If video games aren't to blame for the shooting, maybe it was Nietzsche! Looking for something (or someone) to blame? Here's the FBI's (laughable) take on profiling school shooters.

One method for discovering potentially violent students involves having students write about their lives as a window into their thoughts. This would have helped in some of the school shootings if the teachers had had the essays and then been able to interpret their content and style. For example, one of the shooters' work was influenced heavily by the 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who is best known for having proclaimed the death of God and for calling himself an 'immoralist,' one who opposes all morality. Another suspect's writing was inspired by the musician Marilyn Manson who reportedly based his song 'Antichrist Superstar' on Nietzsche's book The Antichrist... - School Violence: Lessons Learned, Harpold and Band, FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, Sept 2001

Meanwhile, an antipsychiatry pundit claims antidepressants are to blame. A Prozac massacre? (Or was it being teased as gay?) Read Columbine: Whose Fault Is It? for Marilyn Manson's view.

Best article by far is Risk factors in school shootings by Stephanie Verlinden [this was her PhD thesis topic], Michel Hersen and Jay Thomas, Clinical Psychology Review, Volume 21, Issue 1, February 2001. (Free PDF.) Very comprehensive. "In all cases, violent intentions were communicated to peers and there was an interest in weapons and targeted violence. ... There was a lack of expressed concern among those who knew the school assailants that they would act on their threats. In all cases, there was a failure of peers to report threats of serious violence and of peers, parents, and professionals to consider them seriously."

Harpold and Band suggest this to help prevent school-associated violent deaths:

...communities must send positive messages to all of their children that they are valuable and important to the community. Parents and other concerned adults must find ways to sincerely praise children, positively recognize their contributions to the community, and actively show children that they are loved and respected.

As if that's going to happen. I hate that I am cynical about it, that child abuse is so problematic. But what's the solution? Good parents are good parents without being reminded to be in news articles. Bad parents don't care, aren't getting or don't want help. So things like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, PTSD and psychopathy continue. There were over 220 school shooting events in America in just a five-year period (94-99, *). Obviously these kids need "positive messages" they're not getting or likely to get from parents.

Hey! Had enough of analysis and negativity? Read an uplifting, inventive and brilliant novel set around a school shooting is Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland. It's his best. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll stop thinking about the news for awhile.

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