What We've Learned About School Shooters

Frank DeAngelis has become a resource for survivors of mass shootings across the world in the last 22 years.

Within days of the Columbine High School shooting, University of Colorado band students wanted to help and organized a commission for a new piece of music for the high school band. The piece, “American Elegy,” by composer Frank Ticheli, premiered a year after the shooting. Since then it’s been performed over 10,000 times.

Former President Bill Clinton talks about his role in consoling the nation after the shootings 20 years ago, and insight from historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Barbara Perry about how other U.S. presidents have also played the role of "consoler-in-chief" after national tragedies.

Survivors of the Columbine massacre didn’t know at the time that there would be so many other shootings that followed: Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Navy Yard, and more. Initiated by a group of Columbine alumni, survivors of each shooting are now banded together, in a new kind of family that works together to re-learn how to live.

Lockdown drills have become prolific since the Columbine High School Shooting, but they can traumatize students, even though there’s no real attack. Is it worth it, given that researchers don’t even know if drills are effective?

In the 20 years since Columbine, researchers have dedicated themselves to studying potential shooters and teaching others how to spot them. They believe that assessing individual threats - based on psychology and behavior - can prevent attacks.

The student survivors of the Columbine shooting are now in their mid- to late-30s, and many now have families. Raising your own children as a survivor presents a unique set of challenges, like how and when to tell them your story, or what to do when dropping them off at school sets off a panic attack.