Going Beyond School Shooter Profiles to Identify Mass Killers

This original thesis was submitted to Academic Magnet, North Charleston, SC as graduation requirement. Within this thesis, the research attempts to establish a better model for characterizing events that contribute to school shootings. Ideally, this model will outperform current psychological profiling methods used to identify school shooters. Specifically, this work focuses on discrete variables within each state that are shaped by the choices and circumstances of the residents of those states (and the District of Columbia). Some state variables included in this research are as follows: percent of state residents in poverty, percent of state residents reported to be prose illiterate, self-reports of "religiosity", individual political preferences (liberal versus conservative), household composition (single mother-led homes versus two-parent led homes), and increases in gun ownership and gun purchases over time, among other variables.