Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Laying the foundation -- Three populations of school shooters -- Three psychological types of school shooters -- 2. Psychopathic secondary school shooters -- A word on psychopathic personalities -- Attacks by psychopathic secondary school shooters -- Robert Poulin -- Brenda Spencer -- Barry Loukaitis -- Andrew Golden -- Eric Harris -- Robert Steinh�auser -- Tim Kretschmer -- 3. Psychotic secondary school shooters -- A word on psychotic symptoms -- Attacks by psychotic secondary school shooters -- Luke Woodham -- Michael Carneal -- Andrew Wurst -- Kipland Kinkel -- Dylan Klebold -- Alvaro Castillo -- Pekka-Eric Auvinen -- 4. Traumatized secondary school shooters -- A word on trauma -- Attacks by traumatized secondary school shooters -- Eric Houston -- Gary Scott Pennington -- James Rouse -- Evan Ramsey -- Mitchell Johnson -- Jason Hoffman -- Jeffrey Weise -- Eric Hainstock -- Asa Coon -- Thomas "T.J." Lane -- 5. College shooters : targeted attacks -- Targeted attacks by psychopathic shooters -- Gang Lu -- Valery Fabrikant -- Robert Flores -- Targeted attacks by shooters with psychotic and psychopathic traits -- Peter Odighizuwa -- Biswanath Halder -- Amy Bishop -- 6. College shooters : random and ambiguous attacks -- Random attacks by psychopathic shooters -- Charles Whitman -- Wayne Lo -- Random attacks by psychotic shooters -- Seung Hui Cho -- Steven Kazmierczak -- Matti Saari -- Ambiguous attacks -- Edward Allaway -- One Goh -- 7. Aberrant adult shooters -- Young adults who attacked colleges they did not attend -- Mark L�epine -- Jillian Robbins -- Kimveer Gill -- Adults who attacked schools they had attended years before -- Patrick Purdy -- Bruco Eastwood -- Wellington de Oliveira -- Adam Lanza -- Adults who attacked elementary schools to which they had no connection -- Laurie Dann -- James Wilson -- Thomas Hamilton -- Adult whose attack was in an atypical educational setting -- Jiverly Wong -- 8. Patterns among school shooters -- The significance of the body -- Military failures -- Educational failures -- Occupational failures -- Romantic failures -- Frequent and significant relocations -- Psychotic shooters : sibling rivalry -- Other possible factors -- External influences -- Peer support -- Ideologies and role models -- Media violence -- 9. Preventing school shootings : threat assessment and warning signs -- The many faces of school shooters -- Threat assessment -- What are the warning signs? -- Forms of leakage -- School assignments -- Warning signs at home -- Warning signs online -- Sudden purchase of firearms -- School employees -- Aberrant attacks -- The unpredictability of victim selection -- Immediate aftermath -- 10. Key findings -- Findings versus conventional wisdom -- The magnitude of their attacks -- Suicide among school shooters -- The typology across the populations of shooters -- Other observations.

School shootings scare everyone, even those not immediately affected. They make national and international news. They make parents afraid to send their children off to school. But they also lead to generalizations about those who perpetrate them. Most assumptions about the perpetrators are wrong, and many of the warning signs are missed until it's too late. Here, Peter Langman takes a look at 48 national and international cases of school shootings in order to dispel the myths, explore the motives, and expose the many factors that drive people to rampage attacks. Finally, he addresses violence prevention and the importance of identifying at-risk individuals before it is too late. --Jacket flap.

Examines forty-eight national and international cases of school shootings to dispel the myths, explore the motives, and expose the many factors that drive people to rampage attacks.