The rampage at Oxford High School, north of Detroit, was the deadliest shooting on school property this year. How Do We Stop the Next School Shooting?

Back in May, I wrote an article, Are We Facing a Tsunami of Mass Shootings? In my opinion, we are, and we are now starting to see the crest of the wave. In my previous article, I postulated we are facing an oncoming tsunami of mass shootings because of the new and untreated mental health issues that festered in last year’s pandemic lockdown. The path to violence has many dimensions, and one of the most important ones is the presence of stressors. A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013 found that active shooters were typically experiencing multiple stressors (an average of 3.6 separate stressors) in the year before they attacked. Stressors are physical, psychological, or social forces that place real or perceived demands/pressures on an individual and which may cause psychological and physical distress. 62% of the active shooters were experiencing mental health stress. The stressor “mental health” indicates that the active shooter appeared to be struggling with (most commonly) depression, anxiety, paranoia, etc., in their daily life in the year before the attack. 

The reason someone becomes a mass shooter is more complicated than just suffering from a mental health illness, and not everyone with mental health issues will become violent. We need to understand that targeted violence, i.e., school shootings, is a person’s “solution” to their untenable problem. Like we saw in Oxford, Michigan, people who commit th ...