Shooters

[HereSince1628]

3. Appears to be based on 37 incidents and interviews with 10 perpetrators

out of 42 attackers involved in the 37 incidents.

Although the intent was to determine pre-incident thinking of the perpetrators the information used in the study was collected retrospectively from incident reports, school records, court records and mental health records. Some of the information will be ambiguous, and require interpretation.

The background sources for each attacker may not have provided information for every question being asked. The combination of low sample size and missing elements further depresses confidence in percentages as meaningful summaries.

There is no reason to believe that 'pivotal' events occurring in private lives of the attackers are captured in the records. The presumption that all earlier events/incidents are relevant to a later attack requires acceptance of the concept that a person has an unchanging unified character...the motivations and judgements in an earlier time in life reflect accurately what will be motivations and judgements in other parts of later life.