What would we do without experts?

School shooters resist telltale patterns:

I did a phone interview with The Globe and Mail last night about the Dawson College shooting. It was done before we knew anything concrete about the situation. I’m not making excuses, just setting the time frame because I still stand behind what I said…

Trench Reynolds, the pseudonym of a Charlotte, N.C., man who runs a website devoted to school shootings, concluded from early reports that the Dawson rampage was another in a long line of copycat incidents that have followed the 1999 shooting at Columbine in which two students killed 12 fellow students and a teacher.

“To me, it sounds like a copycat almost to a T,” he said.

At the time, I meant the media reports reminded me of Columbine with the unconfirmed reports going out. However, knowing what we know now, I still stand behind my statement that Kimveer Gill was emulating Columbine in someway. The experts disagree…

But analysts say it would be a mistake to draw conclusions based on the gunman’s appearance.

“When you see something like a mohawk or a piercing, that is not a predictive behaviour of anything violent,” said Michael Hoechsmann, a McGill University educational psychologist. “I think it’s a dubious proposition to draw too many parallels to something that is unfolding right now.”

University of Toronto education professor Kathy Bickmore agreed. “It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that there’s a parallel in particular to Columbine,” she said, referring to the gunman’s trench coat. “But it’s not uncommon enough clothing for me to say that has anything to do with it.”

O RLY?..ahem…I mean, oh, really? I’m not basing this on a particular article of clothing but more of a subculture. For the most part, since Columbine, school shooters and would be shooters have been considered at some point goth, metal, punk, etc. They feel excluded because of their choice of music and dress. They sympathize with the Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold over their mythical status of being heroes to the outcasts and bullied, even though Harris and Klebold were neither, in my opinion.

“There is no real type,” said James Sheptycki, a criminologist at York University in Toronto. “Any psychological profile that people could come up with would identify too many individuals to actually be useful and wouldn’t necessarily fit all potential perpetrators. There simply isn’t a profile that works.”

Maybe not all perpetrators, but I think there’s a profile for most of them. Now I’m not saying all goths, punks, and metalheads, are potential school shooters. Just the ones that have a fascination or obsession with a certain Colorado school shooting.

Again thanks to Harding for the article.