
By Melanie Warner
Each time a high-profile mass shooting happens in America, a grieving and incredulous nation scrambles for answers. Who was this criminal and how could he (usually) have committed such a horrendous and inhumane act? A few details emerge about the individual’s troubled life and then everyone moves on.
Three years ago, Jillian Peterson, an associate professor of criminology at Hamline University, and James Densley, a professor of criminal justice at Metro State University, decided to take a different approach. In their view, the failure to gain a more meaningful and evidence-based understanding of why mass shooters do what they do seemed a lost opportunity to stop the next one from happening. Funded by the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Department of Justice, their research constructed a database of every mass shooter since 1966 who shot and killed four or more people in a public place, and every shooting incident at schools, workplaces and places of worship since 1999.
Share This Post!
It Happened Here: Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence
By NYP History Every time she was turned away, Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence, whose career began at NewYork-Presbyterian in the 1940s, found a new opportunity to succeed, eventually becoming the first [...]
The Impact of Childhood Trauma on Developing Bipolar Disorder
By Yann Quidé, Leonardo Tozzi, Mark Corcoran, Dara M Cannon, Maria R Dauvermann Childhood trauma (CT) has been repeatedly linked to earlier onset and greater severity of bipolar disorder (BD) in adulthood. However, such knowledge [...]
Protecting Children from Sexual Abuse in the #MeToo Era
By Nickolas Agathis, MD Do you keep up with any modern social movements, such as #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter or #KeepFamiliesTogether? The conversations surrounding them are still grabbing widespread attention through social media [...]
Immigrant Health is Interpersonal
By Amanda Venta, PhD Waves of Latinx immigration to the United States have changed in recent decades, and our scientific literature is only beginning to catch up. Regional violence and unrest [...]
Essential Elements of a Trauma-Informed Juvenile Justice System
NCTSN Trauma-informed policies and procedures make juvenile justice organizations safer and more effective by ensuring the physical and psychological safety of all youth, family members, and staff and promoting their recovery [...]
How Childhood Trauma Can Impact the Brain
Written by Kaytee Gillis, LCSW A recent study published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging finds that childhood trauma can lead to disruptions in two main regions of the brain, the default mode network (DMN) and [...]