There are various factors that feed into each shooter's dark scheme of murder and suicidal quest for fame, but one of the biggest, I think, is kids left unattended and unsupervised, pretty much raising themselves. The parent(s) are indeed around, but their focus is on other things...pursuits of their own.
Then when they start to go off track in school and start getting marginalized by other kids for acting weird, they are often just a number in a sea of 2,000 other students.
Teachers individually try to help them, but their year or semester with them ends. Then the parents often will not accept that their child is doing anything wrong, much less that he's showing signs of deviant behavior/thinking....and the child digs himself deeper into a hole of isolation and aberrant thinking fed by drugs, solitude, internet research, violent/bloody video games, and wayward friends into some really sick topics.
I think many of the school shooters feel unloved and home is the first place where they felt that. One thing different about parochial schools, which seem to have few if any shootings, is that the students are taught and reminded at every turn that when nobody else loves you, God always does, and He can be accessed 24/7/365 thru prayer.
I'm not advocating prayer in public schools at all, nor that parochial schools are the answer. Public schools are foundational to our nation. But kids being taught who God is, and how to access Him in our deepest, darkest moments could well be a big defining factor in the path the shooters took.
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