Portrait Of A School Shooter

On Valentine’s Day 2008, Steve Kazmierczak killed five and wounded eighteen at Northern Illinois University, then killed himself. But he was an A student, a Deans’ Award winner. How could this happen? CNN could not get the story. The Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and all others came up empty because Steve’s friends and professors knew very little. He had reinvented himself in his final five years. But David Vann, investigating for Esquire, went back to Steve’s high school and junior high friends, found a life perfectly shaped for mass murder, and gained full access to the entire 1,500 pages of the police files. The result: the most complete portrait we have of any school shooter. But Vann doesn’t stop there. He recounts his own history with guns, contemplating a school shooting. This book is terrifying and true, a story you’ll never forget.

On Valentine's Day 2008, Steve Kazmierczak killed five and wounded eighteen at Northern Illinois University, then killed himself. But he was an A student, a Deans' Award winner. How could this happen? CNN could not get the story. The Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and all others came up empty because Steve's friends and professors knew very little. He had reinvented himself in his final five years. But David Vann, investigating for Esquire, went back to Steve's high school and junior high friends, found a life perfectly shaped for mass murder, and gained full access to the entire 1,500 pages of the police files. The result: the most complete portrait we have of any school shooter. But Vann doesn't stop there. He recounts his own history with guns, contemplating a school shooting. This book is terrifying and true, a story you'll never forget.

School shootings are a tragic reality. And while they're not as common as they seem, they are still very real, and so is the fear, anxiety, and trauma that comes with them-even if you've never actually experienced one. This book will help grownups and kids better understand school shootings and encourage us to be prepared while reminding us that we should never let the fear of the what ifs take over our lives.

Ten years after the school massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, school shootings are a new and alarming epidemic. While sociologists have attributed the trigger of violence to peer pressure, such as bullying and social isolation, prominent psychologist Peter Langman, argues here that psychological causes are responsible. Drawing on 20 years of clinical experience, Langman offers surprising reasons for why some teens become violent. Langman divides shooters into three categories, and he discusses the role of personality, trauma, and psychosis among school shooters. From examining the material evidence of notorious school shooters at Columbine and Virginia Tech to addressing the mental states of the violent youths he treats, Langman shows how to identify early signs of homicide-prone youth and what preventive measures educators, parents and communities can take to protect themselves from the tragedy.

"Groundbreaking." ―Rachel Louise Snyder, bestselling author of No Visible Bruises An examination of the phenomenon of mass shootings in America and an urgent call to implement evidence-based strategies to stop these tragedies Winner of the 2022 Minnesota Book Award Using data from the writers’ groundbreaking research on mass shooters, including first-person accounts from the perpetrators themselves, The Violence Project charts new pathways to prevention and innovative ways to stop the social contagion of violence. Frustrated by reactionary policy conversations that never seemed to convert into meaningful action, special investigator and psychologist Jill Peterson and sociologist James Densley built The Violence Project, the first comprehensive database of mass shooters. Their goal was to establish the root causes of mass shootings and figure out how to stop them by examining hundreds of data points in the life histories of more than 170 mass shooters—from their childhood and adolescence to their mental health and motives. They’ve also interviewed the living perpetrators of mass shootings and people who knew them, shooting survivors, victims’ families, first responders, and leading experts to gain a comprehensive firsthand understanding of the real stories behind them, rather than the sensationalized media narratives that too often prevail. For the first time, instead of offering thoughts and prayers for the victims of these crimes, Peterson and Densley share their data-driven solutions for exactly what we must do, at the individual level, in our communities, and as a country, to put an end to these tragedies that have defined our modern era.

In the last decade, school shootings have decimated communities and terrified parents, teachers, and children in even the most "family friendly" American towns and suburbs. These tragedies appear to be the spontaneous acts of troubled, disconnected teens, but this important book argues that the roots of violence are deeply entwined in the communities themselves. Rampage challenges the "loner theory" of school violence, and shows why so many adults and students miss the warning signs that could prevent it. Drawing on more than 200 interviews with town residents, distinguished sociologist Katherine Newman and her co-authors take the reader inside two of the most notorious school shootings of the 1990s, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and Paducah, Kentucky. In a powerful and original analysis, she demonstrates that the organizational structure of schools "loses" information about troubled kids, and the very closeness of these small rural towns restrained neighbors and friends from communicating what they knew about their problems. Her conclusions shed light on the ties that bind in small-town America.

The Power of Faith, Hope, and Relationships On September 28, 2016, school counselor Molly Hudgens was in her office at Sycamore Middle School when a fourteen-year-old armed with a semiautomatic handgun and an additional magazine of ammunition came to her in the counseling department. His plan was to kill people on campus. He told Hudgens she was the only person who could talk him out of it. After ninety minutes of talking with the young man, and ultimately praying on her knees with him, he relinquished the gun with no shots fired and no lives lost. In this memoir, Hudgens shares the story of that day and the thirty-nine years and 364 days leading up to it that prepared her for the best and worst day of her life. Her story is one of triumph over adversity and hope found in the bleakest of moments. As Hudgens walks readers through the incident, she shares how her faith, rapport with the student, and a strong school community guided her efforts and provided a positive outcome that day. How do you have compassion for a student sitting in your office with a loaded gun and the desire to kill? Saving Sycamore is the remarkable story of a woman whose compassion was stronger than the homicidal rage in the heart of a desperate student.--Peter Langman, PhD, author of School Shooters: Understanding High School, College, and Adult Perpetrators; director of Research and School Safety Training, Drift Net Securities Saving Sycamore illustrates Molly's leadership, compassion, faith, and vulnerability when the members of her school community needed her most on that fateful day and in the aftermath. This is a book about a faith journey.--Frank DeAngelis, principal of Columbine High School, 1996-2014; author of They Call Me "Mr. De" The Story of Columbine's Heart, Resilience, and Recovery Saving Sycamore is a must-read to learn how God worked to truly save lives at Sycamore Middle School.--Major General William B. Raines, Jr., USA (retired); Charles H. Coolidge National Medal of Honor Heritage Center Executive Board

This book analyses the global (media) cultural phenomenon of school shootings in the context of mediatization in contemporary social and cultural life. It explores shootings from different, interconnected perspectives with a focus on the theoretical aspect, the practices of mediatization and an examination of the audiences, victims and witnesses.