What does the The "Average" School Shooter Profile Look Like? (The Short Version)

If you came to Echoes of Columbine in search of a way to 100% positively identify a school shooter before the fact, you've come to the wrong place. Any group or person who clams they have any single identifier is just plain wrong.

Currently, the only way to find them is to wait for them to hurt someone and then try to intervene as quickly as possible. That method is costing America dearly.

Everyone has their pet cause of course. Many have blamed bullying, while just as many say it is easy access to guns. Others blame it on mental health issues. Violence in movies, music, and video games are favorite targets as well. Some say it is the media fascination with blood and anti-heroes. The copycat effect. Lack of parenting and failure to disciple. Weak school structures. Overcrowded classrooms. A godless society. Latchkey kids.

Nobody seems to agree where the blame should go, and all of this finger pointing is wasting valuable time. They not only keep happening, but have increased in frequency. The cold hard truth is that we cannot change school shooters without changing the environments they are being created in.

Over the past 10 years I've heard just about every reason possible for why these rampages keep happening including mass mind control and aliens. We will leave the conspiracy theories in the closet where they belong and focus on the reality. We will also leave the one sided solutions to the activists.

We are going to talk about the cold hard facts. There is no one factor that will turn a normal, American teenager into a cold blooded killer. There are many factors, and to solve this crisis, we need to look at the bigger picture.

In 2002 the U.S.Secret Service completed the Safe School Initiative study. After studying dozens of school shooters they found there is no useful profile to guide professionals. That is part of what makes finding a solution so difficult. There is no useful profile of a school shooter to rely on. They don't all wander around in black trench coats listening to dark music and issuing vague threats. There is no red flag checklist to follow.

Most rampage shooters looked just like every other disaffected American teen. For the most part, these are not just bullies and abused children who just snapped. They were not monstrous mutations of nature either. In most cases, these kids were just like every other teen-ager in America until...

Until it was too late.

A look at your "average school shooter" will reveal very little that is remarkable before the fact.When you comb through the profiles of mass shooters, you expect to find glaring differences between them and the rest of society. You wont.

Mass shooters are predominantly white males, average age 35. Shooters who targets schools are most often school age, and usually students or former students of the institution.

Most of these kids came from two loving parents who were still married. Rarely was physical abuse found in their pasts, more often they came from authoritarian homes with high expectations. There were power struggles, just like every other home. Strict homes with strong rules and little room for error perhaps, but nothing outside of what would be considered normal for our society.

Backgrounds were upper middle class, and they were most often from small towns or suburbs. Their school careers were unremarkable as well. They had fairly typical after school and summer jobs. Even some fairly normal hobbies.

Rarely involved in sports they were often bullied by jocks or popular kids. Not excessive physical bullying, indeed most of the time witnesses identified it as "boys will be boys" type teasing. Reported bullying included questioning of sexuality or manhood. Harassment such as calling them homosexuals despite their orientation, or taunts of being somehow less than the ideal male.

Which may be one reason why nearly every mass shooter shows a strong desire to prove themselves. Most showed a deep desire to be acknowledged in some grand way. Perhaps they sought revenge for slights real or imagined, or a way to feel less invisible. They almost always showed a strong need to BE someone.

They tended towards violent entertainment more often than not. Some gravitated towards books like Hilter's "Mein Kampf," or Stephen King's "Rage" (No longer in print.) Others leaned towards spree killing movies like "Natural Born Killers," and "Basketball Diaries." As far as video games go, first person shooter games are popular.

It wasn't just that they consumed this media. They became obsessed with it. They were obsessed with violence in general and it didn't seem to matter what the source was. They watched the movies over and over, carried tattered and highlighted copies of the books, they immersed themselves so deeply in the video games that reality almost became the simulation. They talked about violence, spent their spare money on violence, immersed themselves in violence.

They sought out opportunities for their violent tendencies to be accepted. Anything that gave them a false sense of control over an out of out of control world seemed attractive to them. Prior military experience is common with many of the older shooters, and talk of joining the military or law enforcement was common among the younger shooters. Many have tried to join the military only to be turned down, or enlisted but were discharged.

They seek out peers where their warped views will be accepted, or they have very few friends at all. They often leave a strong online presence, and leave behind small clues that are often missed. They often seek out groups focused on power and control over others. Nazis, white power groups, survivalist groups, even religious extremes attract them.

A history of abusing animals is often present. Abusive behaviors towards females are often reported. Though they rarely have a significant record with law enforcement, there are often reports of threats towards others, even in their own families. All three elements of the Menninger Triad are present in the majority the shooters: they wished to die (suicidal), they wish to kill (homicidal), and they wish to be killed (suicide by cop).

These people want to kill, they want to die, and they want to be killed.

There is no proof that these incidents were linked to any specific mental illness. Schizophrenia was diagnosed after the fact in a number of cases, (Kip Kinkle and Michael Carneal) but only a small few. There are often signs of Atypical Depression and Mixed Personality Disorder with paranoid, antisocial and narcissistic features but not always a diagnoses. They are often reported to be on psychotropic medications, and it is known that dosages had been recently changed or stopped entirely in many cases.

Clinical trials have shown that for a small number of individuals feelings of suicidality or violence towards others can worsen. It was determined that the risks of using these medications on adolescents far outweighed the benefits, and they are not recommended. Beginning in 2006 these medications began to require a black box warning highlighting these risks and warning doctors and warning families and caregivers to monitor patients closely for warning signs.

These black box warnings are often overlooked.

Many point to antidepressants as a cause of the rise of mass shootings, but it is important to remember than many, many people are on medications for a variety of reasons without issue. Many people are on psychotropic medications because of prior depression or mood disorders, this does not mean they are or will ever become violent.

Chances are the violent tendencies were there long before the medications came into play.

Mass shooters didn't just like violence they were obsessed with it. So it stands to reason that they didn't just like weapons they truly loved them. They worked summer jobs for them, they saved up for them for months and years, they trained for them, and they collected them. They even named them. They. Loved. Weapons.

Weapon of choice varied, with a definite preference for rapid fire military style weapons. Not all of them had prior weapons experience, but many still were able to hit their targets with remarkable accuracy without real world practice. The use of high powered rifles and bullets designed to do maximum damage renders wounds far more destructive and much less survivable than handguns or rifles.

But guns were not the only ingredient found, far from it.

In almost every school shooting incident the same basic ingredients were found to differing degrees, but still after years of research no single profile of a mass shooter has ever emerged to warn us who might be next.

So far, most efforts at preventing school shootings have been geared towards minimizing damage once a shooting has begun, and stopping the shooting as soon as possible after it starts.

If there are ways to locate these potential shooters before they get a gun, or better yet, before they go off the edge in the first place we CAN fight against rampage shootings, but only if we refuse to allow ourselves to give up. We can't allow ourselves or those with the power to make changes to focus on one single issue.

This isn't something that will be solved by taking one action, or even a group of actions. It is time we took a long hard look at the many ingredients that go into a mass shooter individually and as a whole.

Up next: If there were a recipe for school shooters, what would it be?