kept walking. mark, there s, again, a student there. describing who he believes the shooter was, and again at this point we are not naming the 17-year-old, although we are acutely aware that the name is out there on social media. based on that description there, mark, what can we glean from that, if anything? first i d like to say that our prayers go out to the families and victims of this terrible epidemic, an epidemic of shootings we ve had even this year. the description of the actor is consistent with other actors being a loner. dressing with the trench coat. all kinds of signals apparently missed in this particular incident. there have been reports already there were social media postings by him indicating the possibility or threats of some kind of active violence. we should note, nbc news has
perspective. it sure would be good to not have to talk to you on television for some time. lucy macbeth lost a son to gun violence. since that happened, she has been an advocate for gun law reform in this country. we should note that she is also running for congress in the state of georgia right now. lucy, we talked to you recently about gun violence. you heard what president trump said a couple of hours ago, that the president is going to stand behind and support victims of this school shooting. is the federal government do you think doing enough to protect this country s children? and if not, what more should it be doing? absolutely, the government is not doing enough to protect our children. thoughts and prayers are definitely not enough. it always remains to be seen what happens beyond these moments. what is our government willing to do beyond the moments of
they may know about a fellow student or a friend who is doing research on previous school shootings, and maybe identifying with previous school shooters, or looking for tactical information. any of those behaviors should be reported to a school. should be reported to law enforcement and law enforcement and school personnel can use a threat assessment process to gather more information and figure out, is this someone thinking about, most importantly, planning to engage in violence? and if so, why? the reason that we have seen school shooters carry out their attacks time and again is usually for very personal reasons. they re at a point of personal desperation. in about two-thirds of the cases that we ve examined, we have seen this theme of bullying. they were bullied, but not just bullied occasionally. bummied extensively. bummied in situations that for them felt inescapable. maybe asked for assistance but the problem wasn t fully solved and they felt they had to solve
plans and they plan them out, and they follow what we in the field refer to as a pathway to violence. so they come up with some idea to do harm. they develop a more detailed plan. they have to then acquire some means of mass lethality and get that to where they want to do harm. and then they carry out the attack. just because someone gets on that pathway to violence, just because they are thinking about or start to research other shootings doesn t mean it s inevitable that they carry out a violent attack. they re usually doing this because they feel there are no other options left. they almost have tunnel vision and they see no way out. when we can identify a student or anyone who may be considering violence as a way to solve problems, get some notoriety, maybe considering violence because they are despondent. when we can get them the right help and resources beforer in s at that point of implementing the attack, we get them off that pathway and we keep them off that pathway and we
this. based on what we know, based on what you have heard on our air. based on what you ve read from reliable sources, what conclusions can we realistically draw at this point about this particular school shooting? you know, there s so much that is still unanswered, and this is an active investigation. just as mark and darin and your other law enforcement commentators talked ab s we can t go past mere speculation here. a couple things to emphasize. that we are hearing from some of your on the ground reporting that i think is very noteworthy here. one is that there was concerns about an incident that happened a couple months ago. we don t know if it s related yet to what happened today, but anything that people may see, students often are going to be likely the ones who are going to hear about a concerning threat on social media first. they may hear about someone talking about violence, hear someone talking about suicide.