School Staff/Clinicians: Awesome New Overview Article on Youth Violence:

David A. Perna, PhD
Licensed Psychologist
Clinical Instructor
Harvard Medical School

School Rampage Shooters

Up-to-Date Research
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92 % of “School shootings occur in stable, close knit, low-crime, small rural towns or suburbs.”

Brad Bushman, one of our nation's most renowned researchers in the area of youth violence and aggression, has co-authored an excellent overview article on youth violence in this month’s American Psychologist. Here are just a few of the relevant talking points related to rampage shootings:

School Rampage Shootings: 92 % of “School shootings occur in stable, close knit, low-crime, small rural towns or suburbs.”
 
​School Shooter Profiles:

• Over 75% of the shooters are white adolescent males.
• Only “34% of shooters are loners” (p. 19), contrary to commonly held beliefs.
• However, “78% of school shooters were socially marginalized.” In essence they wanted to join new groups of friends but were rejected.
• Most younger shooters were likely (68%) to obtain guns from their homes.
• Most older shooters, such as college students were likely to turn to legal ways of obtaining guns, via the internet or gun shows.
• In typical homicides only 0.001% of cases involve coexisting suicide, while 43% of rampage shooters commit suicide.

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"Older shooters generally obtain guns legally"

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Here are a few additional points/definitions made in the article that I found interesting or helpful:

•  US Youth Homicide Rate: It is 3-40 times higher when compared to other countries with a similar level of economic development.
• Aggression: Defined as, “Any behavior intended to harm another person who does not want to be harmed”(p. 18).
• Violence: Defined as, “Aggression with the goal of extreme physical harm, such as injury or death” (p. 18).

This article lists/reviews a variety of additional articles on this topic that I have reviewed in the past which are all excellent. If you want to quickly bring yourself up to speed on this topic I would highly suggest that you review the entire article.  

Bushman, B., Newman, K., Calvert, S., Downey, G., Dredze, M., Gottfredson, M., Jablonski, N. G., Masten, A., Morrill, C., Neill, D., Romer, D., & Webster, D. (2016). Youth Violence: What We Know and What We Need to Know, American Psychologist, 71(1), 17-39.

Here is an online version of the same article that appeared on Columbia University's Website: 
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Youth Violence: What We Know and What We Need to Know