School shooters leave evidence of potential shooting

It turns out that most school shooters leave evidence of what they are about to do. Any threats should be taken seriously, according to this article:

Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris from Littleton, Colo.; Kip Kinkel from Springfield, Ore.; Michael Carneal from Paducah, Ky.; and Evan Ramsey from Bethel, Alaska, are just a few of the dozens of school shooters who share strikingly similar characteristics with one another. Almost all are white males who attended suburban schools. They all had easy access to guns and struggled to fit in at school. Almost all displayed signs of mental disorders, such as depression; experienced conflict in their home environment; and felt bullied, persecuted or injured by others prior to the attack.

The question to ask is, how do you identify potential school shooters from among the millions of boys who share these characteristics? The answer is surprisingly simple.

School shooters plan their crimes, and they typically leave evidence of their planning for others to see. Also, they warn others — verbally, in writing or in online postings — before they attack. They are waiting for someone to stop them. They want help to deal with the issues they are facing.

(...) Until every person who interacts with kids learns that threatening to bring a gun to school is no joke, we'll have incidents like the one in Ohio.

Parents, educators and students can and are stopping incidents of school violence. The Attleboro incident proves this.

Recent data from the government's "Indicators of School Crime and Safety Report," found that school-related violent deaths are at an all-time low since tracking such deaths in 1992. Law enforcement officials credit students like the ones who came forward in Utah and Attleboro for this decline.

There is good news and bad news here. Reporting threats and tracking students' behavior seems to be working. But we still have too many school shootings in our country taking the lives of too many children. Easy access to guns is a factor in all of the shootings.

Every gun in the hands of a child or teen must first pass through the hands of an adult.