Missy never returned to teaching. She’s been in therapy for the past fifteen years, “about a thousand hours,” she says.
—
After our first interview, Missy felt inspired to do more. She attended parent training on threat assessment and emergency planning with Safe and Sound Schools, a nonprofit founded by parents who lost children at Sandy Hook. She then drove to North Dakota to attend training by the Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Technical Assistance Center. During the lunch break, she approached the trainers and told them who she was. They were shocked and apologized that some of their slides included information about her school’s shooter and photos from the shooting. A few months later, they invited Missy to be the keynote speaker at a national training event.
Missy has also worked with the “I Love U Guys” Foundation, founded in 2006 by John-Michael and Ellen Keyes following a school shooting that took the life of their daughter, Emily. Emily texted “I Love U Guys” during the ordeal, which became a rallying cry for the organization: to promote school safety and preparedness through the lens of kindness, community, and responsibility. The organization’s measured “standard response protocol” for all threats to student safety, including weather emergencies, is the antidote to the traumatic ALICE protocol discussed earlier in the book. Missy has spoken at “I Love U Guys” events nationally. During the pandemic, as all her speaking engagements were canceled, she wrote her own children’s school’s emergency operation plans and started to get involved in statewide policy.
Missy has told her story to rapt audiences at several of the Violence Project’s trainings, and each time she tells it, her voice gets stronger. She describes our research as “her missing piece.” She explains: “We had security. I think we had a good culture and school climate. We had community liaisons. But we didn’t have mental health. And we didn’t have formal systems where the teachers and administration were talking to each other about students they were concerned about.”
After one presentation, at which a parent who lost her son at Sandy Hook was in the audience, Missy approached Jill in the hallway, her voice a whisper and shaking with emotion: “When I meet parents from the Sandy Hook shooting, I always feel the need to apologize. Why didn’t we stop it? I’m so sorry we didn’t stop it. Y’all came after us. Why didn’t we stop it?”
During the course of this research, we became aware of “survivor networks” like this: informal and formal groups of “similar others” who have experienced the tragedy and trauma of a mass shooting and who provide for one another a range of social and emotional supports to assist in healing and recovery.5 It was a humbling experience to sit with survivors and victims united in grief but also in purpose: to help each other through the day and ensure that what happened to them never happens again. It’s a club to which no one wants to be a member and that no one can ever leave. Survivors and victims share an unspeakable bond. “This is sadness that sinks into your bones and never goes away,” Tom Teves from No Notoriety told us when we asked about his contact with other victims’ families. Every anniversary of the shooting, every missed birthday or milestone, every back-to-school day and graduation, the grief comes back in waves. “We’re never untraumatized. Which means we can’t be retraumatized. It’s not like I broke my arm but now it’s healed. You just cope,” Tom says.
—
Over a year later, Missy and Jill meet in Jill’s university office. Missy is in town to visit family. “What’s next for you?” Jill asks.
Missy laughs. “I’m not sure what’s coming next for me. I can never go back to the classroom; that’s not in the books for me. I don’t know exactly why—guilt, I guess. And fear.”
Jill presses her: “What do you think we need to be working on in terms of prevention in schools? What needs to happen to stop this from happening again?”
Missy pauses. “I’m a math teacher with a math brain. I think of things as black-and-white, something to be solved. I’ve been trying to solve this. But this is fuzzy. It’s complex. I’ve had to learn to accept that.”
—
It is complex. There are no quick fixes to systemic social problems. For too long, America has either viewed possible solutions in isolation or created false dichotomies that are pitted against each other, from gun safety measures to mental health treatment. Even when solutions have merit, they are then wrongly dismissed for being imperfect. The reality is that imperfections do not render solutions completely useless. There is no one solution to rule them all. As with Swiss cheese, there are holes—but if you layer the slices, one on top of the other, the holes start to get covered up. And layering imperfect solutions, holistically, is the only way to prevent mass violence.
After every mass shooting, the media like to fixate on “motive,” but in reality, the pathway to mass violence is long and winding. At the moment of their crimes, mass shooters usually have suffered trauma. They’ve experienced an existential and often suicidal crisis in the days and weeks leading up to the shootings. They’ve searched for validation for their feelings and have found it in America’s cultural script for mass violence: its long history of firearm-enabled violence, its values of rugged individualism and success at any cost, and the words and deeds of mass shooters past and present. And they’ve had the opportunity to shoot, often because of lax gun laws.
This complexity doesn’t mean we give up. The voices of the victims, survivors, families, and perpetrators themselves have shown us the many possible off-ramps that could be taken along the way.
To recap, here’s what we all can do to stop the mass shooting epidemic:
As Individuals
Trauma
Build relationships and mentor young people
Crisis
Develop strong skills in crisis intervention and suicide prevention
Social Proof
Monitor our own media consumption
Opportunity
Safe storage of firearms; if you see or hear something, say something
As Institutions
Trauma
Create warm environments; trauma-informed practices; universal trauma screening
Crisis
Build care teams and referral processes; train staff
Social Proof
Teach media literacy; limit active shooter drills for children
Opportunity
Situational crime prevention; anonymous reporting systems
As a Society
Trauma
Teach social emotional learning in schools. Build a stronger social safety net with adequate jobs, childcare, maternity leave, health insurance, and access to higher education
Crisis
Reduce stigma and increase knowledge of mental health; open access to high quality mental health treatment; fund counselors in schools
Social Proof
No Notoriety protocol; hold media and social media companies accountable for their content
Opportunity
Universal background checks, red flag laws, permit-to-purchase, magazine limits, wait periods, assault rifle ban
These off-ramps have a broad diffusion of benefits. Not only will they likely impact mass shootings, but they will also reduce other forms of deaths of despair like suicide, reduce other forms of violence, increase reporting of concerns, curb the spread of hateful rhetoric, reduce the impact of trauma, and improve our mental well-being.
—
In one of Perpetrator A’s last letters, he reflected on the difficult time he had answering all of our questions:
“This has turned out to be much more difficult than I expected. Some of the memories I’m forcing myself to recall are not easy to deal with.”
In prison, he sees a psychologist and takes antidepressants. He concludes,
“I pray these responses help in some way further your study. Thank you very much for allowing me to contribute!”
In his final letter, Perpetrator B, the school shooter, signed off:
THANK YO
U FOR WRITING TO ME AND FOR SEEKING MY ASSISTANCE. THANK YOU FOR DOING THIS RESEARCH AND THE TIME YOU AND YOUR HELPERS HAVE PUT INTO THIS. TAKE CARE NOW AND MAY GOD BLESS YOU! I WILL ALWAYS PRAY FOR YOU.
Exorcising the mass shooting monster will take all of us, working individually and collectively, to create the safe and connected world we want to live in.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is full of personal stories. Many were hard to tell. We are forever indebted to the people who shared them with us and will never forget how they sacrificed a little bit of themselves in an effort to make the world a better place. For your honesty, hospitality, and humility, we thank you. The time we spent together has changed us for the better.
Research reported in this book was generously supported by the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, under award number 2018–75-CX-0023. Please note, the opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this book are ours and not those of the Department of Justice. Thanks especially to Basia Lopez and all the participants at NIJ’s 2019 Topical Meeting to Advance Research on Mass Violence, for vital input on the early stages of this project.
NIJ provided the financial capital, but a team of incredibly smart and skilled undergraduate students at Hamline University was the human capital behind this project. To Amanda Jensen, Kyle Knapp, Stasia Higgins, and Elliot Fay: Thank you for your steadfast commitment to the facts, careful attention to the details, and perfect combination of flexibility and tenacity in your pursuit of all leads. For the late nights, early mornings, and vibrant exchange of ideas: Thank you. Thanks also to Jessica Lindgren, Hannah Klumb, Hannah Peterson, and Grace McMahon.
Thank you to Hamline University for providing everything we needed for a project like this to thrive. Thank you also to the late David Steele, for convincing us to apply for the grant that changed our lives. To Marcela Kostihova, Shelly Schaefer, Gina Erickson, Sarah Greenman, and other Hamline colleagues: Thank you for supporting us from the beginning. Likewise, a shout-out to Metropolitan State University and the team at the School of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice for your equally enthusiastic support. Thanks especially to Andrew Johnson for reviewing an early draft of the book and helping us see the forest for the trees.
To our partners in crime at the Violence Project Research Center, Missy Dodds, Jeremy Kalin, and Katie Pekel: Thank you for your friendship and for living the mission of this project. We hope we make you proud. Thanks also to Mary Dillon for all the small things that make a big difference.
Special thanks to the team at Abrams Press for helping bring this book to market, especially our editor, Garrett McGrath, for seeing something in this project and pushing us to fulfill its potential with insightful comments and good humor.
A huge thank-you goes to our agent and biggest champion, Veronica Goldstein, and the team at Fletcher and Company for taking a chance on us, always believing in us, and making our first foray into trade publishing a truly magical experience.
To our friends and mentors, especially Analisa Calderon: Thank you. To anyone who ever attended one of our trainings and asked us a critical question, or one of our classes and asked us for clarification; to anyone who challenged our work in the ivory tower and the public square: Thank you. You all helped us fine-tune the ideas in this book and make the final product that much better.
Writing a book is a labor of love and would not be possible without the patience and understanding of our families. James’s father died suddenly, unexpectedly, the summer we wrote this book, and so the meaning of family took on renewed importance for us. To our parents and siblings: Thank you for building the foundation for everything that came next. Kevin and Emily: Thank you for believing in us and in this project, for your constant support, and for holding down the fort while we were interviewing and writing. And to our incredible children: We do this work for you, to help build the safe and compassionate world we want you to live in. May you always ask the hard questions and see the humanity in others.
AFTERWORD
Individuals who commit, or intend to commit, mass shootings have among the highest public profiles of all violent offenders. The Violence Project began as a code name for our research into their lives, to protect the identities of our research subjects. It has since grown into its own nonpartisan, nonprofit research center. At the Violence Project, we are dedicated to advancing data-driven solutions to vexing social problems and ending the scourge of violence in our communities. To learn more about our work or get involved, follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @theviolencepro, or visit us at www.theviolenceproject.org.
Our interviews with incarcerated mass shooters began in 2018 after we received funding from the National Institute of Justice and approval from Hamline University’s Institutional Review Board. We wrote to 31 mass shooters living in prisons (as opposed to psychiatric hospitals, where consenting to research is difficult), the entire sample universe we were aware of at the time, plus a handful of homicide offenders who attempted mass shootings but fell below the threshold of four killed. Initially, nine perpetrators responded to our recruitment letter, which described the project and asked each potential participant if they were interested in being interviewed anonymously for a research study about their life histories, without any pay or compensation. Three letters were returned to us because the recipients were not allowed to read mail. Two of the nine responding perpetrators declined to participate, and others had their attorneys contact us to decline due to pending litigation. Seven agreed to be interviewed. A written consent form was then mailed to each participant detailing the benefits and risks of the study. Brief phone calls were subsequently held to answer any questions about the consent form or the research project.
Research in prisons is inherently challenging, especially when some of their most notorious and dangerous inmates are the subject of your research. Owing to constraints imposed by state and federal corrections departments, we were denied access to two of the participants, and face-to-face interviews were not permitted. Five of the perpetrators were able to sign the consent form and send it back to us. We conducted interviews via telephone and/or written correspondence. In most cases, we exchanged one or two phone calls and, in some cases, up to twenty letters examining the lives and crimes of our interviewees. Interview questions asked about their childhoods and adolescence, their families, their education and work histories, their health and mental health histories, their access to firearms, and other factors of interest. In two cases, interviewees voluntarily signed a release form to allow us to gather records from hospitals, schools, and social services that corroborated their firsthand accounts.
While five mass shooters are hardly representative of all mass shooters, they amount to about a sixth of all mass shooters currently alive and incarcerated; thus the important insights provided do have significance.
For our community interviews, participants were recruited via a mix of what researchers call “purposive” and “snowball” sampling techniques. In total, we interviewed forty-four people: Sixteen were personally connected to mass shooters as family, friends, romantic partners, work colleagues, or survivors of their shootings; six were grieving family members who offered victims’ perspectives; five provided personal insights into averted mass shootings; the rest were either first responders or community stakeholders in shooting tragedies or provided some other professional insight or expertise pertinent to our investigation. The interviews were semi-structured and lasted ninety minutes on average, although some people we interviewed multiple times, and some interviews lasted as long as eight hours. Owing to approved ethical protocols, no interviews were recorded, so quotations captured by hand and used in this book are not strictly verbatim but rather are faithfully reconstructed from shorthand notes. In no way do they distort the language or intentions of our interviewees. Two people were present at each interview, one to ask questions and the other to take notes.
All statistical data on mass
shooters and mass shootings reported on in this book are derived from the Violence Project’s database of mass shooters in the United States, which is publicly available, for free, on our website. There you will also find a detailed methodology and codebook for the more than 150 variables in the database, plus separate tabs on the more than 370 firearms used in mass shootings and the 1,200 victims who lost their lives to them. Each variable is hyperlinked to online sources, meaning you can trace the origins of our interpretations and fact-check them. Like thousands of other researchers, graduate students, and journalists, you can download the database as a spreadsheet and run your own analyses.
Also on our website is a link to our “Off-Ramp Project,” a hub for violence prevention education and training (www.off-ramp.org). There you will find a series of online training modules for educators at K–12 schools, colleges, and universities; for workplace employees and supervisors; and for law enforcement and private security professionals, to become certified in crisis intervention and de-escalation, suicide prevention, and some of the other practical skills discussed in this book. The website also includes downloadable and customizable protocols for building a working crisis team in your organization and a list of resources to help divert people away from the pathway to violence, some of which we share here in the next few pages for convenience:
American Psychological Association (https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/crisis)
Click on your state in the APA’s “Crisis Hotline and Resources” to find a mental health professional in your area.
Boys & Girls Club of America (https://www.bgca.org/)
A national organization of local chapters that provide voluntary after-school programs and mentoring for young people.
The Violence Project Page 21