WHEN ARE WE GOING TO DO SOMETHING?! by Abby Zimet

 

Small bodies drop. Ghouls pray and babble. Most of us rage, weep, howl for action. In Uvalde, the families of 19 children - who all had a heartbeat so where are the alleged protectors of young lives? - had to tell police what their blessed child wore to school that day and get DNA tests to help officials identify now-unrecognizable, AR-15-ravaged corpses.

In response to the slaughter of 19 children and two teachers, evil freaks and bought pols who love guns more than children blame meds, morals, not enough God, anything but the over 400 million guns adrift in a nation they now hold hostage, steeped in blood.

The U.S. has 4% of the world's population, and 46% of its guns; it has more than twice the number of guns than the next most-gun-infested country, Yemen; its gun violence is soaring, with over 45,000 dead in shootings in 2020, an increase of 35%; gun violence is now the leading cause of death among young people; there have been two dozen school shootings so far this year.

Since 2004, when a ten-year ban on assault weapons expired, mass shootings have tripled. Before the ban there were 400,000 AR-15s in America; today, there are 20 million. This is the country gun addicts have chosen.

Uvalde is bloody America all over again. It's also Sandy Hook, says Jessica Winter, which "came to be seen as the graveyard of gun control" after demands for background checks and assault weapons bans failed again. "If an entire classroom of dead first-graders could not spur even remedial action in Congress on gun control, nothing would," she writes. "And nothing has."

Thus do willfully blind lovers of guns and their profits shake their complicit heads and insist they really don't know why all these tiny bodies keep piling up but right now we need to mourn them and not talk about the who or why of it, which remain a mystery.

"No Way to Prevent This, Says Only Country Where This Regularly Happens," reads The Onion headline helpfully repeated 21 times for the 21 stories they've written that began, each time, "In the hours following a violent rampage in Colorado/California/Indiana etc. in which a lone attacker killed 10/8/20 etc. individuals...citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “It’s a shame, but what can we do?"

Enter Republicans who take millions from the NRA offering astute insights on the likely cause of the bloodshed. Though the school had doubled security measures - cops, fence, surveillance - guns obviously weren't the issue. They blamed ADHD meds, too many doors, "fatherlessness," "decades of rejecting good moral values"; some presumably also blame Dr. Seuss, CRT, pronouns, Disney and gay Socialists. Human gnoll Rep. Paul Gosar blamed "a transsexual leftist illegal alien." Marjory Taylor Greene blamed non-believers: "We need to return to God." Calling on God was, in fact, the escape route of choice. Decrying the "devastating," "unimaginable," "unspeakable," "horrifying," "heartbreaking" loss of life, the entire deadly-arsenal-supporting GOP, without irony or any awareness they've become unholy parodies of themselves, said they were "lifting up the families in prayer," "sending thoughts and prayers," "holding the family in our prayers," and hoping, "May God comfort them all." Sen. Tim Scott added a salutary and no doubt deeply soothing footnote: "Psalm 34 tells us that the Lord is near to the broken-hearted." One constituent offered up the only appropriate response: "Do something other than pray or go fuck yourself."

Unsurprisingly, the most vile hypocrisy came from slimy Ted Cruz, who takes the most money from the NRA - twice that of next-up Marco Rubio - and gives them what they pay for. He and Heidi were "fervently lifting up in prayer" the victims, which probably made them feel way better, while insisting we need more guns and armed cops; he also trashed gun-control advocates "politicizing" the event "whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens," which "doesn't prevent crime," except, actually, it does. (See New Zealand, the U.K. et al.)

This time, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Az.) nobly stepped up. "Fuck you @tedcruz, you care about a fetus but you will let our children get slaughtered...You are useless." Cruz was among the Texas Nazis who Beto O'Rourke bravely interrupted at a presser as they blathered about mental health -  which they only cite post-slaughter - "how much worse it could have been" - tell it to the families - how "evil will always walk among us,” and, per Gov. Abbott, how Uvalde families "need our love." Despite a wave of vicious responses - He's "a sick asshole?" Really? - Beto said, nope, they need action, and "now is the time."

Inconceivably, Abbott will still speak Friday at the NRA's shameless annual gun orgy, also Trump and Cruz. Despite planned widespread protests, the good-guy-with-a-gun goons are still doubling down on the lunatic claims we need more firepower - "We have to harden these targets"; armed guards are a soothing sight - "You see a gun, you should (be) appreciating what they are doing for you!"; and a bigger, deadlier police force like the two dozen law enforcement agencies who turned up at in Uvalde is always the best solution, though all the cops reportedly stood outside for an incomprehensibly long, still-being-investigated 40 minutes, pissing in their pants 'cause "they could get shot" and harassing desperate parents yelling they needed to take action as, inside, small bodies kept falling.

"Kindness Takes Courage," read the award-winning poster Alithia Ramirez created for an anti-bullying campaign by police; without them, Abbott said, things would have been much worse. Yet they didn't save Alithia and 18 of her classmates. Or Irma Garcia, one of two teachers who died trying to protect their kids; a fundraiser for her and her husband, who died of a heart attack shortly after, leaving their four children orphans, set out to raise $10,000 and is now at over $2 million. 

And courage was much in evidence elsewhere. In a passionate, beseeching speech in the Senate, Sen. Chris Murphy, who saw his constituents through the horrors of Sandy Hook, pointedly asked colleagues what their purpose is, if not to "solve a problem as existential as this?" "What are we doing?" he asked. "Why are you here?" Citing "kids living in fear every single time they step foot in a classroom," he repeated the refrain. “Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job if your answer is that as this slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives, we do nothing? What are we doing? Why are you here?"

Such atrocities happen "only here" in the U.S., he bitterly noted. "And it is a choice. It is our choice to let it continue." Even more furiously echoing the national rage and grief was Steve Kerr, coach of the NBA's Golden State Warriors and longtime gun reform advocate whose father was killed by gunmen in Beirut in 1984. Trembling with fury, slamming his fists down, listing killing after killing, excoriating 50 GOP senators with blood on their hands who refuse to enact gun reform, he yelled, "WHEN ARE WE GOING TO DO SOMETHING?" Heroic. To those 50 who care more about power than dead children, we add: May their obscene reign end soon, and may their fucking souls rot in hell.

---

 

ABBY ZIMET

Abby Zimet has written CD's Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, she moved to the Maine woods in the early 70s, where she spent a dozen years building a house, hauling water and writing before moving to Portland. Having come of political age during the Vietnam War, she has long been involved in women's, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues. Email: azimet18@gmail.com

 

 

The facts behind Memorial Day's controversial history by Brian Clark Howard and Sydney Combs

 

No one is sure how the holiday started, and people debate how it should be celebrated, but it still honors those who lost their lives in service of their country. For many Americans, Memorial Day signifies the start of the summer season, as well as a much-needed long weekend filled with activities like sporting events and barbecues. But that wasn’t the original purpose of the day—and its evolution over the years has been rife with controversy.

Celebrated on the last Monday in May, Memorial Day commemorates those who have lost their lives serving their country—unlike Veterans Day, on November 11, which celebrates all people who have served in the military. Since the end of the Civil War, when it was known as Decoration Day, the holiday has been marked by solemn parades and ceremonies and the placing of flowers on the graves of fallen service members.

However, some critics have complained that the holiday has drifted too far toward frivolous fun and should be restored to a more respectful observance. Here’s how the holiday got started and why it has sparked debate throughout its history.

DISPUTED ORIGINS

Even the origins of Memorial Day remain debated—and controversial. Some scholars have noted that the practice of decorating graves with flowers on specific days in spring is an ancient custom, and may thus represent the true roots of the holiday. However, most say that the holiday began in the bloody wake of the nation’s most divided time: the Civil War.

The U.S. Civil War was devastating for families on both sides of the conflict—nearly 500,000 men died, or about two percent of the U.S. population at the time. During the battle of Gettysburg, the Union and Confederacy lost more than 7,000 people.

The conflict ended in April 1865 and in subsequent years women, especially in the South, began tending to the graves of fallen soldiers, often regardless of which side they fought for. Their willingness to overlook past divisions was lauded in newspapers in the North. Their kindness was viewed as an olive branch to many, including northerner Francis Miles Finch, who in 1867 wrote the popular poem “The Blue and The Grey” praising those efforts.

The specific event that sparked the first Memorial Day remains a matter of debate.  Some say the first Memorial Day took place on May 1, 1865, when a large group of recently freed African Americans held a parade in Charleston, South Carolina, to honor fallen Union soldiers. Dozens of other cities around the country claim the title, too, for their early Civil War remembrance ceremonies. Still other observers have pointed to President Abraham Lincoln’s commemoration of the dead at Gettysburg in 1863 as a possible origin of the holiday.

President Lyndon B. Johnson would later weigh in on the lingering question in 1966, when he officially recognized Waterloo, New York’s ceremony on May 5, 1866, as the “birthplace” of Memorial Day. Waterloo’s supporters argued that event was deserving of the notice because it was formal and city wide, and included closing of local businesses.

FROM DECORATION DAY TO MEMORIAL DAY

After years of local celebrations, the holiday was first celebrated nationwide in May 1868, when former Civil War General John A. Logan led a commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery. He issued a proclamation calling for "Decoration Day" to be observed each May 30 across the country.

Logan, who would eventually run for vice president, called it Decoration Day because he said the fallen should be honored by "strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating, the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion." The month of May was likely chosen due to an abundance of spring flowers.

After World War I, in which America lost more than 100,000 soldiers, Decoration Day was expanded to honor all those who had died while fighting—not just those from the Civil War. The name of the holiday also gradually shifted, with Memorial Day becoming more popular in the 20th century.

Congress made Memorial Day an official national holiday in 1971. Instead of May 30, however, the day was pegged to the last Monday in May to create a long weekend. In the years since, Memorial Day evolved into a three-day weekend filled with barbecues, sports, and store discounts, which often overshadow the day's more somber origins.

HOW MEMORIAL DAY IS CELEBRATED

The American Legion has called for a return to a more serious observance of Memorial Day. In 2010, the organization wrote a resolution that called for ending the long weekend and restoring Memorial Day to May 30, noting, "The majority of Americans view Memorial Day as a time for relaxation and leisure recreation rather than as a solemn occasion and a time to reflect and pay tribute to the American servicemen and women who sacrificed their lives in defense of our Nation."

The late Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye, a World War II veteran and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient who served in the Senate from 1963 to 2012, introduced legislation to move Memorial Day back to May 30 several times, without success. Some communities continue to host Memorial Day events on May 30 as well.

Many solemn observances of the day remain, however. Since 2000, people across the country have been asked to join in a moment of remembrance at 3:00 p.m. local time. Bells are tolled and NASCAR races are put on hold. Flags are flown at half-mast until noon, to signify a day of mourning.

Over Memorial Day weekend, more than 135,000 people visit Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Traditionally, the president or vice president lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. More than 280,000 flags are placed at headstones for all those who have laid down their lives for their country.  

-National Geographic

Editor's note: This story was originally published on May 24, 2019. It has been updated. 

 

2,000,000 Readership Views

Dear Reader,

Thank you for reading my blog! 

Sincerely,

Glen Brown

Top 10 Readership Areas:

United States 1,470,000+

France 97,000+

United Kingdom 41,000+

Russia 39,000+

Italy 38,000+

Ukraine 34,000+

Germany 32,000+

Sweden 20,000+

China 15,000+

Total from other countries (and perhaps from other planets in the GN-z11 galaxy) 210,000+

"I care too much about education and too much about students to abide by these policies" -Tom Stukel

 

Effective June 2nd, 2022, I, Tom Stukel, resign from my English teaching position of 17 years at Lyons Township High School because I cannot, in good moral standing, teach students well based on current administrative policies. I care too much about education and too much about students to abide by these policies. Based on my 24 years of experience as a high school teacher, it is my opinion that it is immoral to teach the way LT teachers are being asked to work. Our school has changed the following in recent years:

1. Homework not scored: Homework (formatives) are no longer scored as any part of the students' grade. Because of this, an average of 50 percent of my sophomores this year consistently did not do their homework, and 80 percent of my seniors consistently did not do their homework. These students know they will not be marked down, so they don't think it is important enough to do, even though doing this work in class and at home is an essential part of the learning process. It has had an awful impact on them; we are essentially encouraging the students not to work. The administration believes that formatives should not be counted because the students are learning and have not mastered the skills yet. I agree, in theory, but not in practice. The administration is ignorant of the day-to-day happenings in the classrooms. Most students will not do the work unless they get credit for it. It's a flawed system based on theory instead of facts/data, and it is hurting the students, creating apathy and idle minds.
2. No due date: The administration forces teachers to not have a set due date on summative assignments (major assignments/essays). For example, if I assign a summative essay to be turned in on February 1st. The students know that they can turn it in on Feb.1st or anytime two weeks after that and I can't consider it late when it comes to grading. In my opinion, this is teaching them laziness, apathy, and disrespect. Many, about 70% of my seniors turn in their summative assignments late. There are a number of students that wait until that last evening, Feb. 15th (two weeks late), to turn in their work. This practice reinforces a lack of discipline and focus (putting off assignments until the last minute) and mediocrity (many of these assignments turned in late are not well written). Also, since it is an extension of two weeks, we have moved on to new material and skills. Students are not only constantly behind, but they are trying to remember what they need to do on an assignment that was taught to them two weeks ago.
3. Revisions: And then once I grade their summative assignment and turn it back to them, they have two more weeks to decide to revise it for a better grade, even though, in my class, I go over the writing process with every major summative assignment and give feedback on all their drafts multiple times before they turn it in for a grade. This last semester the administration changed the policy to where the students had to turn in the "majority" of their formative assignments in order to get the chance to revise. The problem with that is many students still did not do their homework and did not learn the skills to do well on the summative assignment. Even with this new change, students who revise could be working on a revision that is two months old. This creates more anxiety, which runs counter to the reason the policy was changed. Also, this is not making students "college ready." Most college students will not get this similar opportunity. I taught the Indiana University literature dual-credit course here at LT last year and we had to follow IU policies; IU has a no revision policy.
4. Failures: Sadly enough, these are becoming less and less, I believe, for the wrong reasons. Instead of teaching discipline and encouraging consequences for actions to teach students that they need to take their education seriously, the policies at LT are reinforcing D standards. Dejectedly, 30 percent of my seniors this year received a D. In the last three or four years the administration has made it their duty to limit failures. However, they are not taking on the main, complex issues of why many students fail or just falter to the easy way out. One initiative is getting rid of standards-based grading for equal-interval grading. In theory, equal interval says that all letter grades should be equal. Sounds great but in practice that means giving a student credit for not doing anything. If a student does not turn in an essay, he/she receives a 50 percent credit. How does the administration see this as morally just? Giving students credit for doing nothing? Another way is when students fail a course putting them in online classes, where they can make-up semester credit. They take this online course at their own pace in a class called "Academy." There were over 100 students in the class this year. I talked to one counselor that knew one of her students that finished the program in just a few weeks! An 18-week course reduced to three weeks. And she/he gets the same grade and credit as any student sitting in a class for 18 weeks. What do you think that student learned in that limited time? Another way this "Academy" class was used was with a senior in my class this semester. He was failing because he didn't do any of the work so he wanted out of my class, in a different one to start over. The administration wouldn't do that but they put him in this online class so he could get enough credits to graduate, more than half way through the semester. What will happen to more students when they know this exists? It is so immoral.

Because of all these changes, and so many more (cell phones in classrooms a huge distraction from education), over the last four years (the pandemic is not the only reason) I cannot in good moral conscience teach at LT any longer. And I know that many other teachers, parents, and students feel the same way about how bad it has become.

I tried to fight for what I thought was right: My fight got me a "notice of remedy" (on probation) from the administration. I have spoken out against these policies to parents and administration over the years. Two things happened: 1. I was denounced and negatively scolded, told that it's my fault for not fixing anything that was a problem in my class. These policies directly changed my classroom and its environment, but I was held responsible for failed policy. I am trying to uphold quality instruction and a growth mindset development, with effort and hard work as a focus to learning. 2. Without first addressing me, administration was compiling notes on anonymous accusations that could not be proven as fact; I was told that if I did not follow their new policies, they would fire me. I argued my case in front of the board of education last year, but the board defended the administration.

Parents! I write this to you, not the administration. I care about your students. I care that they get the quality education that they deserve and you expect. Parents! Be aware and be proactive to what is happening at your school and your student's' classrooms. Quality change will not come from the administration, the board, or even the teachers. The teachers here at LT are wonderful, caring people, but they don't have a strong enough communal voice to fight against lame policy.

Parents! It is up to you to make the change you want for your student. Parents! Demand that the policies that are harming your children's education change. 

-Tom Stukel

Teacher Resigns from LT | La Grange, IL Patch

 

 

Seeing America, Again, in the Uvalde Elementary-School Shooting by Jessica Winter

 

On Tuesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released a report titled “Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2021,” which logged sixty-one mass shootings last year. The deadliest of these was at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, where ten people were killed, a death toll that was matched ten days ago, at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and then exceeded, at Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas, where an eighteen-year-old shot and killed nineteen children and two adults.

Early reports indicate that he used a handgun and a rifle. Families who gathered at the local civic center, which was used as a reunification site, were asked for DNA swabs to assist investigators in identifying their loved ones. The shooting began around eleven-thirty in the morning; as darkness fell, many families were still waiting outside the civic center, without word of their children.

This is the second-deadliest K-12 school shooting in U.S. history, after the December, 2012, massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut, where twenty children and six educators were killed. Eventually, Sandy Hook also came to be seen as the graveyard of the gun-control movement: in 2013, a new assault-weapons ban, and also a bill to require universal background checks for firearm sales, failed in the Senate. If an entire classroom of dead first-graders could not spur even remedial action in Congress on gun control, nothing would. And nothing has.

A few months after Sandy Hook, the agitprop-documentary-maker Michael Moore, writing in HuffPost, imagined a scenario in which the parents of the victims leaked photographs of the classroom crime scenes to the press. If that were to happen, Moore argued, the horrifying images would have the same galvanizing effect on activist movements and public opinion as those of Emmett Till, in 1955, or Phan Thi Kim Phúc, in 1972.

“There will be nothing left to argue over,” Moore wrote. “It will just be over. And every sane American will demand action.” (Just like that!) Sandy Hook parents swiftly shut Moore down, but there was a kernel of sense in his proposal—he was grasping for some method of defibrillation for a movement in arrest. Published images that represent school shootings are always heartrending and always the same: the surviving children filing out, some in tears, others in shock and excitement; the desperate parents; the sorrowful reunions. 

One of the many unforgivable obscenities of America’s gun obsession is how it can render the image of an anguished child and her caregiver, captured in real time as they absorb a life-altering trauma, as commonplace, interchangeable, even banal. Wait, which one is this again?

On Tuesday night, the poet Jana Prikryl shared the “Alas, poor country” passage from “Macbeth,” in which Ross laments that Scotland has become not a place to live but merely a place to die: “Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot / Be call’d our mother, but our grave . . . where violent sorrow seems / A modern ecstasy.” A modern ecstasy—and a habit, or a ritual, with its attendant ceremonies and scripts and rites. These always include cut-and-paste expressions of sympathy and concern from various bridesmaids of the National Rifle Association.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader—who once said, following a school shooting in his home state of Kentucky, “I don’t think at the federal level there’s much that we can do other than appropriate funds” for school safety officers and counselling—tweeted that he was “horrified and heartbroken” by the tragedy at Robb Elementary School. Ted Cruz, the junior senator for Texas—who once ran a campaign ad that boasted, “After Sandy Hook, Ted Cruz stopped Obama’s push for new gun-control laws”—tweeted that he and his wife were “fervently lifting up in prayer the children and families in the horrific shooting.”

Governor Greg Abbott—who last year signed seven pieces of gun-rights legislation into law, including one that permitted Texans to carry handguns without a license and another exempting the state from future federal gun restrictions—said that he and his wife “mourn this horrific loss and we urge all Texans to come together to show our unwavering support to all who are suffering.”

Politicians like these are routinely criticized for their hypocrisy and empty gestures—their “thoughts and prayers.” But, if only for the sake of rhetorical hygiene, we should go a step further. Republicans, as we know, get what they want. It is their best feature. 

They have vacuumed up the state legislatures, gerrymandered much of the country, stacked the Supreme Court and the federal judgeships, turned back the clock on L.G.B.T.Q. rights, paralyzed entire school districts with engineered panics over critical race theory and “grooming,” ended (or so it seems) reproductive rights as a constitutionally guaranteed freedom, and blocked all attempts at gun-control legislation.

If the leaders of this political movement, which in Texas managed to ban most abortions and criminalize health care for trans kids in the space of a school year, took real offense to murdered children, they would never simply accept their deaths as the unfortunate cost of honoring the Founding Fathers’ right to take up muskets against hypothetical government tyranny. They would act. 

If America were not afraid to know itself, we could more readily accept that gun-rights advocates are enthralled with violent sorrow. This is the America they envisaged. It is what they worked so hard for. Their thoughts and prayers have been answered. 

Jessica Winter is an editor at The New Yorker, where she also writes on family and K-12 education. She is the author of the novels “Break in Case of Emergency” and “The Fourth Child.”

What we know about mass school shootings in the US – and the gunmen who carry them out

 

When the Columbine High School massacre took place in 1999 it was seen as a watershed moment in the United States – the worst mass shooting at a school in the country’s history. Now, it ranks fourth.

The three school shootings to surpass its death toll have all taken place within the last decade: 2012’s Sandy Hook Elementary attack, in which a gunman killed 26 children and school staff; the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which claimed the lives of 17 people; and now the Robb Elementary School assault in Uvalde, Texas, where on May 24, 2022, at least 19 children and two adults were murdered.

We are criminologists who study the life histories of public mass shooters in the U.S. As part of that research, we built a comprehensive database of mass public shootings using public data, with the shooters coded on over 200 different variables, including location and racial profile. 

For the purposes of our database, mass public shootings are defined as incidents in which four or more victims are murdered with at least one of those homicides taking place in a public location and with no connection to underlying criminal activity, such as gangs or drugs.

Our database shows that since 1966, when our database timeline begins, there have been 13 such shootings at schools across the U.S – the first in Stockton, California, in 1989. Four of those shootings – including the one at Robb Elementary School – involved a killing at another location, always a family member at a residence. There have been reports the most recent perpetrator shot his grandmother prior to going to the school in Uvalde, although that has yet to be officially confirmed.

The majority of mass school shootings were carried out by a lone gunman, with just two – Columbine and the 1988 shooting at Westside School in Jonesboro, Arkansas – carried out by two gunmen. In all, some 146 people were killed in the attacks and at least 182 victims injured.

The choice of “gunmen” to describe the perpetrators is accurate – all of the mass school shootings in our database were carried out by men or boys. And the average age of those involved in carrying out the attacks was 18. This fits with the picture that has emerged of the shooter in the Robb Elementary School attack. He turned 18 just days ago and purchased two military-style weapons thought to be the ones used in the attack.

Police have yet to release key information on the shooter, including what motivated him to kill the children and adults at Robb Elementary School. The picture of the shooter that has emerged conforms to the profile we have built up from past perpetrators in some ways but diverges in others.

We know that most school shooters have a connection to the school they target. Twelve of the 14 school shooters in our database prior to the most recent attack in Texas were either current or former students at the school. Any prior connection between the latest shooter and Robb Elementary School has not been released to the public.

Our research and dozens of interviews with incarcerated perpetrators of mass shootings suggests that for most perpetrators, the mass shooting event is intended to be a final act. The majority of school mass shooters die in the attack. Of the 15 mass school shooters in our database, just seven were apprehended. The rest died on the scene, nearly all by suicide – the lone exception being the Robb Elementary shooter, who was shot dead by police. And school shooters tend to preempt their attacks by leaving posts, messages or videos warning of their intent.

Inspired by past school shooters, some perpetrators are seeking fame and notoriety. However, most school shooters are motivated by a generalized anger. Their path to violence involves self-hate and despair turned outward at the world, and our research finds they often communicate their intent to do harm in advance as a final, desperate cry for help. The key to stopping these tragedies is for society to be alert to these warning signs and act on them immediately.   

The Conversation: James Densley, Professor of Criminal Justice, Metropolitan State University; Jillian Peterson, Professor of Criminal Justice, Hamline University