This book follows closely in the never-ending, easily resolved drama that is American school mass murders.

I say easily resolved, as it’s no secret that the fewer guns one has access to, and the fewer class differences there are in the society that one lives in, the fewer mass murders there are. That’s simplifying things, but not much.

The Pulse shooting in 2016 seems to have been the point when millions of Americans decided they couldn’t bear it anymore. Nothing ever changed, except the body count, which kept rising. The Onion famously reruns the same headline after every time: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”

Cullen follows youths who have somehow been, geographically and/or physically speaking, been affected by the mass-murder in Parkland in 2018.

Sadly, Columbine ignited the school-shooter era, which we’re still dealing with, and it’s getting much worse. While keeping top-ten lists of these massacres is part of the problem, it’s notable that Columbine no longer even makes that list.

What differed reactions of the mass murder in Columbine—which Cullen excellently covered in his book “Columbine“—is that what happened at Parkland sparked hundreds of movements of sorts, by youth.

Youth directed political strife, started organisations with the sole purpose to ban semi-automatic rifles, to spark true political change, to prevent themselves from being slaughtered.

And that’s mainly what this book is about; while Cullen’s “Columbine” focused on the perpetrators, this book is all about the youth and their organisation towards changing the future.

After two decades of research based on the voices of victims and victim advocates, and responses from the best minds in academia, psychology, criminology, and journalism, plausible roads out seem clear: major reforms to the easy access to deadly weapons and ammunition; a targeted approach to mental health in the form of screening for teen depression, every semester, in every high school in the country; and a major change in the media’s coverage of these killers, which lionizes them in the eyes of unraveling future perps. It may take a combination of these strategies, and of course the smart money is on doing all three. Yet in twenty years, America alone has lost 683 lives in 81 mass shootings, and we’ve done virtually nothing. Concealed-carry and a host of other laws have made quick access to guns easier and easier. The “mental health” component has always been addressed with that absurdly broad label, so of course we have failed to move an inch. Only the media angle has begun to show some progress, or at least the early rumblings, in which journalists are beginning to accept our role in the star-making cycle.

Sadly, this book does not delve deeply, or even semi-deeply into what could be done to stop what truly erects mass murder in schools in the USA; that is what I believe. Access to weapons is one thing, but weapons do not create the chaos that leads to mass murder; I’m not pro-NRA or anything like it, and I firmly believe that the NRA is a destructive organisation that should best be cancelled, and weapons be demolished. However, weapons will always exist.

Senate president Joe Negron opened his session to the media. He was joined by two other Republican Senate leaders. The senators were respectful and engaging, seemed genuinely concerned, and answered every question—but most of them evasively. The questions were dignified, as instructed, but the reactions were spontaneous and blunt. “Why should anyone have an assault rifle?” a boy asked. “That’s an issue that we’re reviewing,” Negron said. The students groaned.

“I’ll take two more questions,” Senator Negron said. “This young lady, and the young man in the red tie.” When his turn came, the red-tie boy stood and spoke more sternly than his peers. “You said you would look at things closely. Are you willing to actually act on anything? Yes or no?” Senator Negron gave a long, meandering answer: he was proud of the senate, they were working on mental health . . . No real answer.

The planning phase typically lasts weeks or months. In the case of the deeply depressed, it typically comes at the tail end of a far longer downward spiral into depression. The definitive study on school shooters reported that nearly 95 percent of perpetrators planned the attack in advance, just over half spent a month or more doing so, and some planned for an entire year. The Secret Service conducted that investigation in 2004, and studied every targeted school shooting in the United States until that point: thirty-seven incidents from 1974 to 2000. The FBI did a companion study with similar findings and has recently done more exhaustive work on the broader cohort of mass shooters. In all cases, same result. The Secret Service report made a startling statement, backed by all the others: “There is no accurate or useful ‘profile’ of students who engaged in targeted school violence.” Shooters encompass all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic factors, parenting styles, and so forth. However, most of the major studies have indicated that mental health disorders play a big factor. The FBI’s June 2018 study examined “concerning behaviors” in major mass shooters, and only one of those broke 50 percent: mental health issues afflicted 62 percent of all shooters studied. Depression, anxiety, and paranoia were the issues most frequently cited.

The best part about this book is summed up by the author:

“Adults will always think of ten thousand reasons why you can’t do something,” Dr. Ley said. “Kids won’t do that. That’s what’s glorious about young people: the still-developing impulse control. They see something, they see a cause, and they say, ‘I’m going to do what’s right. You’re not going to stop me.’”

All in all, this book is a good job on kids who rush to danger, willing to make changes that affect humans for real. Cullen’s capturing of the urgency is the best part. Having said that, I truly wish that Cullen would have delved more into the thoughts and processes that drove the youth which rallied for true change, and this book would have been much better for it.