Research, ideas, and leadership for a more secure, peaceful world

Past Event
Seminar

How to Prevent Mass Shootings 

RSVP Required Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

America’s gun massacres are not inevitable. These recurring disasters can potentially be stopped before they happen—and some have been, by trained community teams responding to warning signs. In this seminar, journalist and author Mark Follman will share insights from “Trigger Points,” his acclaimed book chronicling the emerging field of behavioral threat assessment, which seeks to intervene with troubled people who are planning violence. Threat assessment is a growing policy, now required in K-12 schools and universities in many states. Follman will discuss how these multidisciplinary teams work, the role of mental health, and more, with time included for audience questions. 

 

Date: Time: - Location: Littauer Building - Fainsod Room, 324
Mark Follman

Event Speaker

Related Book

Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America

 It’s time to go beyond all the thoughts and prayers, misguided blame on mental illness, and dug-in disputes over the Second Amendment. Through meticulous reporting and panoramic storytelling, award-winning journalist Mark Follman chronicles the decades-long search for identifiable profiles of mass shooters and brings readers inside a groundbreaking method for preventing devastating attacks. The emerging field of behavioral threat assessment, with its synergy of mental health and law enforcement expertise, focuses on circumstances and behaviors leading up to planned acts of violence—warning signs that offer a chance for constructive intervention before it’s too late.

Beginning with the pioneering study in the late 1970s of “criminally insane” assassins and the stalking behaviors discovered after the murder of John Lennon and the shooting of Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, Follman traces how the field of behavioral threat assessment first grew out of Secret Service investigations and FBI serial-killer hunting. Soon to be revolutionized after the tragedies at Columbine and Virginia Tech, and expanded further after Sandy Hook and Parkland, the method is used increasingly today to thwart attacks brewing within American communities. 

  

Event Poster