Lone-wolf terrorists and school shooters think alike – psychologist

SS: So Jesse Osborne, the perpetrator of the 2016 school shooting in South Carolina, admitted that he wanted to beat Adam Lanza, the attacker at the Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, for the number of victims. Is the scale and carnage of school shootings going to go up, because now, you know, they try to upstage each other?

PL: You know, sometimes shooters are looking at previous attackers and, as in the case with Jesse Osborne, are very aware of how many fatalities there were, and sometimes they want to exceed that number. Other shooters, though, have no particular connection to previous shooters, they’re just acting out their own anguish or rage, and it’s not related to other attackers, there’s no role modelling or imitation going on. So I think we have to be careful about putting all school shooters into the same category. Not all of them are following in the footsteps of a previous shooter, not all of them are doing it just to become famous or to have a higher number of fatalities.

SS: What is the main reason behind this? What do you think motivates them? Is there something that they all have in common – I mean, besides the fact that they’re probably mentally disturbed?

PL: Well, you know, there’s three different types of school shooters that I have identified in my research. One type is the psychopathic personality, who’s very narcissistic, lacks empathy and is very entitled. Second type is the psychotic school shooter, and these are the people with major mental illness, such as schizophrenia, so they may be having hallucinations and delusions. And the third type is what I call the traumatized school shooters, and these are the children from chronic and severely dysfunctional violent homes. So even they may all end up committing the same type of act, how they got there and why they’re doing it is very different. So again, we have to be careful about looking for a single profile or putting them all in one category.

SS: You know, there’s an idea out there that the media shouldn’t name the shooter when covering attacks – could that help?  

PL: You know, there is a movement among some media outlets to minimize the amount of attention they give to the perpetrator, and this can be either not naming them or naming them very infrequently, as well as not showing photographs of them, because some shooters do cite previous shooters and, apparently, take them as role models. The idea is to minimize the attention on the perpetrators and to focus more on the community, the survivors, the victims, the attempt to recover from the tragedy, and also use that as an opportunity to educate people about warning signs and preventing future acts of violence rather than focusing so much on the perpetrator.

SS: You once compared school shootings with acts of terror. Are terrorists like those who are responsible for, let’s say, the Bataclan in Paris mentally disturbed in the same way as American school shooters, the first two types that you’ve cited?

PL: You know, when you’re talking about terrorists, even there, there’s different types. There are those who are affiliated with an organization, and then there’s what we call either lone-wolf terrorists or violent extremists who are acting on their own. So even there, it’s hard to make generalizations because there’s different types of terrorists committing different types of attacks for different reasons. When you’re looking more at the individual, non-affiliated terrorists… Based on the research I’ve done, there are some similarities with those who commit school shootings. So I do think that there is some overlap.

SS: Are school shootings any different in nature from the mass shootings in open spaces, like the one in Vegas at the concert?

PL: I think mass shootings in other settings often are similar to school shootings. When we learn about the perpetrators, and we don’t always learn much about the perpetrators, but when we do get significant information, they often seem to fall into the categories that I have identified for school shooters, particularly, the psychopathic shooters or the psychotic shooters. So we’ve seen mass shootings in other settings than schools committed by people who do seem to fall into either the psychopathic or the psychotic types.

SS: Some of these guys you describe, the guy from Finland, then Breivik from Norway, claimed political reasons for their actions. Should we pay too much attention to the political side of things, or are they just triggers for a messed-up mind prone to violence?

PL: You know, when you’re looking at someone like Anders Breivik in Norway, he claimed to have political motivation, and yet, when you study him as a person, he had a long history of some very unusual characteristics, and I think there was more going on than simply a political rebellion against the government. I do think there were some major psychological issues, personality issues in Breivik.

SS: So in most cases, the shooters leak some information, hint at their intentions on social media. What’s behind that? Is this mere bragging or a disguised cry for help?

PL: You know, what’s called leakage, when they leak their intentions, takes different forms and may have different reasons. In some cases, they are clearly bragging to people, either friends of theirs or putting it online, essentially bragging to the world about what they’re going to do. In other cases, though, they may share their intentions with a few friends to warn them to stay away, so that their friends don’t get hurt in the attack. So the motivation there is obviously very different. Sometimes they leak their intentions to try to get a friend to join them in the attack, so again, it’s a different motivation, different reason. I don’t know that they’re ever doing it as a cry for help, because sometimes, when their friends take them seriously enough to ask if they really mean it, what they’re saying about the attack, they would pass it off as a joke and do their best to keep their friends from being concerned, so it doesn’t seem like they’re really looking for someone to stop them.

SS: So what red flags should people keep an eye out for, if not a direct warning about an imminent attack?

PL: You know, often, the red flags and warning signs are very obvious: people will announce what they’re going to do, they will put it in writing on a Web page, on social media, they’ll share it with their friends… They will be very explicit sometimes that they’re going to commit an act of violence. Other times, it’s not as obvious. You may simply see them really obsessed with a previous school shooting or a particular killer, they may really dwell on violence and acts of violence to an extraordinary degree, they may be obsessed with guns and other weapons… That could be a less explicit, but still very concerning warning sign.

SS: So how can you tell a real threat from a bogus one, from someone just fooling around online?

PL: One thing to look for is the presence of what’s called attack-related behaviour. In other words, are they taking steps to make the attack a reality? Lots of people may threaten things when they’re angry, or joke around about committing an attack, they may even fantasize about it, but if they’re not actually taking steps to make it a reality, then it’s not presenting as an imminent threat. But when people are gathering guns or bombs, when they’re diagramming the school to decide, you know, what entrance to go in or where to shoot from, when they’re gathering the materials and planning attack, at that point, it’s not just an idea or a fantasy, it’s becoming a reality. So one of the important things to look for is attack-related behaviour.

SS: You say there is no common profile for shooters, and they are not by any means a homogenous group. Now, some schools are trying to use AI to scout out red flags in students’ online behaviour, especially when it comes to social media. Can artificial intelligence be the answer to prevention? Are there patterns for detection?

PL: I wouldn’t say that artificial intelligence is the answer, it can be part of the answer, it can certainly contribute to keeping schools safe, because, as we were saying, there’s often a lot of warning signs, sometimes they show up in social media. So if you have software that can detect certain key words or phrases that can alert someone at the school or in the police department to look further into the case, maybe to interview the student in question, maybe talk to the student’s friends. So it’s not the answer, but it’s part of the answer, because so often, as we said, there is some form of leakage. And often, that does show up online.

SS: Alright, so let’s say a school has identified a student who shows some troubling signs, whether it’s something they posted on Facebook or are obsessing over guns and knives… And the student is then referred to you. What would be your next steps as a psychologist? How are such cases investigated?

PL: Ok, well, ideally, the school would investigate it itself by having a threat assessment team within the school or within the local school district, so there might be a psychologist on that team. What they would be looking for is the evidence of attack-related behaviour. They would be talking to the student about whatever warning signs came to their attention, but they wouldn’t stop there. They would also talk to the student’s teachers to see if he’s handed in any homework assignments that might raise some red flags, they could talk to friends of his to see if they’ve heard any leakage, they could look on his computer to see if there’s any evidence of an impending attack there. They could also talk to his parents to see if there’s firearms in the house, if they have any concerns, if they have found any warning signs in the form of a journal or any other things at the home. So a threat assessment is really a comprehensive investigation looking for any evidence of danger.

SS: You said that punishment is not the best option for a student demonstrating violent tendencies, since it can fuel the student’s sense of disheartenment. So how should schools treat potential shooters that they have identified?

PL: So the concern about using punishment, such as suspending the student for, maybe, 2 or 3 days or expelling the student from the school, is that if that’s all that you’re doing, you’re not doing an investigation, so you don’t know what the risk is, and simply trying to get the student out of your school doesn’t prevent that student from coming back the same day, the next day or week, or even a month later and committing an act of violence. So if your concern is a potential school shooting, simply suspending or expelling the student is not really solving the problem, you might not even know the depths of the problem if you don’t also do an in-depth threat assessment. That doesn’t mean that you would never suspend or expel a student, but if you don’t do the threat assessment and find out if there really is a danger, then you’re not preventing the student from committing the attack, so it’s not really solving any problem.

SS: So when you process school shooters, do you feel you have managed to prevent a few tragedies, have talked some of them out of committing atrocities?

PL: You know, I’ve worked with potential school shooters for a period of 12 years, and none of the students who we worked with in our facility ever went on to commit a school shooting, so that gives me hope that if you catch the students early enough and provide the kind of support and mental health treatment that they need, then they can come out of the crisis and move on with their lives without committing the act of violence that came to people’s attention and got them to help in the first place. So I do think that mental health intervention, keeping the kids safe, can make a difference, and they can go on with their lives.

SS: So the current generation of students have grown up in a world of mass shootings, like Columbine, becoming part of life. I mean, I found your Q&A on school shootings in Newsweek filed under “culture”. Is this an undeniable part of culture now in America?

PL: You know, schools now are routinely doing various drills just in the same way that we’ve been doing fire drills for a long, long time now. So in some ways, safety drills are just part of the culture.

SS: So is the public’s fascination with school shooters part of the same culture as obsessing over serial killers, or outlaws like Bonnie and Clyde – what’s with this strange attitude towards mass violence? Because it’s definitely there.

PL: You know, there’s certainly a lot of interest, if not fascination, with perpetrators of violence, especially when it involves children, so I think that’s why school shootings get more attention than other types of violence. After all, school shootings account for, maybe, 1/10th of 1% of the homicides in the United States, but because they involve children, they get an extreme portion of attention in terms of the media coverage and people’s concern.

SS: So in one of your works, you note that school shootings are not easily correlated with high gun ownership in any given district – even there they remain something out-of-order, because so many local teens with easy gun access don't go for it. Do you mean to say that school shootings are largely not a gun control issue? Then, what is it, because if they didn’t have any guns, none of this would happen.

PL: I think it’s more of an issue… When you’re talking about the juvenile perpetrators, usually they’re getting their guns from their own homes. So the parents are legal firearms owners, it’s really a matter of educating the public to do a better job of securing their firearms in the home. Because in over 90% of the cases that I’ve studied, the juveniles are simply getting guns from family members. So it’s not so much about changing the firearms laws as getting people to do a better job of securing their firearms.

SS: How does the politics surrounding a school shooting affect the investigation and the measures taken? I mean, because immediately it’s all becoming about background checks, the 2nd amendment, Republicans, Democrats, white, black – does this help deal with a shooting itself?

PL: If I understand the question, then I would say no. When it comes to school safety, schools are doing all kinds of things to improve the safety in their schools, educating people about warning signs and implementing programmes to get the students to report safety concerns, and so on. The politics don’t necessarily really touch on what’s actually being done day in and day out at our schools.

SS: Now, you said the media coverage in the immediate aftermath of an incident is often far from accurate, and then, when things become more clear, the journalists and the public have already moved on to other stories. So how informed is the public about the issue, in your view?

PL: I think there is certainly a lot of misinformation, or a lack of information, about school shooters. It’s a very complex topic, and obviously, most people are not researchers who specialize in doing in-depth analysis, so most people probably have a fairly basic understanding, and that probably includes some mistaken ideas about school shooters. Because it is a very complicated… There’s no simple answers or conclusions, and it’s hard to get across to the public as a whole just how complex this whole phenomenon is.

SS: You said there’s a complex connection between violence in media and school shooting – on the one hand, most people who play GTA or Call of Duty don’t tend to go and shoot people in real life afterwards, but on the other hand, shooters tend to get obsessed with such things, and they see it as legitimizing violence and as a subject for imitation. So do you think there’s a case to be made for re-considering how violence is culturally represented, so to say?

PL: I certainly think we have to look at what our kids are doing, and that may be more of a parenting issue than any other kind of issue. It’s hard to draw a clear line between media violence and acts of violence because the vast majority of people who watch a violent movie or play a videogame never pick up a gun and kill anybody. So there may be some connection in rare cases where people are already on the path of violence, but generally speaking, seeing or playing a game that involves violence does not lead to violence.

SS: You know, school shootings have given birth to the campus security industry, worth almost $3 billion at this point. Advanced facial recognition and gun detection systems, bullet-proof doors, pepper spray guns for disabling the shooters – you name it, I mean, they got it all. In your personal view, can all this stop someone from carrying out an attack?

PL: Just to be clear, I am a psychologist, I am not a law enforcement officer, I don’t do emergency response. A lot of the things you are citing are about intervening during an attack to minimize the damage, that’s an important field, but that’s a totally different field than what I’m involved with as a psychologist.

SS: Alright, so here’s a psychological question for you. After this February Florida school shooting, President Trump voiced the idea of arming teachers. From a psychological point of view, if the perpetrator is determined to stage a massacre in the classroom, will the presence of an armed teacher stop him from doing that?

PL: No, I don’t think it will, because in many cases the shooters intend to die in their attacks, whether by shooting themselves or being gunned down by a police officer or another armed individual. So I don’t think that the presence of someone armed at the school would be a deterrent. School shootings have occurred where there have been armed guards, in fact, at Columbine, there was an armed security guard. Clearly, that was not a deterrent.

SS: How do you think the presence of a gun will affect the atmosphere in the classroom? Do you think students will feel more secure? Is there a risk that the mere presence of a gun can ignite aggressive behavior from either the teacher carrying it or his students?

PL: Different students might react differently. Currently, many schools have what we call school resource officers, who carry a firearm in the schools. But these are trained police officers who are also trained in interacting with the students and building relationships, and so on. And generally, their presence, I think, is seen as a positive one in the schools.

SS: So do you believe this kind of thing can be rooted out completely, ever? Is that, from your professional experience, possible?

PL: You know, I don’t know that we can ever root it out, we can certainly do our best to minimize these attacks, as we’ve been talking about, through educating people about the warning signs and developing threat assessment systems, and other technologies and so on, that might identify potential perpetrators or stop them before they can carry out their attacks.

SS: Alright, Dr. Langman, thank you for the interview, it's been great to have you on the show.