While emotions remain high surrounding a mass school shooting in Georgia and many other copycat school threats across the country, many people wonder why this keeps happening.

More than 30 years ago, Mary Ellen O’Toole, a former FBI profiler, began researching school shootings as part of a small group of academics, law-enforcement professionals and psychologists. She is quoted in a FiveThirtyEight article in 2022 as saying the risk factors they identified and recommendations made to address the issue remain valid.

Marisa Randazzo once served as the chief psychologist for the Secret Service and reports her findings mirrored those of O’Toole. Research shows that mass shooters typically give many warning signs, but programs and strategies aimed at preventing school shootings are often under-developed and do not train all teachers, students, and staff on what to look and listen for.

Randazzo found a pattern of deeply depressed young people, often victims of trauma or abuse, who were unable to cope stressors that an adult wouldn’t necessarily see as especially traumatic.

GNN