School shooters : understanding high school, college, and adult perpetrators

Title:

Author:

Langman, Peter F., author.

ISBN:

9781442233560

Personal Author:

Langman, Peter F., author.

Publication Information:

Lanham ; Boulder ; New York ; London : Rowman & Littlefield, [2015]

Physical Description:

xviii, 279 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Subject Term:

School violence -- Prevention.

School shootings -- Prevention.

Document ID:

SD_ILS:2194062

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Library	Collection	Collection	Call Number	Status
Searching... Auberry Branch Library (Fresno Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Non-fiction Area	371.782 LAN	Searching... Unknown
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School shootings scare everyone, even those not immediately affected. They make national and international news. They make parents afraid to send their children off to school. But they also lead to generalizations about those who perpetrate them. Most assumptions about the perpetrators are wrong and many of the warning signs are missed until it's too late. Here, Peter Langman takes a look at 48 national and international cases of school shootings in order to dispel the myths, explore the motives, and expose the realities of preventing school shootings from happening in the future, including identifying at risk individuals and helping them to seek help before it's too late.

Author Notes

Peter Langman is a psychologist whose work on school shooters has received international recognition. His previous book, Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters, was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title and was translated into German, Dutch, and Finnish. Langman's research has been cited in congressional testimony on Capitol Hill and thousands of news outlets. He has been interviewed by the New York Times, CBS-TV, Fox, CNN, the BBC, and over 150 other news outlets in the USA, Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Middle East. Langman has trained thousands of professionals in education, mental health, and law enforcement on identifying potential school shooters. He maintains the largest online collection of materials relating to school shooters at schoolshooters.info. He is in private practice in Allentown, PA.

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

Many causes have been proposed to explain school shootings. These include (but are not limited to) bullying, mental illness, exposure to violent video games, drugs, and accessibility of guns. Research, of course, has delved into each of these issues with contradictory findings as the usual result. Some studies demonstrate a correlation with gun accessibility (more accessibility leads to more violence), whereas others demonstrate the opposite (knowing others might be carrying weapons influences choice of targets). In short, the literature was sorely in need of a book such as this one. Addressing the issue by looking at both the perpetrators and the victims, this book reminds the reader that, in many cases, victims are not entirely random and reveal much about the possible motives behind the attacks. By analyzing 48 cases of mass school shootings in the US and abroad, Langman (a psychologist well known for his expertise on this subject) provides insights into the assumptions that have been made about the perpetrators and how many times the warning signs have been missed or not heeded. More importantly, he provides detailed information on prevention strategies gleaned from his work on this subject. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Randall E. Osborne, Texas State University

List of Figures	p. ix
List of Tables	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction	p. xv
Comments on the Cases	p. xvi
Comments on Diagnosis	p. xvii
Comments on Symptoms and Patterns	p. xvii
1 Laving the Foundation	p. 1
Three Populations of School Shooters	p. 2
Three Psychological Types of School Shooters	p. 3
2 Psychopathic Secondary School Shooters	p. 5
A Word on Psychopathic Personalities	p. 5
Attacks by Psychopathic Secondary School Shooters	p. 7
Robert Poulin	p. 7
Brenda Spencer	p. 10
Barry Loukaitis	p. 14
Andrew Golden	p. 16
Eric Harris	p. 18
Robert Steinhauser	p. 23
Tim Kretschmer	p. 25
Comments	p. 28
3 Psychotic Secondary School Shooters	p. 29
A Word on Psychotic Symptoms	p. 29
Attacks by Psychotic Secondary School Shooters	p. 31
Lake Woodham	p. 31
Michael Carneal	p. 34
Andrew Wurst	p. 37
Kipland Kinkel	p. 39
Dylan Klebold	p. 42
Alvaro Castillo	p. 44
Pekka-Eric Auvinen	p. 47
Comments	p. 51
4 Traumatized Secondary School Shooters	p. 55
A Word on Trauma	p. 55
Attacks by Traumatized Secondary School Shooters	p. 57
Eric Houston	p. 57
Gary Scott Pennington	p. 60
James House	p. 62
Evan Ramsey	p. 65
Mitchell Johnson	p. 68
Jason Hoffman	p. 70
Jeffrey Weise	p. 72
Eric Hainstock	p. 76
Asa Coon	p. 79
Thomas "T.J." Lane	p. 81
Comments	p. 82
5 College Shooters: Targeted Attacks	p. 85
Targeted Attacks by Psychopathic Shooters	p. 86
Gang Lu	p. 86
Valery Fabrikant	p. 88
Robert Flora	p. 91
Comments	p. 93
Targeted Attacks by Shooters with Psychotic and Pscyopathic Traits	p. 94
Peter Odighizuwa	p. 94
Biswanath Halder	p. 96
Amy Bishop	p. 99
Comments	p. 102
6 College Shooters: Random and Ambiguous Attacks	p. 103
Random Attacks by Psychopathic Shooters	p. 103
Charles Whitman	p. 103
Wayne Lo	p. 107
Comments	p. 110
Random Attacks by Psychotic Shooters	p. 110
Scung Hui Cho	p. 110
Steven Kazmierczak	p. 114
Matti Saari	p. 117
Comments	p. 119
Ambiguous Attacks	p. 121
Edward Allaway	p. 121
One Goh	p. 123
Comments	p. 125
7 Aberrant Adult Shooters	p. 127
Young Adults Who Attacked Colleges They Did Not Attend	p. 127
Marc Lepine	p. 127
Jillian Robbins	p. 129
Kimveer Gill	p. 131
Comments	p. 134
Adults Who Attacked Schools They Had Attended Years Before	p. 134
Patrick Purdy	p. 134
Bruco Eastwood	p. 137
Wellington de Oliveira	p. 138
Adam Lanza	p. 140
Comments	p. 143
Adults Who Attacked Elementary Schools to Which They Had No Connection	p. 143
Laurie Dann	p. 143
James Wilson	p. 147
Thomas Hamilton	p. 149
Comments	p. 153
Adult Whose Attack Was in an Atypical Educational Setting	p. 154
Jiverly Wong	p. 154
8 Patterns among School Shooters	p. 157
The Significance of the Body	p. 157
Military Failures	p. 160
Educational Failures	p. 163
Occupational Failures	p. 169
Romantic Failures	p. 171
Frequent and Significant Relocations	p. 172
Psychotic Shooters: Sibling Rivalry	p. 173
Other Possible Factors	p. 174
External Influences	p. 176
Peer Support	p. 176
Ideologies and Rolf Models	p. 177
Media Violence	p. 178
Summary	p. 180
9 Preventing School Shootings: Threat Assessment and Warning Signs	p. 181
The Many Faces of School Shooters	p. 182
Threat Assessment	p. 183
What Are the Warning Signs?	p. 184
Forms of Leakage	p. 185
School Assignments	p. 186
Warning Signs at Home	p. 187
Warning Signs Online	p. 188
Sudden Purchase of Firearms	p. 188
School Employees	p. 189
Aberrant Attacks	p. 190
The Unpredictability of Victim Selection	p. 191
Immediate Aftermath	p. 192
10 Key Findings	p. 195
Findings versus Conventional Wisdom	p. 195
The Magnitude of Their Attacks	p. 201
Suicide among School Shooters	p. 203
The Typology across the Populations of Shooters	p. 206
Other Observations	p. 209
Conclusion	p. 214
Notes	p. 215
Selected Bibliography	p. 259
Index	p. 267
About the Author	p. 279

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