School Shooters

Understanding High School, College, and Adult Perpetrators

by Peter Langman

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Pub Date Jan 16 2015 | Archive Date Feb 13 2015

Description

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.
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.

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...

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Advance Praise

Langman dives deep into the backgrounds of our nation's school shooters to analyze their mindsets, discover patterns and dispel common myths. He uncovers numerous critical misconceptions about school shooters and presents key findings to strengthen prevention and intervention practices for keeping schools safe.
— Kenneth S. Trump, M.P.A., President of National School Safety and Security Services, Cleveland, Ohio

Peter Langman's book is a welcome advance over the existing popular library of books about school shootings, many of which are grounded in hunch and fueled by hysteria. This volume features insightful analysis of schoolyard assailants, with carefully researched case studies, and should be of immense value to policy-makers and professionals alike. I, for one, will keep Langman's School Shooters on my nearby bookshelf of favorites. For years to come, this book should remain as one of the most important contributions to the fast-growing body of work on the topic of school violence.
— James Alan Fox, Ph.D., The Lipman Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Northeastern University; author of Violence and Security on Campus: From Pre-School through College

School Shooters is a captivating read that reaches beyond the headlines and media coverage to reveal the larger context of the narrative exploring the factors that may have contributed to the attack. The quotes from the attackers at the beginning of each case narrative bring the reader closer to understanding the mind of the killer. Peter Langman truly grapples with events from Columbine to Sandy Hook and his passion, dedication to detail, and ability to draw together complex thoughts in his typology of psychopathic, psychotic, and traumatized school shooters provides a wealth of information. Langman leaves no stone unturned and no narrative unexplored as he lays out for his reader a well-reasoned and meticulously researched book that helps us all better understand what drives some to commit these horrific attacks. Work like Peter Langman’s is key, because understanding past attacks is essential to the prevention of future attacks.
— Brian Van Brunt, Ed.D, author, Ending Campus Violence: New Approaches to Prevention; Senior Vice President for Professional Program Development, The NCHERM Group

Langman dives deep into the backgrounds of our nation's school shooters to analyze their mindsets, discover patterns and dispel common myths. He uncovers numerous critical misconceptions about...

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Acknowledgments
Other Works by Author
Introduction
Chapter 1: Laying the Foundation
Secondary School Shooters
Chapter 2: Psychopathic Secondary School Shooters
Chapter 3: Psychotic Secondary School Shooters
Chapter 4: Traumatized Secondary School Shooters
College Shooters
Chapter 5: College Shooters: Targeted Attacks
Chapter 6: College Shooters: Random and Ambiguous Attacks
Aberrant Adult Shooters
Chapter 7: Aberrant Adult Shooters
Patterns and Prevention
Chapter 8: Patterns in the Lives of School Shooters
Chapter 9: Preventing School Shootings: Threat Assessment and Warning Signs
Chapter 10: Key Findings
Bibliography

Available Editions

EDITION	Hardcover
ISBN	9781442233560
PRICE	$36.00 (USD)

Additional Information

Average rating from 8 members

Featured Reviews

Kari B, Reviewer

I work in a school and I know the chances of something like a school shooting happening to me are remote, but it is still a topic that worries me. I thought that this book did a great job of showing how many of the shooters lived in difficult situations and experienced abuse and neglect as well as the results of poverty. Some of them are psychotic (as in, out of touch with reality), and some are essentially narcissists or what we might call sociopaths who don't experience empathy. Seeing that there isn't a clear pattern actually made me feel safer, because the training we receive at school has taught us some of the warning signs. I appreciated the brief overview of each shooter that did not emphasize the crime in detail and instead focused on their background and the possible causes of each shooting. It wasn't light reading, but it was helpful to me.

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Educator 196348

Very important book to read to help you understand some of the mind of a school shooter. As shootings are on the rise, I believe that this type of book should be on everyone's bookshelf.