 1943, when his boss , another , was replaced by the collaborator André Masson, but he remained in charge of the "centres d'entraides". In the spring of 1943, along with Gabriel Jeantet, a member of Marshal Pétain's cabinet, and Simon Arbellot (both former members of La Cagoule), François Mitterrand received the Order of the Francisque (the honorific distinction of the Vichy Regime).


title: François Mitterrand

text: Debate rages in France as to the significance of this. When François Mitterrand's Vichy past was exposed in the 1950s, he at first denied having received the Francisque (some sources say he was designated for the award, but never received the medal because he went into hiding before the ceremony took place). Socialist Resistance leader Jean Pierre-Bloch says that François Mitterrand was ordered to accept the medal as cover for his work in the resistance. Pierre Moscovici and Jacques Attali remain skeptical of François Mitterrand's beliefs at this time, accusing him of having at best a "foot in each camp" until he was sure who the winner would be. They noted François Mitterrand's friendship with René Bousquet and the wreaths he was said to have placed on Pétain's tomb in later years (see below) as examples of his ambivalent attitude.


title: François Mitterrand

text: In 1994, while President of France, François Mitterrand maintained that the roundup of Jews who were then deported to death camps during the war was solely the work of "Vichy France", an entity distinct from France: "The Republic had nothing to do with this. I do not believe France is responsible." This position was rejected by President Jacques Chirac in 1995 who stated that it was time that France faced up to its past and he acknowledged the role of the state – "4,500 policemen and gendarmes, French, under the authority of their leaders [who] obeyed the demands of the Nazis" – in the Holocaust. He added that the "criminal folly of the occupiers was seconded by the French, by the French State".


title: François Mitterrand

text: President Emmanuel Macron was even more specific as to the State's responsibility for the 1942 Vel' d'Hiv Roundup of 13,000 Jews for deportation to concentration camps. It was indeed "France that organized the roundup, the deportation, and thus, for almost all, death." It was done by "French police collaborating with the Nazis", he said on 16 July 2017. "It is convenient to see the Vichy regime as born of nothingness, returned to nothingness. Yes, it’s convenient, but it is false. We cannot build pride upon a lie.


title: François Mitterrand

text: François Mitterrand built up a resistance network, composed mainly of former POWs. The POWs National Rally ("", RNPG) was affiliated with General Henri Giraud, a former POW who had escaped from a German prison and made his way across Germany back to the Allied forces. In 1943 Giraud was contesting with de Gaulle for the leadership of the French Resistance.


title: François Mitterrand

text: From the beginning of 1943, François Mitterrand had contacts with a powerful resistance group called the "Organisation de résistance de l'armée" (ORA), organised by former French military personnel. From this time on, François Mitterrand could act as a member of the ORA, moreover he set up his own RNPG network with Pinot in February and he obtained funding for his own network. In March, François Mitterrand met Henri Frenay, who encouraged the resistance in France to support François Mitterrand over Michel Cailliau. 28 May 1943, when François Mitterrand met with Gaullist , is generally taken as the date François Mitterrand split with Vichy. According to Dechartre, the meeting on 28 May 1943 was set up because "there were three movements [of "Résistance":] […] the Gaullist, the communist, and one from support centers […] hence I was assigned the mission to prepare what would be called afterwards the merger [of the three movements]."


title: François Mitterrand

text: During 1943, the RNPG gradually changed from providing false papers to information-gathering for France libre. Pierre de Bénouville said, "François Mitterrand created a true spy network in the POW camps which gave us information, often decisive, about what was going on behind the German borders." On 10 July François Mitterrand and Piatzook (a militant communist) interrupted a public meeting in the Salle Wagram in Paris. The meeting was about allowing French POWs to go home if they were replaced by young French men forced to go and work in Germany (in French this was called ""la relève""). When André Masson began to talk about ""la trahison des gaullistes"" (the Gaullist treason), François Mitterrand stood up in the audience and shouted him down, saying Masson had no right to talk on behalf of POWs and calling "la relève" a ""con"" (i.e., something stupid). Mitterrand avoided arrest as Piatzook covered his escape.


title: François Mitterrand

text: In November 1943 the "Sicherheitsdienst" (SD) raided a flat in Vichy, where they hoped to arrest François Morland, a member of the resistance. "Morland" was François Mitterrand's cover name. He also used Purgon, Monnier, Laroche, Captain François, Arnaud et Albre as cover names. The man they arrested was Pol Pilven, a member of the resistance who was to survive the war in a concentration camp. François Mitterrand was in Paris at the time.


title: François Mitterrand

text: Warned by his friends, François Mitterrand escaped to London aboard a Lysander plane on 15 November 1943 (piloted by then-Squadron Leader Lewis Hodges). He promoted his movement to the British and American Authorities, but he was sent to Algiers, where he met de Gaulle, by then the uncontested leader of the Free French. The two men clashed, de Gaulle refused to jeopardize the Resistance by including a movement that gathered information from POWs. Later Mitterrand refused to merge his group with other POW movements if de Gaulle's nephew Cailliau was to be the leader. Under the influence of Henri Frenay, de Gaulle finally agreed to merge his nephew's network and the RNPG with Mitterrand in charge. Thus the RNPG was listed in the French Force organization from spring 1944.


title: François Mitterrand

text: François Mitterrand returned to France by boat via England. In Paris, the three Resistance groups made up of POWs (Communists, Gaullists, RNPG) finally merged as the POWs and Deportees National Movement ("", MNPGD) and Mitterrand took the lead. In his memoirs, he says that he had started this organisation while he was still officially working for the Vichy Regime. From 27 November 1943 Mitterrand worked for the Bureau central de renseignements et d'action. In December 1943 François Mitterrand ordered the execution of Henri Marlin (who was about to order attacks on the "Maquis") by Jacques Paris and Jean Munier, who later hid out with François Mitterrand's father.


title: François Mitterrand

text: After a second visit to London in February 1944, François Mitterrand took part in the liberation of Paris in August; he took over the headquarters of Commissariat général aux prisonniers de guerre (general office for POW, the ministry he was working for), immediately he took up the vacant post of secretary general of POWs. When de Gaulle entered Paris following the Liberation, he was introduced to various men who were to be part of the provisional government. Among them was François Mitterrand, when they came face to face, de Gaulle is said to have muttered: "You again!" He dismissed François Mitterrand 2 weeks later.


title: François Mitterrand

text: In October 1944 François Mitterrand and Jacques Foccart developed a plan to liberate the POW and concentration camps. This was called operation "Vicarage". On the orders of de Gaulle, in April 1945 François Mitterrand accompanied General Lewis as the French representative at the liberation of the camps at Kaufering and Dachau. By chance Mitterrand discovered his friend and member of his network, Robert Antelme, suffering from typhus. Antelme was restricted to the camp to prevent the spread of disease, but François Mitterrand arranged for his "escape" and sent him back to France for treatment.


title: François Mitterrand

text: After the war François Mitterrand quickly moved back into politics. At the June 1946 legislative election, he led the list of the Rally of the Republican Lefts ("Rassemblement des gauches républicaines", RGR) in the Western suburb of Paris, but he was not elected. The RGR was an electoral entity composed of the Radical Party, the centrist Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance ("Union démocratique et socialiste de la Résistance", UDSR) and several conservative groupings. It opposed the policy of the "Three-parties alliance" (Communists, Socialists and Christian Democrats).


title: François Mitterrand

text: In the November 1946 legislative election, he succeeded in winning a seat as deputy from the Nièvre "département". To be elected, he had to win a seat at the expense of the French Communist Party (PCF). As leader of the RGR list, he led a very anti-communist campaign. He became a member of the UDSR party. In January 1947, he joined the cabinet as War Veterans Minister. He held various offices in the Fourth Republic as a Deputy and as a Minister (holding eleven different portfolios in total), including as a mayor of Château-Chinon from 1959 to 1981.


title: François Mitterrand

text: In May 1948 François Mitterrand participated in the Congress of The Hague, together with Konrad Adenauer, Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan, Paul-Henri Spaak, Albert Coppé and Altiero Spinelli. It originated the European Movement.


title: François Mitterrand

text: As Overseas Minister (1950–1951), François Mitterrand opposed the colonial lobby to propose a reform program. He connected with the left when he resigned from the cabinet after the arrest of Morocco's sultan (1953). As leader of the progressive wing of the UDSR, he took the head of the party in 1953, replacing the conservative René Pleven.


title: François Mitterrand

text: In June 1953 François Mitterrand attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Seated next to the elderly Princess Marie Bonaparte, he reported having spent much of the ceremony being psychoanalyzed by her.


title: François Mitterrand

text: As Interior Minister in Pierre Mendès-France's cabinet (1954–1955), François Mitterrand had to direct the response to the Algerian War of Independence. He claimed: "Algeria is France." He was suspected of being the informer of the Communist Party in the cabinet. This rumour was spread by the former Paris police prefect, who had been dismissed by him. The suspicions were dismissed by subsequent investigations.


title: François Mitterrand

text: The UDSR joined the Republican Front, a centre-left coalition, which won the 1956 legislative election. As Justice Minister (1956–1957), François Mitterrand allowed the expansion of martial law in the Algerian conflict. Unlike other ministers (including Mendès-France), who criticised the repressive policy in Algeria, he remained in Guy Mollet's cabinet until its end. As Minister of Justice, he had a role in 45 executions of the Algerian natives, recommending President René Coty to reject clemency in 80% of the cases, an action he later came to regret. François Mitterrand's role in confirming the death sentences of FLN rebels convicted by French courts of terrorism and later in abolishing the death penalty in 1981 led the British writer Anthony Daniels (writing under his pseudonym of Theodore Dalrymple) to accuse François Mitterrand of being an unprincipled opportunist, a cynical politician who proudly confirmed death sentences of FLN terrorists in the 1950s when it was popular and who only came to champion abolishing the death penalty when this was popular with the French people.


title: François Mitterrand

text: As Minister of Justice he was an official representative of France during the wedding of Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, and actress Grace Kelly. Under the Fourth Republic, he was representative of a generation of young ambitious politicians. He appeared as a possible future Prime Minister.


title: François Mitterrand

text: In 1958, François Mitterrand was one of the few to object to the nomination of Charles de Gaulle as head of government, and to de Gaulle's plan for a Fifth Republic. He justified his opposition by the circumstances of de Gaulle's comeback: the 13 May 1958 quasi-putsch and military pressure. In September 1958, determinedly opposed to Charles de Gaulle, François Mitterrand made an appeal to vote "no" in the referendum over the Constitution, which was nevertheless adopted on 4 October 1958. This defeated coalition of the "No" was composed of the PCF and some left-wing republican politicians (such as Pierre Mendès-France and François Mitterrand).


title: François Mitterrand

text: This attitude may have been a factor in François Mitterrand's losing his seat in the 1958 elections, beginning a long "crossing of the desert" (this term is usually applied to de Gaulle's decline in influence for a similar period). Indeed, in the second round of the legislative election, François Mitterrand was supported by the Communists but the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) refused to withdraw its candidate. This division caused the election of the Gaullist candidate. One year later, he was elected to represent Nièvre in the Senate, where he was part of the Group of the Democratic Left. At the same time, he was not admitted to the ranks of the Unified Socialist Party ("Parti socialiste unifié", PSU) which was created by Mendès-France, former internal opponents of Mollet and reform-minded former members of the Communist Party. The PSU leaders justified their decision by referring to his non-resignation from Mollet's cabinet and by his past in Vichy.


title: François Mitterrand

text: Also in that same year, on the Avenue de l'Observatoire in Paris, François Mitterrand claimed to have escaped an assassin's bullet by diving behind a hedge, in what became known as the "Observatory Affair". The incident brought him a great deal of publicity, initially boosting his political ambitions. Some of his critics claimed, however, that he had staged the incident himself, resulting in a backlash against François Mitterrand. He later said he had earlier been warned by right-wing deputy Robert Pesquet that he was the target of an "Algérie française" death squad and accused Prime Minister Michel Debré of being its instigator. Before his death, Pesquet claimed that François Mitterrand had set up a fake attempt on his life. Prosecution was initiated against François Mitterrand but was later dropped. Nonetheless, the Observatory Affair cast a lasting shadow over François Mitterrand's reputation. Years later in 1965, when François Mitterrand emerged as the challenger to de Gaulle in the second round of the presidential elections, de Gaulle was urged by an aide to use the Observatory Affair to discredit his opponent. "No, and don't insist" was the General's response, "It would be wrong to demean the office of the Presidency, since one day he [Mitterrand] may have the job."


title: François Mitterrand

text: François Mitterrand visited China in 1961, during the worst of the Great Chinese Famine, but denied the existence of starvation.


title: François Mitterrand

text: In the 1962 election, François Mitterrand regained his seat in the National Assembly with the support of the PCF and the SFIO. Practicing left unity in Nièvre, he advocated the rallying of left-wing forces at the national level, including the PCF, in order to challenge Gaullist domination. Two years later, he became the president (chairman) of the General Council of Nièvre. While the opposition to De Gaulle organized in clubs, he founded his own group, the Convention of Republican Institutions ("Convention des institutions républicaines", CIR). He reinforced his position as a left-wing opponent to Charles de Gaulle in publishing "Le Coup d'État permanent" (The permanent coup, 1964), which criticized de Gaulle's personal power, the weaknesses of Parliament and of the government, the President's exclusive control of foreign affairs, and defence, etc.


title: François Mitterrand

text: In 1965, François Mitterrand was the first left-wing politician who saw the presidential election by universal suffrage as a way to defeat the opposition leadership. Not a member of any specific political party, his candidacy for presidency was accepted by all left-wing parties (the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), French Communist Party (PCF), Radical-Socialist Party (PR) and Unified Socialist Party (PSU)). He ended the "cordon sanitaire" of the PCF which the party had been subject to since 1947. For the SFIO leader Guy Mollet, Mitterrand's candidacy prevented Gaston Defferre, his rival in the SFIO, from running for the presidency. Furthermore, François Mitterrand was a lone figure, so he did not appear as a danger to the left-wing parties' staff members.


title: François Mitterrand

text: De Gaulle was expected to win in the first round, but François Mitterrand received 31.7% of the vote, denying De Gaulle a first-round victory. François Mitterrand was supported in the second round by the left and other anti-Gaullists: centrist Jean Monnet, moderate conservative Paul Reynaud and Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, an extreme right-winger and the lawyer who had defended Raoul Salan, one of the four generals who had organized the 1961 Algiers putsch during the Algerian War.


title: François Mitterrand

text: François Mitterrand received 44.8% of votes in the second round and de Gaulle, with the majority, was thus elected for another term, but this defeat was regarded as honourable, for no one was really expected to defeat de Gaulle. François Mitterrand took the lead of a centre-left alliance: the Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left ("Fédération de la gauche démocrate et socialiste", FGDS). It was composed of the SFIO, the Radicals and several left-wing republican clubs (such the CIR of François Mitterrand).


title: François Mitterrand

text: In the legislative election of March 1967, the system where all candidates who failed to pass a 10% threshold in the first round were eliminated from the second round favoured the pro-Gaullist majority, which faced a split opposition (PCF, FGDS and centrists of Jacques Duhamel). Nevertheless, the parties of the left managed to gain 63 seats more than previously for a total of 194. The Communists remained the largest left-wing group with 22.5% of votes. The governing coalition won with its majority reduced by only one seat (247 seats out of 487).


title: François Mitterrand

text: In Paris, the Left (FGDS, PSU, PCF) managed to win more votes in the first round than the two governing parties (46% against 42.6%) while the Democratic Centre of Duhamel got 7% of votes. But with 38% of votes, de Gaulle's Union for the Fifth Republic remained the leading French party.


title: François Mitterrand

text: During the May 1968 governmental crisis, François Mitterrand held a press conference to announce his candidacy if a new presidential election was held. But after the Gaullist demonstration on the Champs-Elysées, de Gaulle dissolved the Assembly and called for a legislative election instead. In this election, the right wing won its largest majority since the "Bloc National" in 1919.


title: François Mitterrand

text: François Mitterrand was accused of being responsible for this huge legislative defeat and the FGDS split. In 1969, François Mitterrand could not run for the Presidency: Guy Mollet refused to give him the support of the SFIO. The left wing was eliminated in the first round, with the Socialist candidate Gaston Defferre winning a humiliating 5.1 percent of the total vote. Georges Pompidou faced the centrist Alain Poher in the second round.


title: François Mitterrand

text: After the FGDS's implosion, François Mitterrand turned to the Socialist Party ("Parti socialiste" or PS). In June 1971, at the time of the Epinay Congress, the CIR joined the PS, which had succeeded the SFIO in 1969. The executive of the PS was then dominated by Guy Mollet's supporters. They proposed an "ideological dialogue" with the Communists. For François Mitterrand, an electoral alliance with the Communists was necessary to rise to power. With this in mind, François Mitterrand obtained the support of all the internal opponents to Mollet's faction and was elected as the first secretary of the PS. At the 1971 congress, he declared: "Whoever does not accept the break with the established order, with capitalist society, cannot be an adherent of the Socialist Party."


title: François Mitterrand

text: In June 1972, François Mitterrand signed the Common Programme of Government with the Communist Georges Marchais and the Left Radical Robert Fabre. With this programme, he led the 1973 legislative campaign of the "Union of the Left".


title: François Mitterrand

text: At the 1974 presidential election, François Mitterrand received 43.2% of the vote in the first round, as the common candidate of the left. He faced Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in the second round. During the national TV debate, Giscard d'Estaing criticised him as being "a man of the past", due to his long political career. François Mitterrand was narrowly defeated by Giscard d'Estaing, François Mitterrand receiving 49.19% and Giscard 50.81%.


title: François Mitterrand

text: In 1977, the Communist and Socialist parties failed to update the "Common Programme", then lost the 1978 legislative election. While the Socialists took the leading position on the left, by obtaining more votes than the Communists for the first time since 1936, the leadership of François Mitterrand was challenged by an internal opposition led by Michel Rocard who criticized the programme of the PS as being "archaic" and "unrealistic". The polls indicated Rocard was more popular than François Mitterrand. Nevertheless, François Mitterrand won the vote at the Party's Metz Congress (1979) and Rocard renounced his candidacy for the 1981 presidential election.


title: François Mitterrand

text: For his third candidacy for presidency, François Mitterrand was not supported by the PCF but only by the PS. François Mitterrand projected a reassuring image with the slogan "the quiet force". He campaigned for "another politics", based on the Socialist programme "110 Propositions for France", and denounced the performance of the incumbent president. Furthermore, he benefited from divisions in the right-wing majority. He obtained 25.85% of votes in the first round (against 15% for the PCF candidate Georges Marchais), then defeated President Giscard d'Estaing in the second round, with 51.76%. He became the first left-wing politician elected President of France by universal suffrage.


title: François Mitterrand

text: In the presidential election of 10 May 1981, François Mitterrand became the first socialist President of the Fifth Republic, and his government became the first left-wing government in 23 years. He named Pierre Mauroy as Prime Minister and organised a new legislative election. The Socialists obtained an absolute parliamentary majority, and four Communists joined the cabinet.


title: François Mitterrand

text: The beginning of his first term was marked by a left-wing economic policy based on the 110 Propositions for France and the 1972 Common Programme between the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and the Left Radical Party. This included several nationalizations, a 10% increase in the "SMIC" (minimum wage), a 39-hour work week, 5 weeks holiday per year, the creation of the solidarity tax on wealth, an increase in social benefits, and the extension of workers' rights to consultation and information about their employers (through the Auroux Act). The objective was to boost economic demand and thus economic activity (Keynesianism), but the stimulative fiscal policy implemented by the Mauroy government was in contradiction with the constrained monetary policy implemented by the Bank of France. However, unemployment continued to grow, and the franc was devalued three times.


title: François Mitterrand

text: Old age pensions were raised by 300 francs per month to 1,700 francs for a single person and to 3,700 francs for a couple, while health insurance benefits were made more widely available to unemployed persons and part-time employees. Housing allocations for the low-paid were raised by 25% in 1981, and in the two years following May 1981 family allowances were increased by 44% for families with 3 children and by 81% for families with 2 children. In 1981, the purchasing power of social transfers went up by 4.5% and by 7.6% in 1982. In addition, the minimum wage (which affected 1.7 million employees) was increased by 15% in real terms between May 1981 and December 1982.


title: François Mitterrand

text: Major efforts were made to improve access to housing and health care, while the government also attempted to tackle working-class under-achievement in schools by reinforcing the comprehensive system, modernising the curriculum and reducing streaming. As a means of increasing political participation, the government increased the financial allowances of local politicians, who also became entitled to paid leave from their jobs to attend courses in public administration. Allowances for the handicapped were improved, while improvements were also made in the pay and conditions for those serving in the army. A decree of January 1982 provided for "solidarity contracts" whereby firms would be subsidised for introducing part-time work or early retirement if they also allowed the creation of new jobs, while a decree of March 1982 provided employees with the right to retire at the age of 60 on 50% of average earnings during their 10 best years of employment. In 1983, legislation was passed to encourage greater equality in the private sector. Firms now had to make an annual report on the training opportunities and employment conditions for women and present a statistical analysis of their position in the firm, whilst the works committee had to ensure that equality promoting measures are taken. In addition, a new benefit was introduced for unemployed workers who had exhausted their eligibility for unemployment insurance. In December 1982, a law was passed that restored to workers the right to elect administrators to social security funds, which had been eliminated by Charles De Gaulle in 1967.


title: François Mitterrand

text: François Mitterrand continued to promote the new technologies initiated by his predecessor Valéry Giscard d'Estaing: the TGV high speed train and the Minitel, a pre-World Wide Web interactive network similar to the web. The Minitel and the Paris-Lyon TGV line were inaugurated only a few weeks after the election. In addition, Government grants and loans for capital investment for modernisation were significantly increased.


title: François Mitterrand

text: After two years in office, François Mitterrand made a substantial u-turn in economic policies, with the March 1983 adoption of the so-called "tournant de la rigueur" (austerity turn). Priority was given to the struggle against inflation in order to remain competitive in the European Monetary System. Although there were two periods of mild economic reflation (first from 1984 to 1986 and again from 1988 to 1990), monetary and fiscal restraint was the essential policy orientation of François Mitterrand's presidency from 1983 onwards. Nevertheless, compared to the OECD average, fiscal policy in France remained relatively expansionary during the course of the two François Mitterrand presidencies.


title: François Mitterrand

text: In 1983, all members of the general pension scheme obtained the right to a full pension at the age of 60 payable at a rate of half the reference wage in return for 37.5 years contribution. The government agreed at the same time to improve the pension position of some public sector employees and to increase the real value of the minimum pension. In addition, later negotiations brought retirement at 60 years into the occupational schemes although the financial terms for doing so could only be agreed for a 7-year period. A comparison between 1981 and 1986 showed that the minimum state pension had increased by 64% for a couple and by 81% for one person. During that same period, family allowances had increased by 71% for three children and by 112% for two children. In addition, the single-parent allowance for mothers or fathers with one child had been increased by 103% and for two or more children by 52% for each child


title: François Mitterrand

text: In order to mark the importance of the problems of the elderly, the government appointed a Secretary of State (attached to the Ministry of Social Affairs and National Solidarity) to carry special responsibility for them, and in an effort to try to relate policy to the felt needs of the elderly, it set up a central advisory committee to examine social policy from their point of view and carry out special studies and enquiries. This body became especially concerned with monitoring the attempts at coordination and encouraging policies which were aimed at helping he elderly stay at home instead of entering residential care.


title: François Mitterrand

text: In the field of health care, some prescription charges were abolished, hospital administration was decentralised, workers' rights in the health service were reaffirmed, and equipment was provided for researchers. From 1983 onwards, wage-earners who had contributed to a pension fund for 37.5 years became eligible to retire on a full pension. This right was extended to the self-employed in 1984 and to farmers in 1986. People who had retired at the age of 60 were, however, not initially eligible for reductions on public transport until they reached the age of 65. The qualifying age for these reductions was, however, reduced to 62 in 1985. A number of illegal immigrants had their position regularized under the Socialists and the conditions pertaining to residence and work permits were eased. Educational programmes were implemented to help immigrant communities, while immigrants were allowed the right to free association. The Socialist government also opened up talks with the authorities in some of the main countries of origin, easing nationality rules in the public sector, associating representatives of migrant groups with public authority work, and established an Immigrants Council in 1984.


title: François Mitterrand

text: Although the income limit for allowances varied according to the position of the child in the family and the number of dependent children, these ceilings were made more favourable in cases where both parents were working or where a single parent was in charge and were linked to changes in wage levels. Those taking parental leave to care for three or more children (provided that they fulfilled the rules for eligibility) also received certain benefits in kind, such as a non-taxable, non-means-tested benefit and priority on vocational training courses. A new boost was also given to research into family problems including an interest in the effects of changing family structures, of women’s employment and the impact of local social policies on family life. In addition, while a law on equal opportunities in employment was passed in July 1983 which prohibited all forms of unequal treatment regardless of the circumstances, together with providing for positive action plans to be established in major companies. In January 1984, a decree was made granting state aid to companies which implemented equality plans for staff. That same year, a law was passed that gave the regional Caissess des Allocations Familiales the task of collecting unpaid alimony, initially for lone parents and subsequently for remarried or cohabiting mothers.


title: François Mitterrand

text: In the field of education, more resources were devoted to the educational system, with the education budgets of 1982, 1983, and 1984 increased by approximately 4% to 6% per year above the rate of inflation. From 1981 to 1983, the corps of teachers was increased by 30,000. Authorization was restored for a number of advanced undergraduate and graduate programmes which the previous centre-right minister Saunier-Seite had rejected on grounds of economy and "rationalization" of resources. Numerous initiatives were carried out such as the teaching of civics, the reintroduction of the teaching of French history and geography at the primary level, the introduction of new professional degrees, a partnership between schools and enterprises, and the introduction of computers in classrooms. Priority areas were set up in 1981 as part of a systematic effort to combat underachievement in schools, while technical education was encouraged. In addition, nursery education was expanded, while efforts by the Socialists to promote joint research between industry and the research agencies increased the number of such contracts by a half each year between 1982 and 1985, with a 29% increase in joint patents. The baccalauréat professionnel, introduced in 1985, enabled holders of a Brevet d'études professionnelles (or in some cases of a Certificat d’aptitude professionnelle) to continue for another two years and study for the baccalauréat.


title: François Mitterrand

text: Several societal measures were ratified, such as the official decriminalization of homosexuality. The Minister of the Interior, Gaston Defferre, put an end to the registration of homosexuals, and the Communist Jack Ralite, Minister of Health, removed homosexuality from the list of mental disorders. The government also introduced the passage of the sexual majority to 15 years for all, abolishing the distinction, introduced in 1942, in the age of consent between homosexual and heterosexual relations. Homosexual lifestyle ceased to be a clause for cancellation of a residential lease.


title: François Mitterrand

text: François Mitterrand abolished the death penalty as soon as he took office (via the Badinter Act), as well as the "anti-casseurs Act" which instituted collective responsibility for acts of violence during demonstrations. He also dissolved the "Cour de sûreté", a special high court, and enacted a massive regularization of illegal immigrants. Tighter regulations on the powers of police to stop, search and arrest were introduced, and the "loi sécurité et liberté" (a controversial public order act) was repealed. In addition, the legal aid system was improved.


title: François Mitterrand

text: In 1984, a law was passed to ensure that divorced women who were not in receipt of maintenance would be provided with assistance in recovering the shortfall in their income from their former husband. By 1986, particular attention was being focused on assisting women in single-parent families to get back into employment, in recognition of the growing problems associated with extra-marital births and marital breakdown. Parental leave was extended to firms with 100 employees in 1981 (previously, parental leave provision had been made in 1977 for firms employing at least 200 employees) and subsequently to all employees in 1984. From 1984 onwards, married women were obliged to sign tax returns, men and women were provided with equal rights in managing their common property and that of their children, and in 1985 they became responsible for each other’s debts.


title: François Mitterrand

text: Childcare facilities were also expanded, with the number of places in crèches rising steadily between 1981 and 1986. In addition, the minimum wage was significantly increased. From 1981 to 1984, the "SMIC" rose by 125%, while prices went up by only 75% during that same period. Various measures were also introduced to mitigate the effects of rising unemployment. Between 1981 and 1986, there had been just over 800,000 young people placed on special work schemes, 800,000 early retirements, 200,000 enterprise allowance successes, and 30,000 retrained workers from declining industrial sectors.


title: François Mitterrand

text: With respect to cultural policies, grants were allocated to non-profit associations and community cultural initiatives, Mitterrand liberalized the media, created the CSA media regulation agency, and authorized pirate radio and the first private TV (Canal+), giving rise to the private broadcasting sector.


title: François Mitterrand

text: In terms of the theatre, some transfer of resources was made from the subsidy of the national theatres to the support for theatre companies which did not necessarily have an institutional home. A significant investment was made in music education with the creation of 5 new music schools in the departements and the revamping of the Conservatoire National de la Musique at Lyon, while the range and capacity of performance facilities in Paris was considerably increased, with the Cite Musicale de la Villette and the Opera de la Bastille allowing for specialist performance in a way that was lacking in Paris previously, and a 2,000 seat concert hall called le Zenith, which was designed primarily for rock music concerts but adapted for all uses.