Abstract
Every active shooter event follows a similar arc: fear, disbelief, and the inevitable public examination of the shooter's motives (where it often becomes patently clear that very few people were surprised that this person turned his or her anger and despair towards innocent bystanders). It is very seldom that an attacker "just snaps." There are often warning signs, a goodly number of family members, teachers, and peers who, in hindsight, noticed signs of danger but did not voice their concerns. Or worse yet, they had shared their concerns but their worries were not fully addressed. According to an FBI publication, The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective, "In general, people do not switch instantly from nonviolence to violence. Nonviolent people do not "snap" or decide on the spur of the moment to meet a problem by using violence. Instead, the path toward violence is an evolutionary one, with signposts along the way. A threat is one observable behavior; others may be brooding about frustration or disappointment, fantasies of destruction or revenge, in conversations, writings, drawings, and other actions4." Gavin De Becker, author of the Gift of Fear5 and an expert in predicting violence, believes that our own intuition is enough to help prevent many of these tragedies. This was certainly appeared to be the case with Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech shooter who was on the radar screen of many faculty members and the counseling and administrative offices at the Institute. Female students reported his stalking behavior and professors informed department heads that they felt his writings were violent and threatening6. One faculty member went so far as to have a safe word, which her staff would recognize as a call for help, when she was working with him. There were many lessons learned as a result of this tragic event, perhaps the most relevant is the importance of "reports on the ground." Cho's family, faculty and student peers all reported his inappropriate and unusual behaviors to the campus police and administration. Unfortunately, the campus, like many work environments, did not have a plan for banning unsafe people from campus. This lack of a comprehensive response to a string of threatening actions allowed Cho's behaviors to continue unabated until he reached his breaking point and commenced his rampage. The tragedy that struck Virginia Tech should empower institutions to develop the wherewithal to set up the infrastructure to prevent such devastation and the backbone to act more firmly when warning signs appear.