Vendor
	Fletcher Agency Melissa Chinchillo
Original language
English
Categories
Society & Social Sciences Criminal or forensic psychology

THE VIOLENCE PROJECT

Jillian Peterson James Densley

How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic

An examination of the phenomenon of mass shootings and an urgent call to implement evidence-based strategies to stop these tragedies.

Using data from the writers’ groundbreaking research on mass shooters, including first-person accounts from the perpetrators themselves, The Violence Project charts new pathways to prevention and innovative ways to stop the social contagion of violence. Frustrated by reactionary policy conversations that never seemed to convert into meaningful action, special investigator and psychologist Jill Peterson and sociologist James Densley built The Violence Project, the first comprehensive database of mass shooters.

Their goal was to establish the root causes of mass shootings and figure out how to stop them by examining hundreds of data points in the life histories of more than 170 mass shooters—from their childhood and adolescence to their mental health and motives. They’ve also interviewed the living perpetrators of mass shootings and people who knew them, shooting survivors, victims’ families, first responders, and leading experts to gain a comprehensive firsthand understanding of the real stories behind them, rather than the sensationalized media narratives that too often prevail. For the first time, instead of offering thoughts and prayers for the victims of these crimes, Peterson and Densley share their data-driven solutions for exactly what we must do, at the individual level, in our communities, and as a country, to put an end to these tragedies that have defined our modern era.

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Book Published 2021-09-07 by Abrams

Comments

Guys and guns: Why men are behind the vast majority of America's gun violence
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One second from Columbine at Lehigh Acres
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“A moving book that not only translates the authors’ years of research, but also synthesizes the available literature on mass shootings in an easily digestible, yet compelling format for the lay audience... an essential read.” - Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences

https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.acjs.org/resource/resmgr/acjstoday/final_updated_acjs_nov_newsl.pdf

"The Violence Project work is a statement of hope in a time when it is easy to feel that Americans have become so inured to gun violence that we simply accept it as standard operating procedure" – Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism
https://pinjnews.org/the-violence-project-book-investigates-mass-shootings-in-order-to-find-solutions/

Professors Jillian Peterson and James Densley, co-authors of The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic, and David Riedman, co-creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database, have offered a succinct explanation. “School shootings are increasing because everyday shootings are increasing and spilling over onto campuses,” they wrote for The Washington Post. “They are a microcosm of bigger gun violence problems that include homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings.”
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Pull quote: "insightful and cautiously optimistic... the authors’ nuanced portraits of mass shooters buttress the case that these tragedies ‘are not an inevitable fact of American life; they’re preventable.’ This is a sensitive and knowledgeable treatment of one of America’s most vexing social problems.”

In this insightful and cautiously optimistic account, psychologist Peterson and sociologist Densley present findings from their study of nearly 200 mass shootings in the U.S. between 1966 and 2020. Drawing on trial transcripts, media reports, and interviews with perpetrators, their friends and family, and survivors, Peterson and Densley identify risk factors, including childhood abuse and neglect, that increase the likelihood a young person might commit such a crime, and contend that trauma screening in schools could help reduce the frequency of mass shootings. Peterson and Densley also show that shooters often experience a personal crisis shortly before committing their crime, and provide lists of warning signs (increased agitation, abusive behavior) and de-escalation strategies. To prevent mass shootings motivated by hate-based ideology, the authors suggest deplatforming extremists online and “cognitively empower[ing]” people to think more critically. They also call on reporters to avoid “excessive, irrelevant details” in their coverage of perpetrators, and support “red flag” laws that allow for the removal of firearms from people deemed to be a threat to themselves or others. Throughout, the authors’ nuanced portraits of mass shooters buttress the case that these tragedies “are not an inevitable fact of American life; they’re preventable.” This is a sensitive and knowledgeable treatment of one of America’s most vexing social problems. (Sept.)

CNN Newsroom with Pamela Brown
CNN Newsroom with Poppy Harlow and Jim Scuitto
NPR All Things Considered: School shootings: It’s hard to spot the warning signs. Prevention steps can help.
LA Times op ed: "The powerful message behind charging the parents in the Michigan school shooting."
Star Tribune profile: "Two Minnesota professors have devoted their careers to researching mass shooters"
CNN (online): "'Constant state of anxiety.' Yet another school shooting takes its psychological toll"
BBC World Service: BBC Newshour
BBC Radio 4: The world tonight
Vox’s daily podcast ‘Today Explained’
***Korean-based media: Discussion of the Michigan school shooting and how to avoid such incidents from happening: TBS eFM's This Morning - an all-English current affairs program in Seoul, December 7.

As gun violence spreads to small towns, one suburb contends with a mass shooting's aftermath
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VIOLENCE PROJECT was quoted in a New York Times op-ed about domestic violence.
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Op-ed in the LA Times

Reprinted in lots of places, including Star Tribune

Haunted by violence, Colorado confronts painful history. Associated Press, March 24.
Reprints:
NBC
News New York,
Star
Tribune,
Washington
Post,
Sentinel
Colorado
Voices of America

Vice News Tonight, March 25:

Heavily quoted in this New York Times article

Mass shootings in the US, WWL Radio, March 25.

The way we think about mass shootings ignores many black victims, The Trace, Reprinted Slate.

German coverage in Badische Zeitung, March 25.

Heavily featured in this article on CNN, March 25.

WBEZ Chicago, March 24.

USA Today, March 24.

The Guardian, March 24.

The Enquirer, March 24.

Spanish coverage Tiroteos masivos en EEUU: ¿Un mal crónico?, El Politico, March 23.

Pull quote: “a bracing compilation of mass shooter profiles and first-person accounts from violent criminals... a multifaceted study that is alternately horrifying, depressing, and even hopeful...A distressing, critical study in the understanding, processing, and prevention of mass-casualty gun violence.”

A report on a unique nonpartisan, nonprofit research center working to stem the tide of mass shootings in America.
Peterson and Densley, both professors of criminology, intensively survey the effects of gun violence via the data-driven prevention group called the Violence Project. In 2018, the authors, who co-founded the project, began anonymously interviewing incarcerated individuals in an effort to illuminate their life histories. Early on, five felons agreed to participate in the uncompensated project, which then expanded outward in interviews with their former and current spouses, family, friends, co-workers, and survivors. Using these interactions, Peterson and Densley sought to garner a more well-rounded perspective of who the shooter is or was and how their personal history shaped them. The result is a bracing compilation of mass shooter profiles and first-person accounts from violent criminals, beginning with the Parkland shooter’s emotional breakdown as he apologized to his brother. This sequence sets the tone for the remaining perpetrators, who are chillingly yet humanely profiled in a multifaceted study that is alternately horrifying, depressing, and even hopeful. The U.S., write the authors “is a lonely island when it comes to mass shootings,” mainly due to the country’s love affair with guns and unrelenting, often misguided, protection of the Second Amendment. (One shooter interviewed not only names the guns in his arsenal; he sleeps with them.) Chronicling the lives of a variety of perpetrators, from mentally distressed school shooters to rampaging extremists, the authors identify many shared attributes and experiences, including childhood trauma, anger, loneliness, societal stressors, and suicidal ideation. Many of these factors serve as propellants for terrible acts of violence, but, as the authors argue convincingly, they also can become integral parts in “unlocking solutions” for personal crisis and trauma intervention across individual, institutional, and societal levels. The authors conclude with holistic, interventional, and tangible strategies for reducing violence in contemporary society.
A distressing, critical study in the understanding, processing, and prevention of mass-casualty gun violence.