Abstract
Although school shootings and mass murders are not common phenomena, the unexpected, devastating, and media frenzied nature of these events beseech communities, law enforcement, and researchers to take an epistemological approach to better understand these offenders and their crimes. Numerous variables used in the Safe School Initiative (Vossekuil, Fein, Reddy, Borum, & Modzeleski, 2002) were applied to case studies of juvenile school shooters and adult mass murderers to investigate any congruencies in depth. This study revealed that although they contrasted in many ways (such as location, age of offender, and victimology), the school shooters and mass murders in this study shared more similarities than they did differences. Specifically, offender characteristics and motivations were, overall, more compatible between the two groups of offenders than were characteristics of their offense. The school shooters and mass murderers in this study tended to be socially isolative Caucasian males, who had an extreme fascination with weapons and planned their revenge-based attack.