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Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America
“An urgent read that illuminates real possibility for change.” —John Carreyrou, New York Times bestselling author of Bad Blood For the first time, a story about the specialized teams of forensic psychologists, FBI agents, and other experts who are successfully stopping mass shootings—a hopeful, myth-busting narrative built on new details of infamous attacks, never-before-told accounts from perpetrators and survivors, and real-time immersion in confidential threat cases, casting a whole new light on how to solve an ongoing national crisis. It’s time to go beyond all the thoughts and prayers, misguided blame on mental illness, and dug-in disputes over the Second Amendment. Through meticulous reporting and panoramic storytelling, award-winning journalist Mark Follman chronicles the decades-long search for identifiable profiles of mass shooters and brings readers inside a groundbreaking method for preventing devastating attacks. The emerging field of behavioral threat assessment, with its synergy of mental health and law enforcement expertise, focuses on circumstances and behaviors leading up to planned acts of violence—warning signs that offer a chance for constructive intervention before it’s too late. Beginning with the pioneering study in the late 1970s of “criminally insane” assassins and the stalking behaviors discovered after the murder of John Lennon and the shooting of Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, Follman traces how the field of behavioral threat assessment first grew out of Secret Service investigations and FBI serial-killer hunting. Soon to be revolutionized after the tragedies at Columbine and Virginia Tech, and expanded further after Sandy Hook and Parkland, the method is used increasingly today to thwart attacks brewing within American communities. As Follman examines threat-assessment work throughout the country, he goes inside the FBI’s elite Behavioral Analysis Unit and immerses in an Oregon school district’s innovative violence-prevention program, the first such comprehensive system to prioritize helping kids and avoid relying on punitive measures. With its focus squarely on progress, the story delves into consequential tragedies and others averted, revealing the dangers of cultural misunderstanding and media sensationalism along the way. Ultimately, Follman shows how the nation could adopt the techniques of behavioral threat assessment more broadly, with powerful potential to save lives. Eight years in the making, Trigger Points illuminates a way forward at a time when the failure to prevent mass shootings has never been more costly—and the prospects for stopping them never more promising.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published April 5, 2022
118 people are currently reading
1627 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
June 24, 2022
I was interested in reading this book because it purports to describe a developing approach to the prevention of mass shootings that is effective, non-punitive, widely applicable, and which largely sidesteps the paralyzing debate over gun control. Behavioral threat assessment, a subfield of criminology that coalesced from several other modes of inquiry beginning in the 1970s—including attempts by the Secret Service and the FBI to profile political assassins and serial killers—has embarked on a new frontier in the age of the spree shooter. Contrary to popular belief and the sensational media coverage that (mis)informs it, mass murderers don’t just “snap” and commit their spectacular acts of violence out of the blue. In nearly every case, the perpetrator spends weeks, months, or even years taking concrete steps to prepare for the attack. He (and it is always a he) unfailingly exhibits behaviors that alarm his peers, and most of the time he even explicitly tells other people of his intentions. The mass shooter is a predatory, calculating creature, not the oft-imagined outcast who explodes in rage after being pushed around one time too many. This grim reality conceals a kernel of hope: at any point in this process, interventions can be made and lives can be saved.
Behavioral threat assessment integrates law enforcement with schools and workplaces to identify troubling patterns of behavior*, ascertain the potential for violence in a given situation, and to intervene with constructive solutions that both deter the would-be attacker and offer a pathway for him to resolve the underlying causes of his behavior (psychiatric, social, financial, familial, etc.) without resorting to criminal prosecution unless it’s necessary to protect the public. Where implemented, BTA-based approaches to violence prevention have produced striking, if understandably unsung, results: scores of lethal acts of violence in American classrooms and offices that didn’t happen. Part of the purpose for this book is to promote a more widespread application of this efficacious approach, and to move the American public beyond its appallingly rote oscillations between insouciance and rhetorical vitriol in the face of a generation of public massacres.
Unfortunately, though the field of behavioral threat assessment sounds promising, the book doesn’t discuss the approach itself in much depth. It is instead primarily a history of the field; and, more disappointingly, one written in the dull patois of a journalist trying to sound like a novelist. One is introduced to a string of characters—criminologists, psychologists, law enforcement agents, murderers, assassins, stalkers, and, finally, mass shooters—moving through their stories and picking up tidbits of information along the way; but the novelizing never develops into a comprehensive picture of either the mass shooting phenomenon itself or of the preventative efforts being aimed against it. The final product leaves me unable to recommend the book over basic online sleuthing.
*“These warning behaviors fall into eight broad areas: entrenched grievances, patterns of aggression or violence, stalking behavior, threatening communications, emulation of previous attackers, personal deterioration, triggering events, and attack planning and preparation.”
Behavioral threat assessment integrates law enforcement with schools and workplaces to identify troubling patterns of behavior*, ascertain the potential for violence in a given situation, and to intervene with constructive solutions that both deter the would-be attacker and offer a pathway for him to resolve the underlying causes of his behavior (psychiatric, social, financial, familial, etc.) without resorting to criminal prosecution unless it’s necessary to protect the public. Where implemented, BTA-based approaches to violence prevention have produced striking, if understandably unsung, results: scores of lethal acts of violence in American classrooms and offices that didn’t happen. Part of the purpose for this book is to promote a more widespread application of this efficacious approach, and to move the American public beyond its appallingly rote oscillations between insouciance and rhetorical vitriol in the face of a generation of public massacres.
Unfortunately, though the field of behavioral threat assessment sounds promising, the book doesn’t discuss the approach itself in much depth. It is instead primarily a history of the field; and, more disappointingly, one written in the dull patois of a journalist trying to sound like a novelist. One is introduced to a string of characters—criminologists, psychologists, law enforcement agents, murderers, assassins, stalkers, and, finally, mass shooters—moving through their stories and picking up tidbits of information along the way; but the novelizing never develops into a comprehensive picture of either the mass shooting phenomenon itself or of the preventative efforts being aimed against it. The final product leaves me unable to recommend the book over basic online sleuthing.
*“These warning behaviors fall into eight broad areas: entrenched grievances, patterns of aggression or violence, stalking behavior, threatening communications, emulation of previous attackers, personal deterioration, triggering events, and attack planning and preparation.”
April 8, 2022
"What if, instead of so much emphasis on shooter response, we put a lot more on shooter prevention?"
"Trigger Points" is well researched and covers a lot of ground to give a full picture of the potential of risk assessment and early intervention to prevent mass shootings. . After reading this book, I feel far better informed about mass shooting - the multi billion dollar industry created in response to previous mass shooters, mass shooter detection techniques, and how many acts of violence have been prevented through early intervention at both the school and community levels.
One thing I hadn't fully appreciated before reading "Trigger Points" is just how short sighter shooter response methods are, because of course at that point the shooting has already happened. But also, just expelling a student who is perceived as dangerous or firing a disgruntled employee doesn't solve the problem, but can in fact exacerbate it. Also, as someone who went to grade school and high school in the wake of Columbine, I really enjoyed the chapter about "safety theatrics". Do the drills, specialized door locks, and general "disaster preparedness" actually help? Spoiler, not really.
I do wish that the author had spent more time explaining the possible arguments against early intervention techniques and why that method is not utilized in more school districts and corporations.
"Trigger Points" is well researched and covers a lot of ground to give a full picture of the potential of risk assessment and early intervention to prevent mass shootings. . After reading this book, I feel far better informed about mass shooting - the multi billion dollar industry created in response to previous mass shooters, mass shooter detection techniques, and how many acts of violence have been prevented through early intervention at both the school and community levels.
One thing I hadn't fully appreciated before reading "Trigger Points" is just how short sighter shooter response methods are, because of course at that point the shooting has already happened. But also, just expelling a student who is perceived as dangerous or firing a disgruntled employee doesn't solve the problem, but can in fact exacerbate it. Also, as someone who went to grade school and high school in the wake of Columbine, I really enjoyed the chapter about "safety theatrics". Do the drills, specialized door locks, and general "disaster preparedness" actually help? Spoiler, not really.
I do wish that the author had spent more time explaining the possible arguments against early intervention techniques and why that method is not utilized in more school districts and corporations.
June 2, 2022
I felt lucky to procure this book so quickly from my library after seeing Follman interviewed on the PBS News Hour following the Uvalde elementary school mass shooting on May 24, 2022. In it the author, an editor for Mother Jones Magazine, describes the science of behavior threat assessment which has long been practiced by the Secret Service and a few other security agencies to identify and thwart potential mass shooters. He promotes the idea of expanding this work to local agencies because it has been shown to prevent many tragedies.
It’s an interesting and informative read, especially relative to the free, public, Mother Jones downloadable database in Excel format pertaining to 129 mass shooting events over the past 40 years.
After looking it, and downloading it, I was surprised to discover several interesting facts:
The 129 mass killing events resulted in a total of 1,039 deaths and 1,479 injuries over 40 years compared to roughly 40,000 1:1 shooting deaths and unknown woundings PER YEAR of all kinds (including suicide). This pointed out to me the huge disparity in news coverage between our country’s routine, everyday 1:1 shootings and its headline killings.
Average age of all mass shooters = 33.74. I had the previous impression they were mostly teenage boys - but the oldest was 64 and the youngest 15.
Race: 68 white, 22 black, 11 Latino, 8 Asian, Native American 3 and the rest unidentified. Again this went against my prior impressions.
Locations of the 129 events: 47 workplace, 19 schools, 7 religious, 5 military, 49 other, 1 airport. This highlighted for me the disparity of news coverage between the locations and victims of our mass shootings. Obviously schools and children get the most attention and legislative focus, but the problem is also much bigger.
Follman’s book was a little disappointing for me because I was expecting to get a clearer profile of the typical mass shooter, and more about proposed gun reform, but it contains a lot of helpful information for anyone interested in the subject, and most importantly it highlighted for me the horrible job done by our media by sustaining its self interest in hype and celebrity rather than soberly promoting fixing things for everybody.
It’s an interesting and informative read, especially relative to the free, public, Mother Jones downloadable database in Excel format pertaining to 129 mass shooting events over the past 40 years.
After looking it, and downloading it, I was surprised to discover several interesting facts:
The 129 mass killing events resulted in a total of 1,039 deaths and 1,479 injuries over 40 years compared to roughly 40,000 1:1 shooting deaths and unknown woundings PER YEAR of all kinds (including suicide). This pointed out to me the huge disparity in news coverage between our country’s routine, everyday 1:1 shootings and its headline killings.
Average age of all mass shooters = 33.74. I had the previous impression they were mostly teenage boys - but the oldest was 64 and the youngest 15.
Race: 68 white, 22 black, 11 Latino, 8 Asian, Native American 3 and the rest unidentified. Again this went against my prior impressions.
Locations of the 129 events: 47 workplace, 19 schools, 7 religious, 5 military, 49 other, 1 airport. This highlighted for me the disparity of news coverage between the locations and victims of our mass shootings. Obviously schools and children get the most attention and legislative focus, but the problem is also much bigger.
Follman’s book was a little disappointing for me because I was expecting to get a clearer profile of the typical mass shooter, and more about proposed gun reform, but it contains a lot of helpful information for anyone interested in the subject, and most importantly it highlighted for me the horrible job done by our media by sustaining its self interest in hype and celebrity rather than soberly promoting fixing things for everybody.
May 26, 2022
This is a well-written profile of threat assessment experts who try to identify future mass shooters. Unfortunately, the book is just anecdotes about presumably well-meaning people who are on a “mission to stop mass shootings in America” as opposed to people who have stopped mass shootings. That is what the title says, so it’s technically accurate but I was still disappointed. The blurbs on the cover specifically mention “averted shootings” and stopping shootings “with regularity” and so on. However, the author provides no rigorous evidence of effectiveness of the described early warning programs.
The author rules out talking about gun policy from the get-go. This seems absurd. The smartest thing in the book is a reference to the Onion:
https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-pr...
For a better book exposing myths about mass shootings, I would recommend Columbine.
Columbine
Nerd addendum:
The stories in the book specifically include an example of someone who seemed okay after receiving these interventions in school and then went off a decade later (p.160). So any meaningful evaluation would have to include long-term follow-up of ten years or more. That seems hard but some of these programs have been around for 20 years. Also, they could look at overall suicides and murders in localities with and without these programs to track community-level impact. Shorter-term, they could look at nationwide standardized surveys like the YRBS to track violence and suicidality in school kids.
There is a brief bit about evaluation of the main program featured in the book (Salem-Keizer, p.155) but it says silly things like you can “measure” the program by how popular it is, and tells you about satisfaction surveys, before admitting “a lack of regular auditing or scientific study of its results.”
The very recent shooting in Buffalo (May 2022) illustrates how all these recognitions of red flags don’t matter if they don’t keep people from acquiring guns.
There are passing references to places like Australia that have succeeded in dramatically decreasing mass shootings.
I disagree with the decision to feature the names of all these mass murderers. The author’s choice here is especially bizarre given his long discussion of how the perpetrators tend to be self-described “nobodies” who commit these crimes in part for the notoriety. Moreover, he is aware that the current journalistic standard is to avoid mentioning them by name. This is not a new concept. The Temple of Diana at Ephesus, a wonder of the ancient world, was destroyed by a jerk who wanted to be remembered for something. I won’t say his name. Stop rewarding awful behavior!!!
The author rules out talking about gun policy from the get-go. This seems absurd. The smartest thing in the book is a reference to the Onion:
https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-pr...
For a better book exposing myths about mass shootings, I would recommend Columbine.
Columbine
Nerd addendum:
The stories in the book specifically include an example of someone who seemed okay after receiving these interventions in school and then went off a decade later (p.160). So any meaningful evaluation would have to include long-term follow-up of ten years or more. That seems hard but some of these programs have been around for 20 years. Also, they could look at overall suicides and murders in localities with and without these programs to track community-level impact. Shorter-term, they could look at nationwide standardized surveys like the YRBS to track violence and suicidality in school kids.
There is a brief bit about evaluation of the main program featured in the book (Salem-Keizer, p.155) but it says silly things like you can “measure” the program by how popular it is, and tells you about satisfaction surveys, before admitting “a lack of regular auditing or scientific study of its results.”
The very recent shooting in Buffalo (May 2022) illustrates how all these recognitions of red flags don’t matter if they don’t keep people from acquiring guns.
There are passing references to places like Australia that have succeeded in dramatically decreasing mass shootings.
I disagree with the decision to feature the names of all these mass murderers. The author’s choice here is especially bizarre given his long discussion of how the perpetrators tend to be self-described “nobodies” who commit these crimes in part for the notoriety. Moreover, he is aware that the current journalistic standard is to avoid mentioning them by name. This is not a new concept. The Temple of Diana at Ephesus, a wonder of the ancient world, was destroyed by a jerk who wanted to be remembered for something. I won’t say his name. Stop rewarding awful behavior!!!
June 16, 2022
I found this book to be dry and a bit slow. The response that he seems to hammer home again and again is we need to provide support to recognize the behavioral patterns that result in mass shooting, and we need to intervene. Intervention should be done in a positive, supportive way and it seems like time and again this has shown to be a way to get people at risk for violence onto a more positive productive path. He opens the book by saying that he was not going to discuss gun control because that just grinds all discussion to a halt, but he also tells us that most guns purchased by mass shooters are purchased legally. This would seem to be an indictment of our existing gun laws as ineffective.
He also discusses the media response and how in recent years organization have changed to publicize the victims and the response as opposed to delving into the personality of the shooter. He also talks about how shooters have started to circumvent this by live streaming their violence themselves.
What I kept thinking about as I read this book was what if we could provide a friendly engaged ear for every child? Not just the ones who were on the verge of homicide or suicide. A responsive system that addressed deficits like poverty, or parental disengagement, nothing that would rise to the level of taking the kids out of their home, but those little things that add up. Maybe the kid doesn’t become a mass shooter, but they drop out of school, start using drugs, or start having babies they have no way to support (emotionally or financially), so the cycle starts all over again.
I know it would have meant the world to me as a kid to have someone who was interested in me and spoke with me on a regular basis. I was one of the quiet ones, making good grades, and not making any trouble – but being ruthlessly bullied in the background. Teachers didn’t notice or didn’t care. Maybe they didn’t have the time or the energy to care. This was before Columbine. I was a college junior in 1999. I’ve heard from younger friends that school got difficult for anyone that was perceived as different or alienated after Columbine.
When I was being bullied, I had no idea how to get an appointment with the school counselor. And there was a sense that you had to be ordered there to get help or those that went there were really messed up. I was having fantasies, at the time, of shooting myself in front of my locker to get back at my bullies – whose lockers were right next to mine. But I had no way to procure a gun. I was surely never going to tell anyone that. It took me well into adulthood before I came anywhere close to coping with what happened to me, and when I brought it up, I was often dismissed.
What we might spare ourselves as a country if we fostered a robust, easy to use, accessible mental health support network. You shouldn’t have to be ready to pick up a gun and kill before someone notices and steps in to intervene.
He also discusses the media response and how in recent years organization have changed to publicize the victims and the response as opposed to delving into the personality of the shooter. He also talks about how shooters have started to circumvent this by live streaming their violence themselves.
What I kept thinking about as I read this book was what if we could provide a friendly engaged ear for every child? Not just the ones who were on the verge of homicide or suicide. A responsive system that addressed deficits like poverty, or parental disengagement, nothing that would rise to the level of taking the kids out of their home, but those little things that add up. Maybe the kid doesn’t become a mass shooter, but they drop out of school, start using drugs, or start having babies they have no way to support (emotionally or financially), so the cycle starts all over again.
I know it would have meant the world to me as a kid to have someone who was interested in me and spoke with me on a regular basis. I was one of the quiet ones, making good grades, and not making any trouble – but being ruthlessly bullied in the background. Teachers didn’t notice or didn’t care. Maybe they didn’t have the time or the energy to care. This was before Columbine. I was a college junior in 1999. I’ve heard from younger friends that school got difficult for anyone that was perceived as different or alienated after Columbine.
When I was being bullied, I had no idea how to get an appointment with the school counselor. And there was a sense that you had to be ordered there to get help or those that went there were really messed up. I was having fantasies, at the time, of shooting myself in front of my locker to get back at my bullies – whose lockers were right next to mine. But I had no way to procure a gun. I was surely never going to tell anyone that. It took me well into adulthood before I came anywhere close to coping with what happened to me, and when I brought it up, I was often dismissed.
What we might spare ourselves as a country if we fostered a robust, easy to use, accessible mental health support network. You shouldn’t have to be ready to pick up a gun and kill before someone notices and steps in to intervene.
July 1, 2022
A perfect companion book to The Gift of Fear, which sets out how to be vigilant and notice the clues of violent behavior in others...this builds on this, and dissects mass shootings with the benefit of hindsight. Follman has cultivated relationships with professionals who study violent crime, gun crime, and the killers. He talked at length with one school district that has a multi-disciplinary team working proactively with students, schools, families, and community, to give disaffected students support early, so they never feel so isolated that they turn violent.
The strength of the book is probably also the weakness: it's mostly narrative...stories of survivors, of shooters, of professionals who study the origins of this violence. If you come to this book for lists of behavior to watch for, steps to take, this isn't your book...all this is IN the book, but you as the reader need to ferret all this out. When you do, you are amply rewarded...
Shooters do not 'snap'. They have planned and prepared for some time. They have researched, gotten into the online world of extremism. They have collected weapons. They are NOT clinically mentally ill. And those video games? They're for PRACTICE!
Shooters have common feelings of rage, paranoia, grievance...they may be perpetrators of domestic violence...they have a huge interest in weapons, and now, they may be steeped in violent ideology. Some see their acts as a way to gain attention. In other words, there is a long trail of warning signals...But we ignore them or shrug them off.
The author asserts that there is always 'leakage' by shooters. They ALWAYS share their plans. Bystanders assume they're not serious and don't report. The author says we need 'upstanders' who will reach out immediately for help and support.
Now, some attackers have an 'extreme over-valued belief' (look it up and then look around).
SO, what to do? Salem-Keizer Behavior Threat Assessment used by school and law enforcement and community services leaders, is a place to start...looking at students and reaching out with services for the students and family. Creating 'wraparound services' for the family. Finding ONE teacher who can 'adopt' students who feel alone and invisible. Listening, reaching out...
Also the Salem, OR, Mid-Valley Threat Assessment Team model is one we need to study and see how to adopt throughout the country...John Van Dreal and Courtney McCarthy are the professionals who helped create this model. It works from the idea that we all know SOMETHING, but together we know so much more. And we have so many more tools.
Important book if we care about PREVENTING the next mass shooting by enfolding troubled young (mostly) men into the community and helping them grow.
The strength of the book is probably also the weakness: it's mostly narrative...stories of survivors, of shooters, of professionals who study the origins of this violence. If you come to this book for lists of behavior to watch for, steps to take, this isn't your book...all this is IN the book, but you as the reader need to ferret all this out. When you do, you are amply rewarded...
Shooters do not 'snap'. They have planned and prepared for some time. They have researched, gotten into the online world of extremism. They have collected weapons. They are NOT clinically mentally ill. And those video games? They're for PRACTICE!
Shooters have common feelings of rage, paranoia, grievance...they may be perpetrators of domestic violence...they have a huge interest in weapons, and now, they may be steeped in violent ideology. Some see their acts as a way to gain attention. In other words, there is a long trail of warning signals...But we ignore them or shrug them off.
The author asserts that there is always 'leakage' by shooters. They ALWAYS share their plans. Bystanders assume they're not serious and don't report. The author says we need 'upstanders' who will reach out immediately for help and support.
Now, some attackers have an 'extreme over-valued belief' (look it up and then look around).
SO, what to do? Salem-Keizer Behavior Threat Assessment used by school and law enforcement and community services leaders, is a place to start...looking at students and reaching out with services for the students and family. Creating 'wraparound services' for the family. Finding ONE teacher who can 'adopt' students who feel alone and invisible. Listening, reaching out...
Also the Salem, OR, Mid-Valley Threat Assessment Team model is one we need to study and see how to adopt throughout the country...John Van Dreal and Courtney McCarthy are the professionals who helped create this model. It works from the idea that we all know SOMETHING, but together we know so much more. And we have so many more tools.
Important book if we care about PREVENTING the next mass shooting by enfolding troubled young (mostly) men into the community and helping them grow.
November 23, 2021
Critically important information in this book told in an accessible and thoughtful way. Not an easy read, but an important one.
Thank you to Edelweiss and Dey Street Books for access to the digital ARC.
Thank you to Edelweiss and Dey Street Books for access to the digital ARC.
May 29, 2022
It's so great that Law Enforcement likes to spend literally DECADES studying this stuff but still can't come up with a progressive plan for threat management. For instance, the FBI spent seven years looking at mass shootings and their main discovery was that a possible shooter will leak details of what they may do but also LIE about it! OMG, someone will actually LIE about a crime they are thinking about committing? The BAU's 35 plus years of studying serial killers and terrorists didn't establish that fact? To combat this, the FBI recommended taking anything a perpetrator might say with a GRAIN OF SALT! GENIUS!
Overall this was a well researched book that covered 20 something years of reinventing the wheel and regurgitating facts we've known about mass shooters since the 1970s with only one real program that seems to work on managing threats in ONE district in one state (though it may have been expanded to four if I understood the reading correctly).
Coming off back to back mass shootings (Buffalo and Uvalde) and literally multiple shootings in multiple cities EVERY SINGLE DAY for the past three months all of the repetitive research does NOTHING to solve the problem. And since we're never going to have common sense gun laws in this country, threat management was supposed to be a hope for combatting mass shootings, but in reality, it's also a fantasy.
Overall this was a well researched book that covered 20 something years of reinventing the wheel and regurgitating facts we've known about mass shooters since the 1970s with only one real program that seems to work on managing threats in ONE district in one state (though it may have been expanded to four if I understood the reading correctly).
Coming off back to back mass shootings (Buffalo and Uvalde) and literally multiple shootings in multiple cities EVERY SINGLE DAY for the past three months all of the repetitive research does NOTHING to solve the problem. And since we're never going to have common sense gun laws in this country, threat management was supposed to be a hope for combatting mass shootings, but in reality, it's also a fantasy.
April 4, 2023
3.5 stars--This concise book explores the use of behavioral science and institutional and personal policies of "see something, say something" to halt mass murder events before they occur. Nearly every spree killer shows warning signs--some very clear--before the fatal event. This seems to be the case especially with minors in school settings.
However, with the devastating sequence of events that occurred before the recent case of the 6-year-old who shot his teacher, those with the power to do so still aren't taking intervention seriously.
However, with the devastating sequence of events that occurred before the recent case of the 6-year-old who shot his teacher, those with the power to do so still aren't taking intervention seriously.
December 27, 2022
Not only a historical description of the field of threat assessment, but also a book that provides concrete information and emotions to inspire change. Mark practices what he preaches, diminishing the notoriety of the perpetrators. He also instills hope, advocating for widespread adoption of behavioral threat assessment.
December 27, 2024
I am honestly surprised the Threat Assessment system even exists and especially for how long it’s been around! I’ve never heard about it before which is honestly quite saddening since it’s so important. Makes you see just how much attention is placed in the wrong direction when shootings happen. This book delves into the history of the system and gives you insights into previous cases where intervention worked and some which did not.
I‘ve always thought the way the general public dehumanizes killers was detrimental to understanding why these things happen and how to prevent future occurrences. It was cool to see this book talk about that. The emphasis on not ascribing the killers and the motive as just being a psychopath/mentally ill was particularly interesting and important. Especially with how prevalent mental illness is, yet there’s only a very small portion of people who actually commit such violence like this.
The tid bits with survivors was also a valuable insight. I can’t even imagine what it would be like going through what they have.
At times the book did feel kind of tedious/repetitive, though I suppose that’s expected with a subject like this.
I hope the Threat Assessment system gains more attention and funding, it’s something that is so sorely needed. I’m glad something like this even exists at all, and that there are people trying to make a genuine difference.
I‘ve always thought the way the general public dehumanizes killers was detrimental to understanding why these things happen and how to prevent future occurrences. It was cool to see this book talk about that. The emphasis on not ascribing the killers and the motive as just being a psychopath/mentally ill was particularly interesting and important. Especially with how prevalent mental illness is, yet there’s only a very small portion of people who actually commit such violence like this.
The tid bits with survivors was also a valuable insight. I can’t even imagine what it would be like going through what they have.
At times the book did feel kind of tedious/repetitive, though I suppose that’s expected with a subject like this.
I hope the Threat Assessment system gains more attention and funding, it’s something that is so sorely needed. I’m glad something like this even exists at all, and that there are people trying to make a genuine difference.
October 15, 2023
This book was exactly what I wanted from a work on such a controversial topic in criminology, so much so that, despite it not being the most enjoyable read (especially for those sensitive to the subject), I believe it should be required reading for everyone involved in policy, law, psychology, education and criminal justice. Frankly I want it to be required reading for every American but let's keep things realistic.
Mark Follman has done a marvelous job at constructing a book that explores the epidemic of mass shootings and the professionals behind the effort to research and stop them. I was struck most by an exchange at the end of the book between the mother of a student killed at Sandy Hook and agents with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit: "If you know all this, why aren't you teaching it to everyone?" Their response was that they didn't have the resources to do so. That mother went on to help them spread the findings of their very important work. This book then is also doing such a job. I hope I too am doing that job by posting this on my social medias for all to see.
The reader will gain an intimate knowledge on the field of behavioral threat analysis, and the history behind the dual effort between the fields of psychology and law enforcement to get inside the mind of mass shooters. Follman explores the history of preventing shootings that extends all the way back to Secret Service efforts to prevent another presidential assassination after JFK. Along the way, readers are introduced to experts in the field with decades of experience in creating the first initial research programs into what makes shooters tick. From presidential assassins, the field expands over the decades to include individuals attacking their workplaces, stalkers targeting celebrities, school shooters, and ideological extremists.
The science is genuinely fascinating and shows me I need to brush up more on my psychology. The reader is provided the BEST overview I've seen (outside of a college classroom) of the characteristics, actions, and warning signs that an individual may conduct an attack. Follman takes great pains to ensure he cracks apart societal biases and deeply ingrained stereotypes associated with mass shooters that just aren't true when looking at the data. Very few actually are mentally ill, few if any just "snap" in an instant, and not all of them are quiet loners or were bullied. These are just a few that are disproved in the book.
One thing that potential readers may be curious about is the author's take on the gun debate. For better or worse, the gun debate is non-existent in this book. Follman actually acknowledges this in the prologue. I was a bit confused at this choice initially but after consuming the book in its entirety I can see the wisdom in his assessment. Guns are too politically charged in this country (an issue in itself that I'm sure is covered in many other books and articles) and Follman wanted to focus on the professionals who were working around the politics of the problem which may be the only way forward in these polarized times. If we can't save lives through legislation then we'll have to save lives by any other means. For the professionals involved in behavioral threat assessment this is an everyday reality, and I am thoroughly impressed by their work and their dedication to doing their best with a very bad hand.
I should let any reader of this review be aware that this book was tough to get through due to the subject matter, and my mind kept wandering to other avenues of thought mid-paragraph to previous educational and research materials I've read on the subject, which annoyingly contributed to the ridiculous length of time it took to finish this book. I should have completed it in two days. Then again, perhaps that's a sign I was connecting the research in this book to my previous knowledge. Perhaps I was also emotionally affected by the constant stream of tragedies. While not as personal in scope as Columbine which I read earlier this year, the timeline continues all the way to 2021, in which the problem seemingly has not been solved. As I look this up, Trigger Points was published in April 2022. The Uvalde, Texas school shooting occurred in May, and we've had many more happen up to now in 2023.
A very high recommend to everybody. Read this book, educate yourself, and look after your loved ones.
Mark Follman has done a marvelous job at constructing a book that explores the epidemic of mass shootings and the professionals behind the effort to research and stop them. I was struck most by an exchange at the end of the book between the mother of a student killed at Sandy Hook and agents with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit: "If you know all this, why aren't you teaching it to everyone?" Their response was that they didn't have the resources to do so. That mother went on to help them spread the findings of their very important work. This book then is also doing such a job. I hope I too am doing that job by posting this on my social medias for all to see.
The reader will gain an intimate knowledge on the field of behavioral threat analysis, and the history behind the dual effort between the fields of psychology and law enforcement to get inside the mind of mass shooters. Follman explores the history of preventing shootings that extends all the way back to Secret Service efforts to prevent another presidential assassination after JFK. Along the way, readers are introduced to experts in the field with decades of experience in creating the first initial research programs into what makes shooters tick. From presidential assassins, the field expands over the decades to include individuals attacking their workplaces, stalkers targeting celebrities, school shooters, and ideological extremists.
The science is genuinely fascinating and shows me I need to brush up more on my psychology. The reader is provided the BEST overview I've seen (outside of a college classroom) of the characteristics, actions, and warning signs that an individual may conduct an attack. Follman takes great pains to ensure he cracks apart societal biases and deeply ingrained stereotypes associated with mass shooters that just aren't true when looking at the data. Very few actually are mentally ill, few if any just "snap" in an instant, and not all of them are quiet loners or were bullied. These are just a few that are disproved in the book.
One thing that potential readers may be curious about is the author's take on the gun debate. For better or worse, the gun debate is non-existent in this book. Follman actually acknowledges this in the prologue. I was a bit confused at this choice initially but after consuming the book in its entirety I can see the wisdom in his assessment. Guns are too politically charged in this country (an issue in itself that I'm sure is covered in many other books and articles) and Follman wanted to focus on the professionals who were working around the politics of the problem which may be the only way forward in these polarized times. If we can't save lives through legislation then we'll have to save lives by any other means. For the professionals involved in behavioral threat assessment this is an everyday reality, and I am thoroughly impressed by their work and their dedication to doing their best with a very bad hand.
I should let any reader of this review be aware that this book was tough to get through due to the subject matter, and my mind kept wandering to other avenues of thought mid-paragraph to previous educational and research materials I've read on the subject, which annoyingly contributed to the ridiculous length of time it took to finish this book. I should have completed it in two days. Then again, perhaps that's a sign I was connecting the research in this book to my previous knowledge. Perhaps I was also emotionally affected by the constant stream of tragedies. While not as personal in scope as Columbine which I read earlier this year, the timeline continues all the way to 2021, in which the problem seemingly has not been solved. As I look this up, Trigger Points was published in April 2022. The Uvalde, Texas school shooting occurred in May, and we've had many more happen up to now in 2023.
A very high recommend to everybody. Read this book, educate yourself, and look after your loved ones.
November 11, 2022
An interesting point of view from a team that I think most people don't know exists. Follman's team looks at data from past mass shootings to discover patterns in shooters' behavior that culminate in shootings, rather than "profiles" of mass shooters. He shows that many mass shooters from the last couple decades don't necessarily fit the profile that the public widely assumes describes a mass shooter, but many of them do demonstrate the same patterns of behavior leading up to their crime. It's certainly a unique take on an attempt to reduce mass shootings, but it is, as Follman even admits, difficult to prove. How can you provide data for how many mass shootings you have prevented? Regardless, the similarities between past shooters are striking, and Follman does provide examples of situations where individuals were demonstrating similar patterns of behavior, but someone intervened to get that person help before things escalated. It's not about stopping shootings in progress; rather it's about descalating a potential-shooter's trajectory before they even pick up a gun. This is not typically a widely discussed strategy in the gun debate, so I appreciated this analysis from an alternative root cause standpoint.
July 29, 2022
I generally find myself hyper critical and/or underwhelmed by literary endeavors attempting to bring information, awareness, and advocacy about behavioral threat assessment to the masses. Because I work in this field. But this. THIS. I want to put this book into the hands of everyone I know. Literally. Did I personally “learn” anything new? No. However this is the most thoughtful, compelling, well-articulated, and vivid book I have encountered about this topic. The author was clearly trusted and given true “behind the curtain” access to The Godfathers of this field and he brings their expertise to the layman in simple and persuasive language. I don’t know how anyone could read this and NOT be stomping their feet in this country demanding answers as to why this isn’t being practiced by every business, school, and government entity. And even knowing everything I knew before I read this book — the final two pages devoted to Ms Hockley and her work brought me to tears. I’ve seen her speak publicly and she’s an amazing human. Buy this book. Read it. And pass it on. This copy will remain in my professional library but I’m planning to purchase a second to dole out.
December 29, 2022
I actually enjoy reading books with varying viewpoints than the ones I hold. I picked this book up fully expecting the author to argue for tighter gun control. To my surprise, that argument was more of an afterthought and not the sole premise of this book.
In short, the author is a researcher who has studied mass shootings, behavioral threat assessment of (would-be and active) shooters, and the proactive steps that have and are continuing to take place to prevent the what-would-have-been shootings we never hear about (because they never made it to fruition). And in those cases, how the would-have-been shooters got a second chance at life due to the intervention and help they received. Really enlightening read.
In short, the author is a researcher who has studied mass shootings, behavioral threat assessment of (would-be and active) shooters, and the proactive steps that have and are continuing to take place to prevent the what-would-have-been shootings we never hear about (because they never made it to fruition). And in those cases, how the would-have-been shooters got a second chance at life due to the intervention and help they received. Really enlightening read.
July 23, 2022
This book looks into how we can use behavioral analysis techniques to stop mass shootings. The author posits that while there is a not a typical profile of a mass shooter detailed enough to predict who will perpetrate such crimes, there does seem to be a discernible pattern of behavior that shooters exhibit leading up to their final acts. By learning to recognize these behaviors and setting up a process to intervene, we can focus on prevention.
October 6, 2022
Author Follman takes us to go back to how many children are killed in their schools by a man with a gun. That theme runs all the way through the book. People of my age will be taken back to a long string of killings in school.
The book drives us to the need to keep children away from people (all have been males) who go into schools and take the lives of children. .
The book includes many pieces of how many other countries outside of the US have do nut let people have guns.
The book doesn’t give single way to do what the other countries have done. This book is a good start but there is so much more to do.
The book drives us to the need to keep children away from people (all have been males) who go into schools and take the lives of children. .
The book includes many pieces of how many other countries outside of the US have do nut let people have guns.
The book doesn’t give single way to do what the other countries have done. This book is a good start but there is so much more to do.
June 30, 2022
Insightful look at one of the most prevalent problems of our generation. Collaborative Behavioral threat assessment programs should be in every school and community. Information needs to be shared through profiling and prevention along with ‘red flag’ and common sense laws! Let’s make the butterfly effect happen!
July 3, 2022
This book adds historical context to the beginning of behavioral threat assessment by law enforcement starting with assassinations and stalking and ending with workplace and school shootings. This author addresses commonalities—emulation, pathological narcissism, and the impact of journalism and digital presence on the shooters. The last chapter is about Nicole Hockley, the cofounder of Sandy Hook Promise. She has turned this tragedy into a cause for good after her son Dylan was murdered and is helping other school, workplaces, and parents become educated on how to prevent these massacres.
June 12, 2022
While this book was a thorough history of threat assessment, the author seemed to miss the glaring problems the field faced due to a lack of diversity. Repeatedly, we were told to ignore statistics because they missed the relatively few female and POC shooters. That seems to be ignoring the main problem. This issue also popped up with the idea of supporting people who were possibly violent and ignoring the impacts that may have on their victims. We need to support everyone without penalizing, not just the people who might commit mass violence. Also, the author repeatedly names people who committed violence, telling their stories, right after talking about how they committed atrocities for fame. Rewarding violent people is not a great idea. Overall, this book highlighted the field's blind spots in gender, race, and other societal issues through the author's own blind spots.
April 26, 2023
Fascinating
June 17, 2022
This book is essential. Carefully cataloging the warning signs of impending violence and offering the support they need to steer them in a different path. This book focuses on saving many lives that would perish in a tragic shooting, as much as saving the lives of those who commit these atrocities. There are things we can do as a community to lift others up and support each other.
June 1, 2022
Well, it’s another Memorial Day here in the United States of Hypocrisy. I’m sure all Americans are spending a brief moment and lighting a candle to remember all the war dead from our past 60 years of mindless warmongering under various guises to feed trillions of dollars into the coffers of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex while bringing misery to millions of non-Caucasian, non-Christian humans around the world. The “War on Terror” completely overlooked the homegrown type though: “Violent far-right extremism had long posed at least a marginal danger, particularly after the Oklahoma City bombing stirred a next generation of anti-government believers, but its proponents emerged greatly emboldened under a president who embrace bigotry and demagoguery and refused to clearly oppose white-supremacist hate” (p. 199).
The anxiety, the apathy, the maddening frustration, the suffocating nihilism, the barely controlled fury at the folly of it all. It’s fair to say every American now has a target on their back; that no one is safe anywhere; and, “the system” isn’t going to protect you. All those cosplaying White Nationalist morons have targets too, they just think they’re bulletproof, but I assure you, everyone catches a well-placed bullet equally. Every single person on Earth.
The Onion republishes its story from 2014 with every mass-casualty rampage (tweaking it every time to contextualize the current senseless slaughter) and it truly highlights the banality of our insufferable hypocrisy. They’ve republished it some 21 times since 2014, while NPR records 199 mass shootings in the US this year to date (30 MAY 2022). Read my review of Frank Smyth’s The NRA: The Unauthorized History (2020) to get to the marrow of this issue, because I’m not going to bother repeating myself (I too am exhausted by my rage for all of this). Shootings surge and gun & ammo companies are making record profits (https://www.thetrace.org/2022/05/gun-...), showing where priorities truly lie. Excuses abound, blame is cast to everyone but those who have direct control over such issues, and the same debunked lies are propagandized ad nauseam to the brainwashed masses. The snake-oil capitalists create bullet-proof backpacks and dragnet online-surveillance tools and lead training seminars with no education, wisdom, or experience to back them up. #WECALLBS “Digital media have also become directly consequential to the mass shootings problem, at once fueling emulation and threats and becoming indispensable to threat assessment work” (p. 183).
I just watched HBO’s 2-part documentary on George Carlin’s American Dream, and I believe he evolved into the Diogenes of our era, thrusting that lantern into everyone’s face, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing does.
I saw Iraqi kids ripped apart by a crude, effective shrapnel bomb. Little bodies tossed like broken rag dolls, their mothers’ intestines strung across the landscape amongst the debris and groceries, like lengths of rope, blood lapped up by the Earth. That is forever embedded in my greymatter.
I know some wanted to publish photos of the kids at Sandy Hook, hoping such images would galvanize support for sweeping gun reform. I would hope so, as tough as that choice is on parents, families, and communities (and we know the wicked backlash of the Right when anything upsets their fantasyland delusions). We could do it now too after Uvalde. Seeing those little bodies tossed atop one another by hollow-point rounds blowing pieces of them apart, crumpled up in corners, arterial blood-splatter across the walls, bits of bone embedded in the plaster, desks overturned, books scattered all around, a teacher’s legs seen in the distance, her torso and half-destroyed face hidden from view, shell casings gleaming in the fractured sunlight through broken windows. This is the Greatness of America. God Bless America. Let us see the images and scream at the sky and force our puppet-politicians to do OUR bidding for once.
After Sandy Hook, “[I]f heavily armed America couldn’t muster the courage and political consensus to transform our underlying policies on guns, then at least we might assemble teams of skilled people to reduce the menace of mass shootings case by case” (p. 203).
Follman is a Mother Jones journalist and a crucial part of their database on mass shootings in America, which they’ve been sadly tracking since 1982 (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/...).
We can safely say there will never again be common-sense gun laws like Australia, Britain, and New Zealand have adopted successfully. Ghost guns have made anything sensible now impossible. We can safely say the Constitution will never be rewritten or the grossly misinterpreted Second Amendment repealed. Some are warning a Civil War or bizarre Balkanization seems likely, given the useless ineffectiveness of a hyper-partisan government and an entrenched, polarized populace. Social norms, those unconscious rules that keep a group of people civil, are breaking down. Society is septic. The lies, the greed, the quest for power will never be ousted from our system of government, and the undereducated will never be enlightened in time. So what can we do?
Follman shows us certain programs work. Talking with threat-assessment experts and the evolution of their practices over the past 4-5 decades, we see now that behavioral profiling is far more important than psychological profiling. I mean half of all Americans can be clinically diagnosed with some mental health issue over one’s lifetime. Aberrant narcissism, entrenched grievances, threatening communications, stalking behavior, aggressive outbursts, and deteriorating life circumstances are the red flags calling for behavioral interventions lead by compassion, rapport-building, fellowship, and ultimately holistic transformation. Communities and organizations across the country have done some amazing work in this field. From Boston’s Operation Ceasefire to LA’s BUILD to small-town American STAT programs showcase the possibilities for everywhere else
This book, in a way, goes back to Robert Greenleaf’s concept of Servant Leadership, how it takes a village to bond and work together to help those on the threshold of violent acts. Follman writes prolifically and has reiterated his points in this essay (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/... ). The bystander intervention education and strategies can create a robust prevention net to safely help those shambling along the pathway to violence. Connection, community, compassion, support. These are the dynamics that strengthen family systems, improve communities, and avoid rampages. Student Threat Assessment Teams (STATs) are built around multidisciplinary expertise involving law enforcement, mental health, and education/community/spiritual members who then approach families, close friends, and classmates to create a true team-based approach to best help an individual. As the research shows, opportunities to intervene abound with most perpetrators, and “it’s important to remember that active shooters are people in the community . . . they have jobs . . . they’re in school . . . they do talk to people” (p. 179).
Thwarting such horrendous acts can and do happen. Is it foolproof? No, nothing ever is. Even with the best approaches undertaken, people like Erik Ayala show that long-term monitoring and mentoring are often required, a very time- and money-taxing endeavor on a case-by-case basis. The myths persist, the lies are gospel, and clickbait media doesn’t care about success stories, but there are teams on many levels (local, state, federal) doing what they can to help those in need and thereby avoid another “tragic day in America” (at the very least) centered on their personal communities. Follman asks media outlets to do their part, social-media monoliths to do theirs, and politicians and community leaders to do theirs, but we all know how that goes. With toxic masculinity and extreme overvalued beliefs spreading like wildfires through the poisoned Internet, STATs are as good as it gets. Read this book and share with those in power in your community, before the next bloodbath happens in your neighborhood.
Sandy Hook Promise (https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/) “envisions a future where children are free from shootings and acts of violence in their schools, homes, and communities.” How fall we’ve fallen to now envision such a thing. Support them and share their resources widely. Their “Evan” video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT7Q_...) really hammers the point home that we can ALL do more to support one another and attempt to heal this country from its division and hate, before it’s too late.
Another potentially good book is The Violence Project by Jillian Peterson and James Densley, whom I listened to The New Yorker’s David Remnick talk to on it’s podcast (https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the...).
As well, the American Psychological Association (APA) publishes a quarterly journal on threat assessment and management that could be helpful too (https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/tam/).
George Carlin apparently liked a line to describe himself: “If you scratch a Cynic, you’ll uncover a disappointed Idealist”. Another astute observation. Follman argues that “[t]he ambition to prevent unpredictable violence is rooted, ultimately, in optimism” (p. 213). I was disappointed a very long time ago watching the sociopathic cops who assaulted Rodney King get senselessly exonerated, and the riots that unsurprisingly followed. If classrooms of dead children don’t shake those in power to their core, especially those who claim to be Christian, we need to replace those in power by whatever means necessary. The system as it is won’t change itself.
The anxiety, the apathy, the maddening frustration, the suffocating nihilism, the barely controlled fury at the folly of it all. It’s fair to say every American now has a target on their back; that no one is safe anywhere; and, “the system” isn’t going to protect you. All those cosplaying White Nationalist morons have targets too, they just think they’re bulletproof, but I assure you, everyone catches a well-placed bullet equally. Every single person on Earth.
The Onion republishes its story from 2014 with every mass-casualty rampage (tweaking it every time to contextualize the current senseless slaughter) and it truly highlights the banality of our insufferable hypocrisy. They’ve republished it some 21 times since 2014, while NPR records 199 mass shootings in the US this year to date (30 MAY 2022). Read my review of Frank Smyth’s The NRA: The Unauthorized History (2020) to get to the marrow of this issue, because I’m not going to bother repeating myself (I too am exhausted by my rage for all of this). Shootings surge and gun & ammo companies are making record profits (https://www.thetrace.org/2022/05/gun-...), showing where priorities truly lie. Excuses abound, blame is cast to everyone but those who have direct control over such issues, and the same debunked lies are propagandized ad nauseam to the brainwashed masses. The snake-oil capitalists create bullet-proof backpacks and dragnet online-surveillance tools and lead training seminars with no education, wisdom, or experience to back them up. #WECALLBS “Digital media have also become directly consequential to the mass shootings problem, at once fueling emulation and threats and becoming indispensable to threat assessment work” (p. 183).
I just watched HBO’s 2-part documentary on George Carlin’s American Dream, and I believe he evolved into the Diogenes of our era, thrusting that lantern into everyone’s face, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing does.
I saw Iraqi kids ripped apart by a crude, effective shrapnel bomb. Little bodies tossed like broken rag dolls, their mothers’ intestines strung across the landscape amongst the debris and groceries, like lengths of rope, blood lapped up by the Earth. That is forever embedded in my greymatter.
I know some wanted to publish photos of the kids at Sandy Hook, hoping such images would galvanize support for sweeping gun reform. I would hope so, as tough as that choice is on parents, families, and communities (and we know the wicked backlash of the Right when anything upsets their fantasyland delusions). We could do it now too after Uvalde. Seeing those little bodies tossed atop one another by hollow-point rounds blowing pieces of them apart, crumpled up in corners, arterial blood-splatter across the walls, bits of bone embedded in the plaster, desks overturned, books scattered all around, a teacher’s legs seen in the distance, her torso and half-destroyed face hidden from view, shell casings gleaming in the fractured sunlight through broken windows. This is the Greatness of America. God Bless America. Let us see the images and scream at the sky and force our puppet-politicians to do OUR bidding for once.
After Sandy Hook, “[I]f heavily armed America couldn’t muster the courage and political consensus to transform our underlying policies on guns, then at least we might assemble teams of skilled people to reduce the menace of mass shootings case by case” (p. 203).
Follman is a Mother Jones journalist and a crucial part of their database on mass shootings in America, which they’ve been sadly tracking since 1982 (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/...).
We can safely say there will never again be common-sense gun laws like Australia, Britain, and New Zealand have adopted successfully. Ghost guns have made anything sensible now impossible. We can safely say the Constitution will never be rewritten or the grossly misinterpreted Second Amendment repealed. Some are warning a Civil War or bizarre Balkanization seems likely, given the useless ineffectiveness of a hyper-partisan government and an entrenched, polarized populace. Social norms, those unconscious rules that keep a group of people civil, are breaking down. Society is septic. The lies, the greed, the quest for power will never be ousted from our system of government, and the undereducated will never be enlightened in time. So what can we do?
Follman shows us certain programs work. Talking with threat-assessment experts and the evolution of their practices over the past 4-5 decades, we see now that behavioral profiling is far more important than psychological profiling. I mean half of all Americans can be clinically diagnosed with some mental health issue over one’s lifetime. Aberrant narcissism, entrenched grievances, threatening communications, stalking behavior, aggressive outbursts, and deteriorating life circumstances are the red flags calling for behavioral interventions lead by compassion, rapport-building, fellowship, and ultimately holistic transformation. Communities and organizations across the country have done some amazing work in this field. From Boston’s Operation Ceasefire to LA’s BUILD to small-town American STAT programs showcase the possibilities for everywhere else
This book, in a way, goes back to Robert Greenleaf’s concept of Servant Leadership, how it takes a village to bond and work together to help those on the threshold of violent acts. Follman writes prolifically and has reiterated his points in this essay (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/... ). The bystander intervention education and strategies can create a robust prevention net to safely help those shambling along the pathway to violence. Connection, community, compassion, support. These are the dynamics that strengthen family systems, improve communities, and avoid rampages. Student Threat Assessment Teams (STATs) are built around multidisciplinary expertise involving law enforcement, mental health, and education/community/spiritual members who then approach families, close friends, and classmates to create a true team-based approach to best help an individual. As the research shows, opportunities to intervene abound with most perpetrators, and “it’s important to remember that active shooters are people in the community . . . they have jobs . . . they’re in school . . . they do talk to people” (p. 179).
Thwarting such horrendous acts can and do happen. Is it foolproof? No, nothing ever is. Even with the best approaches undertaken, people like Erik Ayala show that long-term monitoring and mentoring are often required, a very time- and money-taxing endeavor on a case-by-case basis. The myths persist, the lies are gospel, and clickbait media doesn’t care about success stories, but there are teams on many levels (local, state, federal) doing what they can to help those in need and thereby avoid another “tragic day in America” (at the very least) centered on their personal communities. Follman asks media outlets to do their part, social-media monoliths to do theirs, and politicians and community leaders to do theirs, but we all know how that goes. With toxic masculinity and extreme overvalued beliefs spreading like wildfires through the poisoned Internet, STATs are as good as it gets. Read this book and share with those in power in your community, before the next bloodbath happens in your neighborhood.
Sandy Hook Promise (https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/) “envisions a future where children are free from shootings and acts of violence in their schools, homes, and communities.” How fall we’ve fallen to now envision such a thing. Support them and share their resources widely. Their “Evan” video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT7Q_...) really hammers the point home that we can ALL do more to support one another and attempt to heal this country from its division and hate, before it’s too late.
Another potentially good book is The Violence Project by Jillian Peterson and James Densley, whom I listened to The New Yorker’s David Remnick talk to on it’s podcast (https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the...).
As well, the American Psychological Association (APA) publishes a quarterly journal on threat assessment and management that could be helpful too (https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/tam/).
George Carlin apparently liked a line to describe himself: “If you scratch a Cynic, you’ll uncover a disappointed Idealist”. Another astute observation. Follman argues that “[t]he ambition to prevent unpredictable violence is rooted, ultimately, in optimism” (p. 213). I was disappointed a very long time ago watching the sociopathic cops who assaulted Rodney King get senselessly exonerated, and the riots that unsurprisingly followed. If classrooms of dead children don’t shake those in power to their core, especially those who claim to be Christian, we need to replace those in power by whatever means necessary. The system as it is won’t change itself.
June 1, 2022
I read this book for the subtitle of this book--I wanted to know how threat assessment teams across the U.S. are being created and working hard to prevent mass shootings in America. The day before I began listening to this book, yet another tragic school shooting happened in Uvalde, Texas.
Perhaps my dissatisfaction with this book is due to the fact that I was bombarded with the sad, horrific details of this school shooting with all of the drawn-out details of most prominent mass shootings in the book. But mostly, I think my dissatisfaction is due to the fact that the book was 80% recalling and recounting shootings and 20% talking about how shootings are being prevented.
I'll keep looking for a book on restorative justice in schools...
Perhaps my dissatisfaction with this book is due to the fact that I was bombarded with the sad, horrific details of this school shooting with all of the drawn-out details of most prominent mass shootings in the book. But mostly, I think my dissatisfaction is due to the fact that the book was 80% recalling and recounting shootings and 20% talking about how shootings are being prevented.
I'll keep looking for a book on restorative justice in schools...
May 13, 2022
Too much shop talk
The author mentions that we’re all trying to make sense of it. More of the concrete examples would help in that regard. But too much of the book is filled with a history of threat assessment.
Tell me what we have in place now and provide details from actual case studies on how it’s working.
The author mentions that we’re all trying to make sense of it. More of the concrete examples would help in that regard. But too much of the book is filled with a history of threat assessment.
Tell me what we have in place now and provide details from actual case studies on how it’s working.
October 25, 2022
This is a well researched book. You will learn a lot about the authors search for a consistent profile of mass shooters and the trigger that puts their plan into action. As important is the discussion of behavioral threat assessment which has some proven success to head off mass shootings and get the potential shooter the help they desperately need. This is not a call for gun reform though that is addressed as a side issue. It was well worth my time to read and consider.
April 28, 2023
Quite by happenstance, I checked this book out of my local library (in TN) on the morning of March 27, 2023. The library wasn’t going out of its way to grab my attention: the book was shelved spine-out (in other words not displayed cover-out) in the “new nonfiction” section. The subtitle struck me: who is it that has a “mission to stop mass shootings in America”? I was aware of numerous groups — e.g. Sandy Hook Promise, Moms Demand Action — which to my knowledge were working the gun-control issue very hard, but however worthwhile their aims, they seemed to be political non-starters in my conservative state. Would this book inform me of a different approach, maybe something with political hope?
Later that same day came the news of another mass shooting, this one at the Covenant School in Nashville, the capital of my conservative state. As I write this review, a month has passed and with it the bizarre parade of horrified reactions from citizens mixed in with the shrugs of politicians saying that nothing can be done. The state legislature wrapped up its work, pointedly refusing to act on an “order of protection” proposal from Governor Bill Lee, but Lee has responded by calling a special session to focus on the issue of guns and public safety.
So it was with heightened interest that I read this book, the “missionaries” of which turned out to be practitioners of a field known as “behavioral threat assessment.” Begun by those within such law enforcement agencies as the Secret Service and the FBI trying to guard against assassinations and acts of domestic terrorism, the research soon got the attention of individuals trying to understand the motivations of school shooters. Regardless of the high public profile of the shootings, the work of those studying them was, in the words of author Follman, “an obscure professional niche, virtually unknown to the general public.” Furthermore, the nature of the field’s case studies “made clear how little the public understood about the behaviors and conditions that led to mass shootings,” which were concerningly on the rise, defying a general decline in the overall US murder rate.
Follman — a national affairs editor for Mother Jones whose presumably progressive views are studiously absent in this admirably journalistic work — follows the field from its inception to the present as it followed in the wake of America’s Columbines, Virginia Techs, and Newtowns in a grim effort to derive lessons of scientific value from those horrific events.
If anything, Follman goes overboard in keeping the broader gun issue out of the book: gun control gets scant mention as something that Australia and Great Britain have done in order to make American-style shootings rare. The reason for this, as Follman gives it, is that “hardly ever during my years of reporting did I observe threat assessment professionals openly discussing gun regulations, an apparent third rail in a field populated by a wide range of political views, often conservative ones. … They know that possession of a firearm is not a meaningful predictor of targeted violence, but they also know that readily available semiautomatic weapons and large-capacity ammunition devices make attacks easy and highly lethal.”
In other words, it’s as if to say, “Nope, can’t do guns. What else we got?”
For starters, profiling is out, because it has no predictive value in determining an individual intent on massively violent action. Follman writes, “Countless young white males partake in graphically violent entertainment, are interested in guns, get angry about problems with school, jobs or personal relationships, and struggle with mental health challenges. But the number among them who might aspire to commit mass murder es exceedingly small.”
Mental illness as a root cause comes in for examination that is particularly important especially given the hand-waving by gun advocates that “mental illness pulls the trigger” (Fellman calls it “the most formidable bogeyman of mass shootings.”) The findings of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) are striking: only a quarter of the shooters studied “were known to have been professionally diagnosed with a mental illness of any kind prior to their attacks. Just three cases involved a psychotic disorder;” of the remaining majority, “many of them clearly would not have qualified for a clinical diagnosis of mental illness” [Fellman’s emphasis]. Insofar as mental illness was involved, it seems to have been an “exacerbating rather than a root cause.”
While this may seem to leave us with nothing of predictive value, behavioral threat experts have over the years sharpened their understanding of the kinds of signals that shooters are known to have sent out or given off, in connection with which the experts have identified something they call “the bystander problem”: the signals were there, but they were ignored. Fellman writes, “People around the shooters, the team found, had notified law enforcement in fewer than half the cases — despite the fact that, in every single case, at least one person in proximity to the shooter had noticed a concerning behavior, and that in many cases, multiple people had noticed.” The shooters, in large part, are neither “alien” nor “undetectable.” According to one of Fellman’s sources, “They have jobs. They’re in school. They do talk to people. They come from all walks of life.”
An important and noticeable pattern appeared: to people close to them, the shooters both leaked their intentions and denied them. But who knows this? Nicole Hockley, the mother of Sandy Hook victim Dylan, asked the BAU why they weren’t doing more to share the results of their research. As Fellman puts it, “In the broadest sense the field had its own version of the silo problem. It was rooted in a certain pragmatism …: threat assessment data are complex and nuanced, and case work requires rigorous training to ensure its fairness and efficacy. However, Hockley had raised a strong and ultimately superseding point, … “If we’re going to catch these early, then we also need the people who are often even better positioned to see the warning behaviors.”
Part of the problem here is that family members in particular may let blind love override any sense that there is danger present. But the BAU concludes that this makes it that much more important to publicize their research: “These are the people who may actually be the most in need of the information about what to look for and where to seek help.” One of BAU’s “guiding principles” has become, “What good is research if it’s not usable?”
It seems clear that the tallest order at this point is to get the word out there. Forensic psychologist Russell Palarea, former president of the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals, says that “far too few communities even know about the work.…We need to get more people to understand what this work is, that it’s a problem-solving model using components mostly already in place, and that it needs to be community-based.” On the subject of pushback from the ACLU, ever-vigilant for infringements on individual rights, Palarea says that such criticism is off track: “We’re trying to help people who are struggling, before they get arrested or hurt themselves or others. There’s no downside to that.”
In fact, threat-assessment practitioners place a supreme value on public accountability, which as Follman says is “a perspective rooted in ethical pragmatism that could help solve the long-running bystander problem.” One such practitioner, Nebraskan Mario Scalar, says “It’s really important to be sensitive to feelings of vulnerability in people who come forward, their concerns about their own personal safety and privacy. … We have to show by our actions that we aren’t overreacting to these reports but actually tying to get struggling people help, rather than punishing them.”
The book reveals a field determined to find appropriate solutions that, it is hoped, can become known widely enough to be effective. Given the importance and timeliness of this book’s information, I would like to see it on the bookstand of every TN legislator with a deadline of whenever the special session is. They do have bookstands, don’t they?
Later that same day came the news of another mass shooting, this one at the Covenant School in Nashville, the capital of my conservative state. As I write this review, a month has passed and with it the bizarre parade of horrified reactions from citizens mixed in with the shrugs of politicians saying that nothing can be done. The state legislature wrapped up its work, pointedly refusing to act on an “order of protection” proposal from Governor Bill Lee, but Lee has responded by calling a special session to focus on the issue of guns and public safety.
So it was with heightened interest that I read this book, the “missionaries” of which turned out to be practitioners of a field known as “behavioral threat assessment.” Begun by those within such law enforcement agencies as the Secret Service and the FBI trying to guard against assassinations and acts of domestic terrorism, the research soon got the attention of individuals trying to understand the motivations of school shooters. Regardless of the high public profile of the shootings, the work of those studying them was, in the words of author Follman, “an obscure professional niche, virtually unknown to the general public.” Furthermore, the nature of the field’s case studies “made clear how little the public understood about the behaviors and conditions that led to mass shootings,” which were concerningly on the rise, defying a general decline in the overall US murder rate.
Follman — a national affairs editor for Mother Jones whose presumably progressive views are studiously absent in this admirably journalistic work — follows the field from its inception to the present as it followed in the wake of America’s Columbines, Virginia Techs, and Newtowns in a grim effort to derive lessons of scientific value from those horrific events.
If anything, Follman goes overboard in keeping the broader gun issue out of the book: gun control gets scant mention as something that Australia and Great Britain have done in order to make American-style shootings rare. The reason for this, as Follman gives it, is that “hardly ever during my years of reporting did I observe threat assessment professionals openly discussing gun regulations, an apparent third rail in a field populated by a wide range of political views, often conservative ones. … They know that possession of a firearm is not a meaningful predictor of targeted violence, but they also know that readily available semiautomatic weapons and large-capacity ammunition devices make attacks easy and highly lethal.”
In other words, it’s as if to say, “Nope, can’t do guns. What else we got?”
For starters, profiling is out, because it has no predictive value in determining an individual intent on massively violent action. Follman writes, “Countless young white males partake in graphically violent entertainment, are interested in guns, get angry about problems with school, jobs or personal relationships, and struggle with mental health challenges. But the number among them who might aspire to commit mass murder es exceedingly small.”
Mental illness as a root cause comes in for examination that is particularly important especially given the hand-waving by gun advocates that “mental illness pulls the trigger” (Fellman calls it “the most formidable bogeyman of mass shootings.”) The findings of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) are striking: only a quarter of the shooters studied “were known to have been professionally diagnosed with a mental illness of any kind prior to their attacks. Just three cases involved a psychotic disorder;” of the remaining majority, “many of them clearly would not have qualified for a clinical diagnosis of mental illness” [Fellman’s emphasis]. Insofar as mental illness was involved, it seems to have been an “exacerbating rather than a root cause.”
While this may seem to leave us with nothing of predictive value, behavioral threat experts have over the years sharpened their understanding of the kinds of signals that shooters are known to have sent out or given off, in connection with which the experts have identified something they call “the bystander problem”: the signals were there, but they were ignored. Fellman writes, “People around the shooters, the team found, had notified law enforcement in fewer than half the cases — despite the fact that, in every single case, at least one person in proximity to the shooter had noticed a concerning behavior, and that in many cases, multiple people had noticed.” The shooters, in large part, are neither “alien” nor “undetectable.” According to one of Fellman’s sources, “They have jobs. They’re in school. They do talk to people. They come from all walks of life.”
An important and noticeable pattern appeared: to people close to them, the shooters both leaked their intentions and denied them. But who knows this? Nicole Hockley, the mother of Sandy Hook victim Dylan, asked the BAU why they weren’t doing more to share the results of their research. As Fellman puts it, “In the broadest sense the field had its own version of the silo problem. It was rooted in a certain pragmatism …: threat assessment data are complex and nuanced, and case work requires rigorous training to ensure its fairness and efficacy. However, Hockley had raised a strong and ultimately superseding point, … “If we’re going to catch these early, then we also need the people who are often even better positioned to see the warning behaviors.”
Part of the problem here is that family members in particular may let blind love override any sense that there is danger present. But the BAU concludes that this makes it that much more important to publicize their research: “These are the people who may actually be the most in need of the information about what to look for and where to seek help.” One of BAU’s “guiding principles” has become, “What good is research if it’s not usable?”
It seems clear that the tallest order at this point is to get the word out there. Forensic psychologist Russell Palarea, former president of the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals, says that “far too few communities even know about the work.…We need to get more people to understand what this work is, that it’s a problem-solving model using components mostly already in place, and that it needs to be community-based.” On the subject of pushback from the ACLU, ever-vigilant for infringements on individual rights, Palarea says that such criticism is off track: “We’re trying to help people who are struggling, before they get arrested or hurt themselves or others. There’s no downside to that.”
In fact, threat-assessment practitioners place a supreme value on public accountability, which as Follman says is “a perspective rooted in ethical pragmatism that could help solve the long-running bystander problem.” One such practitioner, Nebraskan Mario Scalar, says “It’s really important to be sensitive to feelings of vulnerability in people who come forward, their concerns about their own personal safety and privacy. … We have to show by our actions that we aren’t overreacting to these reports but actually tying to get struggling people help, rather than punishing them.”
The book reveals a field determined to find appropriate solutions that, it is hoped, can become known widely enough to be effective. Given the importance and timeliness of this book’s information, I would like to see it on the bookstand of every TN legislator with a deadline of whenever the special session is. They do have bookstands, don’t they?
June 16, 2022
After reading his book, his logical inconsistencies are driving me crazy (figuratively).
He said that 50% of mass shootings end in suicide. Then he goes on to claim that it's not a mental health problem because the shooters aren't known to have mental health issues. Lack of information doesn't mean they didn't have mental health issues. That kind of logic, which doesn't compute, seems like a bigger problem than his "data." I'm pretty sure people that commit suicide have a mental health problem, identified or not. Many of his claims and examples scream more about a hugely deficient healthcare system (including mental health) rather than accessible guns and societal pressures.
One of his stated premises in the book, "They don't just snap. They choose to do these heinous acts." Begs the question of whether their choices are rational. Clearly, his examples from Hinckley to Chapman to the Austin tower shooter all have mental health problems that were undiagnosed. "A shrine" focused on a celebrity or politician would clearly be an unhealthy fixation and obsession.
It also seems that he undermines his arguments when he says "They are more like me and you than insane people." Then his evidence outlines the extremity of their actions and "thinking" leading up to their crimes.
Especially with the stalking chapter, that's a problem of coordinating mental health services and law enforcement. I'm in no way saying LEOs should be counselors, but that they should be able to refer crazies (stalkers and others) for evaluation and immediate counseling. We don't really have the cross-coordination between healthcare and police.
The Alaska example, a kid who had been bullied and didn't have access to any kind of counseling for his experiences from abuse, really seems to say that mental health treatment in schools - with positive adult relationship - really is more effective than traditional "profiling" for prevention. Plus, those fellow students that he told should be held accountable for not reporting the threat. Especially the kids who helped him load it and with the shotgun - that's also a lack of communication systems to report threats before they happen. Generally, students know about social media and their peers WAY before any adults know anything.
He keeps taking about how "profiling" will fail, but he's creating a compelling profile of students who commits these crimes. His profile he creates is a bullied, disaffected teen with a unsupported home life, few positive connections with adults, and every sign of depression... Usually crying out for help in multiple ways before actually doing anything.
I cringe at the statement "Educators and other community leaders instead needed to be proactive about what was so often a detectable danger." Yeah, let's put this on teachers - even though they don't have the training or inclination to be mental health workers. Give teachers more to do ... That'll work.
We currently have reporting structures in place, so his conclusions and statements seen outdated. Even his whole outlining of the Salem-Keizer team more emphasizes the need for mental health resources in the schools. His example from SKSD also rely on LEOs in coordination with mental health counselors. Guys with guns to back up the shrinks and helpers.
I don't think it is bad to label this a mental health problem, but that is just the beginning. If the country and politicians label it and shrug, then there is a bigger problem. I don't think the stigma for mental health problems is the same as it used to be. With so many people have depression, anxiety, etc. - the real stigma should be not seeking treatment or not having supports available.
I will give credit to the author that the school shootings issue is really about failed relationships - families, schools, communities, etc. - but the problem can't be a single fix. The question is how does a country/community build solid, supportive relationships in a world with broken families, drug addiction, fake social media 'relationships', a teacher shortage, and a dearth of mental health professionals? One step at a time....
He said that 50% of mass shootings end in suicide. Then he goes on to claim that it's not a mental health problem because the shooters aren't known to have mental health issues. Lack of information doesn't mean they didn't have mental health issues. That kind of logic, which doesn't compute, seems like a bigger problem than his "data." I'm pretty sure people that commit suicide have a mental health problem, identified or not. Many of his claims and examples scream more about a hugely deficient healthcare system (including mental health) rather than accessible guns and societal pressures.
One of his stated premises in the book, "They don't just snap. They choose to do these heinous acts." Begs the question of whether their choices are rational. Clearly, his examples from Hinckley to Chapman to the Austin tower shooter all have mental health problems that were undiagnosed. "A shrine" focused on a celebrity or politician would clearly be an unhealthy fixation and obsession.
It also seems that he undermines his arguments when he says "They are more like me and you than insane people." Then his evidence outlines the extremity of their actions and "thinking" leading up to their crimes.
Especially with the stalking chapter, that's a problem of coordinating mental health services and law enforcement. I'm in no way saying LEOs should be counselors, but that they should be able to refer crazies (stalkers and others) for evaluation and immediate counseling. We don't really have the cross-coordination between healthcare and police.
The Alaska example, a kid who had been bullied and didn't have access to any kind of counseling for his experiences from abuse, really seems to say that mental health treatment in schools - with positive adult relationship - really is more effective than traditional "profiling" for prevention. Plus, those fellow students that he told should be held accountable for not reporting the threat. Especially the kids who helped him load it and with the shotgun - that's also a lack of communication systems to report threats before they happen. Generally, students know about social media and their peers WAY before any adults know anything.
He keeps taking about how "profiling" will fail, but he's creating a compelling profile of students who commits these crimes. His profile he creates is a bullied, disaffected teen with a unsupported home life, few positive connections with adults, and every sign of depression... Usually crying out for help in multiple ways before actually doing anything.
I cringe at the statement "Educators and other community leaders instead needed to be proactive about what was so often a detectable danger." Yeah, let's put this on teachers - even though they don't have the training or inclination to be mental health workers. Give teachers more to do ... That'll work.
We currently have reporting structures in place, so his conclusions and statements seen outdated. Even his whole outlining of the Salem-Keizer team more emphasizes the need for mental health resources in the schools. His example from SKSD also rely on LEOs in coordination with mental health counselors. Guys with guns to back up the shrinks and helpers.
I don't think it is bad to label this a mental health problem, but that is just the beginning. If the country and politicians label it and shrug, then there is a bigger problem. I don't think the stigma for mental health problems is the same as it used to be. With so many people have depression, anxiety, etc. - the real stigma should be not seeking treatment or not having supports available.
I will give credit to the author that the school shootings issue is really about failed relationships - families, schools, communities, etc. - but the problem can't be a single fix. The question is how does a country/community build solid, supportive relationships in a world with broken families, drug addiction, fake social media 'relationships', a teacher shortage, and a dearth of mental health professionals? One step at a time....
March 24, 2024
The subtitle of Mark Follman’s Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America is somewhat misleading. To describe the book’s actual content, it should say “Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings by American Schoolchildren” because it is only persons in the unique position of being subject to an extra-judicial authority with the power to offer significant rewards and impose enforceable restrictions on whom the technique has been - or even could be - tested. The writer’s point is that people - classmates, friends, teachers, staff - invariably notice aspects of prodomal behavior which could, if reported to and acted upon by teachers, psychologists and volunteers, initiate an individualized program to “nudge” (Follman’s word) potential shooters onto a less-dangerous course. But his examples of interesting and effective interventions in certain western Oregon high schools fail to discuss the two major problems with such an approach. The obvious one is scalability. Given the public’s reluctance to devote resources to both education and rehabilitation it is hard to envision a route to significant expansion of such a program. More important is the extreme difficulty of permanently changing fundamental character. Recidivism is real, as is demonstrated by the long term success rates of weight-loss dieting or addiction rehab. One of the book’s anecdotes illustrates both problems: a high school student spoke of bringing a gun to school. After a subsequent suicide attempt he was hospitalized, and when he was released there was “a team of people showing him how much they cared about him through counseling, in-home tutoring, and help pursuing his interests in music and computers. … ‘to move him away from thinking about terrible acts.’” He graduated, continued counseling, got a job and an apartment. A few years later he bought a gun and used it to shoot 10 people, killing himself and two others. According to one of the researchers involved in his earlier nudging, “the outcome also laid bare daunting questions about managing a potentially dangerous person over the long term. Even if a troubled kid could be steered away from violence and set up to be a better-adjusted adult, what happened when he moved beyond the reach of those helping him? … At a certain fundamental level, answers to those questions did not exist.” I found Trigger Points interesting and informative, although some of the information boiled down to “you might be able to make teenagers shape up for a while, but in a free country in love with guns there’s no way to prevent an adult from shooting as many people as he wants to.”
February 8, 2025
This book focuses on the history of behavioral threat assessment; it doesn't talk about gun law reform much. Some reviewers did not like the history/ arrative lens but I did not mind it and found this to be an interesting read. A few main points:
-some people who make threats actually are a threat, many who make threats are just talking shit, and some who are genuinely dangerous will never make a threat prior to the attack
-shooters often view themselves as a victim who has been wronged, and nurse grievances for a long time
-the majority "leak" and will tell the people around them of their plans, though this may be through hints or indirect references. The majority that leak will also lie and deny that they intend any violence. The point the author makes here is that people should trust their gut if they feel uneasy about someone, especially if that unease is reflected in multiple other people.
-it is very common for them to research and copy another killer. The Columbine shooters in particular are frequently copied. This might be seen by wearing similar clothes, taking a "pilgrimage" to sites significant to other shooters, picking the same attack day, etc
-many shooters display narcissistic traits and are highly motivated by the notoriety they receive in the media
-it is difficult to truly profile a school shooter. The vast majority are men (98%) and white, though not all are. Many do not have a prior history of violence, though if they do it seems domestic violence & stalking in particular is a risk factor. Though there is a loner stereotype, a good chunk of shooters had friends and were well-connected.
-the role of mental health is overstated. Psychosis/delusions only present in a very small minority (5%). Only about 25% of shooters have ever been diagnosed with a mental health condition, although they broadly show signs of depression and suicidality. Point is less that they don't have emotional struggles and more that shooters aren't total lunatics having a psychotic break; they function well and would look normal to you or me. Attacks are planned usually well in advance, showing cognitive capacity.
-some people who make threats actually are a threat, many who make threats are just talking shit, and some who are genuinely dangerous will never make a threat prior to the attack
-shooters often view themselves as a victim who has been wronged, and nurse grievances for a long time
-the majority "leak" and will tell the people around them of their plans, though this may be through hints or indirect references. The majority that leak will also lie and deny that they intend any violence. The point the author makes here is that people should trust their gut if they feel uneasy about someone, especially if that unease is reflected in multiple other people.
-it is very common for them to research and copy another killer. The Columbine shooters in particular are frequently copied. This might be seen by wearing similar clothes, taking a "pilgrimage" to sites significant to other shooters, picking the same attack day, etc
-many shooters display narcissistic traits and are highly motivated by the notoriety they receive in the media
-it is difficult to truly profile a school shooter. The vast majority are men (98%) and white, though not all are. Many do not have a prior history of violence, though if they do it seems domestic violence & stalking in particular is a risk factor. Though there is a loner stereotype, a good chunk of shooters had friends and were well-connected.
-the role of mental health is overstated. Psychosis/delusions only present in a very small minority (5%). Only about 25% of shooters have ever been diagnosed with a mental health condition, although they broadly show signs of depression and suicidality. Point is less that they don't have emotional struggles and more that shooters aren't total lunatics having a psychotic break; they function well and would look normal to you or me. Attacks are planned usually well in advance, showing cognitive capacity.
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