Profiling School Shooters in America
Comparing Various Acts of Violence in our Schools a Pattern Emerges
Sep 13, 2008
The cowards who prey on our children are the single greatest criminal type investigated by law enforcement agencies. With school shootings these threats often lay unrecognized until it is far too late. Agencies researching this emerging form of domestic terrorism, have found a rudimentary profile of these murderers and even an established trend that can help us prepare for and better respond to arising situations.
A School Shooter's Profile
Much of establishing the profile of these criminals is cutting through the mythology surrounding what drives them to violence. Most experts discard the idea of violent music, movies, or video games as a cause for violence and instead focus on similarities that can constitute a system of early warning features that students and teachers can look for.
The first consistency is that most shooters perform an initial act of violence to gain confidence for the main killings. This is why school administrators lockdown a campus at the first sign of violence; it's an attempt to isolate a possible shooter before they start.
A high level of planning is also a general trend with these types of criminals. Thus the concerns over violent writings and verbal declarations in school settings. In the wake of Virginia Tech it was learned that the killer's behavior triggered concern from staff and students, but was not taken as seriously as it could have been by the administration. Now, campus communities are working harder to establish their counselors in a student's daily life.
The Trend of Spectacle
Another very consistent, and incredibly unsettling, trend with school shooters lay in their motives and methodology. These types of murders have shown an affinity for learning from each other's mistakes. The Aumish school shooting and the VIrginia Tech shooting showed they learned from Columbine's lesson of barricading the school. This relationship is not so much reciprocal, but meant as establishing what crime the killer is trying to "out-do."
However, these trends offer little in the way of direction for defending our schools. We can establish policies that take advantage of the trends in violence, but the biggest lesson learned is the fact that schools are poorly guarded. In the United States, many citizens demand a feeling of security from their law enforcement agencies, but are unwilling to do what is necessary to actually secure campuses. A true concern would be marked by walls, metal detectors, increased security personnel, but citizens balk out of a fear of impressing students with a feeling of danger. The irony being that in these reservations, true danger has found a means of exploitation.
