Why would a student bring a weapon to school and without any explicable reason open fire on fellow students and teachers? Are school shooters angry? Are they crazy? Is their motive revenge? Hatred for the victims? A hunger for attention? The origins of human violence are complex. Thinkers, historians, and scientists have explored the issue for centuries, but answers remain elusive. The roots of a violent act are multiple, intricate, and intertwined. The mix of factors varies according to the individual and the circumstances. Understanding violence after it has occurred is difficult enough. Trying to assess a threat and keep it from being carried out is even more of a challenge. This monograph presents a systematic procedure for threat assessment and intervention. The model is designed to be used by educators, mental health professionals and law enforcement agencies. Obviously, the same events that led the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) to this subject have also led school administrators and law enforcement officials across the country to consider and develop their own policies and procedures for dealing with threats or acts of violence in schools. This model is offered in the hope that it may help refine and strengthen those efforts. Its fundamental building blocks are the threat assessment standards outlined in Chapter II, which provide a framework for evaluating a spoken, written, and symbolic threat, and the four-pronged assessment approach, which will be described in Chapter III and provides a logical, methodical process to examine the threatener and assess the risk that the threat will be carried out. This model is not a "profile" of the school shooter or a checklist of danger signs pointing to the next adolescent who will bring lethal violence to a school. Those things do not exist. Although the risk of an actual shooting incident in any one school is very low, threats of violence are potentially a problem in any school. Once a threat is made, having a fair, rational, and standardized method of evaluating and responding to threats is critically important.

Youth violence has been one of the greatest single crime problems we face in this country. We have focused on this problem, working in partnership with state and local governments to develop prevention and enforcement programs that work. Youth who commit crimes of violence must be held accountable, and the punishment must be firm and fair and fit the crime. At the same time, we must do everything we can to prevent crime in the first place. We have shown that if communities, schools, government and other key players pull together to address the roots of violence, we can make America safer for our children. Communities around the country are proving that prevention and intervention strategies that help keep our young people out of trouble do work. It is, therefore, critical that we do all we can to identify young people who need our help, and then get them the help they need. We must continue to search for those crucial behavioral and environmental indicators which suggest that a threat of school violence may be real. That is why this report, "The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective," is so important. Although much research remains to be done, this report serves as a vital foundation. It presents a model procedure for threat assessment and intervention--including a chapter on key indicators that should be regarded as warning signs in evaluating threats. If we use this threat assessment model judiciously--and we must, because the risk of unfairly labeling and stigmatizing children is great--then we will be able to fight, and win, the war on two fronts. We will be in a position to help those children who show a propensity for violence, before they scar themselves (and others) forever. And we will be in a position to protect innocent school children before they become senseless victims.

This book presents a systematic procedure for threat assessment and intervention. The model is designed to be used by educators, mental health professionals and law enforcement agencies. Obviously, the same events that led the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) to this subject have also led school administrators and law enforcement officials across the country to consider and develop their own policies and procedures for dealing with threats or acts of violence in schools. This model is offered in the hope that it may help refine and strengthen those efforts. Its fundamental building blocks are the threat assessment standards outlined in Chapter II, which provide a framework for evaluating a spoken, written, and symbolic threat, and the four-pronged assessment approach, which will be described in Chapter III and provides a logical, methodical process to examine the threatener and assess the risk that the threat will be carried out.

The American Institutes for Research (AIR) presents the full text of "The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective," by Mary Ellen O'Toole. The author highlights a model for threat assessment and intervention for those involved in school shootings. O'Toole discusses misinformation about school shootings, the types of threats for school shootings, the intervention process, personality traits and behavior, and family, school, and social dynamics.

School shootings are a topic of research in a variety of different disciplines—from psychology, to sociology to criminology, pedagogy, and public health—each with their own set of theories. Many of these theories are logically interconnected, while some differ widely and seem incompatible with each other, leading to divergent results about potential means of prevention. In this innovative work, leading researchers on the topic of school shootings introduce their findings and theoretical concepts in one combined systematic volume. The contributions to this work highlight both the complementary findings from different fields, as well as cases where they diverge or contradict each other. The work is divided into four main sections: an overview of current theoretical approaches and empirical models; application of these theories to international cases, including Columbine (USA), Emsdetten (Germany), and Tuusula (Finland); a critique of the influence of the media, both in the portrayals of past events and its effect on future events; and finally an overview of existing models for prevention and intervention, and measures of their success. The result is a comprehensive source for current research on school shootings, and will provide a direction for future research.