We are heartbroken. As a parent of two teenaged boys, my blood ran cold when I heard the news anchor break in to the television show I was watching: “Seventeen people were killed and fourteen others were wounded when a former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., opened fire on campus Wednesday, making it the deadliest school shooting since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012.”

Parents all over the country are asking: Why would a student bring a weapon to school and without any explicable reason open fire on fellow students and teachers? Are school shooters angry? Are they crazy? Is their motive revenge? Hatred for the victims? A hunger for attention?

I have been teaching behavioral threat assessment for years. I was a juvenile investigator on Orange County’s ONLY school threat assessment team. In one school year (180 days of school), I conducted 125 threat assessments in nearly 200 schools. Parents, students, and school administrators are looking at what happened in Florida and asking themselves, “Could this happen here?” You may be hearing cries for higher walls or metal detectors to be installed in every school. I can confidently tell you the best detectors of pending violence isn’t gun detectors, it is human detectors. We need law enforcement and school staff better trained to identify students of concern and then how to manage them effectively. Here are some things we can do to make our schools safer. You may want to ask your school if they are already doing these things:

Number 1 – People don’t just snap.

School shooters intend to commit violence well in advance of the date of the attack. Intended violence requires planning and preparation, which are observable behaviors. They are obsessed with violent fantasies, weapons, and often express their des ...