By Bruce Bower
Two decades ago, two students opened fire at Colorado’s Columbine High School, killing 12 of their classmates and a teacher before turning their guns on themselves. In the aftermath, psychologist James Garbarino interviewed one of the shooters’ parents and brother, in hopes of understanding why a troubled young man would carry out such carnage.
But Garbarino came up empty. “It’s very hard to see how any one thing led to the Columbine event,” says Garbarino, of Loyola University Chicago. In fact, 20 years after that shocking tragedy, there is still no established science to predict who might become a mass shooter (SN: 4/14/18, p. 14). And the attacks keep happening. In the last week alone, there have been several mass shootings in public, including especially deadly attacks in El Paso, Texas, on August 3 and in Dayton, Ohio, on August 4, that left 32 people dead, including the Ohio gunman. The killings have renewed speculation about why certain young males, for the most part, decide to spray bullets across crowded spaces.
But scientists are also now thinking more broadly about the issue. Some say testing a range of public policy approaches to see which best prevent mass public shootings, rather than exploring motives for homicidal rampages, offers the most potential. A preventive research program on public shootings would search for practical policy prescriptions aimed at cutting imminent attacks short.
Researchers need to focus on identifying ways to stop mass shootings before they happen, says Philip Cook, a professor of economics and sociology at Duke University. Mass shooters often communicate threats to others in person or online shortly before acting, researchers have found. So, studies of how best to respond to such threats on social media or in daily life could help to refine proposed “red flag” laws aimed at taking guns from those deemed dangerous, Cook says.