Research Paper On School Shootings

“School shooting” is a headline on the news that is unfortunately very common to see today. There have been hundreds of shootings in the United States throughout the year and they have been studied to see their similarities. Many people believe that the shooters are alike, yet others disagree and believe that the shootings are just random. School shootings could be better addressed and prevented if authorities understood that these shooters share a similar set a similar set of traits like showing warning signs, having similar personalities, and committing similar attacks. Most shooters show warning signs. The FBI did a study profiling several school shooters and came up with many interesting statistics. “93% of attackers engaged in some …show more content…
According to Peter Langman, there are three different kinds of school shooters. They are traumatized, psychopathic, and psychotic. Traumatized shooters grow up in chronically dysfunctional families. Parental substance abuse, domestic violence, physical or sexual abuse, and frequent relocations or changing caregivers are all characteristics of a dysfunctional family. These things can have very negative effects on the attacker and could cause them to want to commit violent acts. A psychopathic shooter is usually narcissistic, entitled, and lacking in empathy. They have the ability to charm people and are very deceptive. The third type of shooter is psychotic. Psychotic shooters typically have schizophrenia or schizotypal personality disorder with several psychotic symptoms. These symptoms include: hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thoughts and behavior, and severely impaired social and emotional functioning (Langman). These symptoms when paired together can make people want to commit violent acts. Another thing believed to be a cause of violent acts is cynical shyness. “Cynical shyness is an extreme form of shyness found mostly in males that leads to violent behavior. Some characteristics are: lack of empathy, low tolerance for frustration, anger outbursts, and social rejection (“Cynical Shyness”). Many psychologists believe that a lot of school shooters suffer from this …show more content…
They can be put into four different groups. There are targeted groups, targeted individuals, random, and mixed attacks. Targeted groups are specific groups like women and children who are not known to the attacker, and targeted individuals are specific people known to the attacker. Random attacks are just like they sound and include random victims. A combination of both targeted groups and individuals, and random attacks are known as a mixed attack (Langman). There are also several very famous school shootings that have some of the same characteristics. Columbine is one of the most well known school shootings, in which thirteen people died and twenty were wounded. The attackers were eighteen year old Eric Harris, and seventeen year old Dylan Klebold. They planned the attack for months, and once it was carried out, they killed themselves (“Columbine”). The Sandy Hook shooting is also very well known. Twenty year old Adam Lanza shot and killed twenty kids and six adults. After the attack, he too killed himself (“Adam Lanza”). Finally, the Virginia Tech shooting is very well known. The shooter was twenty three year old Seung-Hui Cho. In his attack, he murdered thirtytwo people, and killed himself after doing so (“Virginia Tech”). In all three of these cases, the shooters killed themselves afterwards. This is a very common thing for perpetrators of mass violence to do. Also, all of these shootings got a massive