The tough part is knowing that for every one of those that shoots up a bunch of people, there&#x27;s an untold number of people that might feel similar feelings of alienation and agitation, but don&#x27;t end up taking those final planning and action steps.  In other words, <i>before</i> the killers took those final steps towards becoming a monster, there&#x27;s not a really good way to differentiate them from someone else who never becomes a monster.<p>This is where I think the whole discussion goes off the rails - the emphasis is in figuring out how to identify these &quot;potential monsters&quot;, or in preventing these &quot;potential monsters&quot; from having the means to accomplish their ends.<p>But if it&#x27;s impossible to define a test&#x2F;indicator such that, if it&#x27;s true then they&#x27;ll probably shoot up a school down the line, and if it&#x27;s false then they probably won&#x27;t, then where does that leave us?<p>I think it leaves us in a place of not treating these people as potential monsters, but instead as normal kids struggling with feelings of alienation and lack of purpose, and giving them love and support. Not looking for signs of &quot;potential school shooters&quot; and seeking to prevent it, but looking for signs of loneliness and alienation, and seeking to give support.  I just think that for a lot of us, we&#x27;ve probably had times in our past where we had a lot in common with the people that had not <i>yet</i> shot up a bunch of people. So when we think of what might have made our lives better at those times, maybe it would have helped some of them too. There the emphasis is more on just helping alienated kids feel less alone, knowing that for a very small percentage of them, it very well could prevent some real tragedies later on.