One of our first areas of research when looking into this topic was the typical shooter, the typical behavior, and any typical patterns or targets. One repeated element in almost every school shooting was the divulging of the plan to shoot up the school to at least one friend or other person in the shooter’s life. In fact, 81% of school shooters told one person before the shooting while 59% told at least two people [1]. Another consistent and obvious trend was that 68% of shooters acquired their weapon from a close friend or relative [2]. In other words, gun control efforts to restrict gun rights even further would not prevent these mentally ill people from acquiring guns as long as anyone close to them in their life has access to guns.

When shooters are planning out their attack, they are mostly focusing on bad teachers, adults who previously disciplined them, and women by whom the shooter feels rejected while not focusing on as much on bullies, mainly because the shooter is normally not some bullied, rejected loner [3]. Rather, only 34% of school shooters were characterized as “loners” by themselves or others. The famous Columbine shooters are an oft-used example of bullied loners who took revenge on the jocks. However, that does not even remotely describe the situation accurately as the Columbine shooters had packed social calendars and active social lives. They were randomly targeting people, not searching out bullying jocks who shut them into lockers [4].