It takes less than a few seconds for Google to return several research-based articles in answer to this question. One article, from 2007, is still timely. Another, from 2013, reinforces and extends the first article. The third article, dated March 12, 2018, again reinforces the first two.
School shooters develop their twisted ideas and plans over years on end. Guns are not the reason they kill. This is obvious but clearly ignored by a broad range of people who want something done about guns, but who apparently have not done the basic research that Google often makes easy.
Even if every gun in America disappeared, people determined to kill others can find multiple ways to kill. Drive a truck into a crowd. Make and detonate bombs as in the Boston case. Blow oneself up in a crowded location. Steal dynamite. Steal poisons. Start fires.
The research suggests what kinds of people to be on the lookout for. They are detectable. Do Americans, their municipal police forces, their school personnel, and their government social workers have the sense to devise ways to detect persons at risk of becoming mass killers and doing something effective to change the course of their lives? I do not mean putting them on drugs; indeed, there are too many instances in which drugs cause violent behavior.
The focus on gun control directs attention to a useless remedy that, even if it were stringently implemented, would only drive killing into alternative means, locales and channels. How does disarming the 9,999,999 out of 10,000,000 people who do not dream of killing others change the mind of the 1 in 10,000,000 who does? If anything, it encourages him that he’ll meet no deadly counter force.
Young people who have the time and energy to march should spend the 15 minutes it takes to do the research. It will take a little longer to think through what it means. For a variety of fairly well-known reasons, a very small number of young people fantasize about killing. Without intervention to counter and reverse their motivations, they may mature into full-fledged killers. If young people want to organize themselves or others to intervene effectively, they need to do it within localities.
The problem is to filter out the few people who may develop into very bad apples. Superficially, it may seem as if this cannot be done without invading people’s rights. However, it can be done fairly easily because in local communities we socialize with others and others get to know us readily. In fact, it’s when we are not socializing, or when we can’t get any respect, or when we’re being rejected, or when our family lives are rotten, so that we become loners and uncommunicative that others should begin to wonder that something may be wrong in our lives.
8:05 pm on March 24, 2018
