According to Education World, Secret Service Report Targets School Violence. But no, it doesn’t, really. It sidesteps the social emergency that creates the climate in which this can happen so viciously and frequently, which of course the Secret Service is unqualified to think about. Instead, it targets the shooters as lone gunmen in an otherwise-intact environment, missing the point and proposing remedies including early recognition of troubled kids and encouraging other students to inform on them. If there ever was going to be a move that accentuates disenfranchisement, alienation and divisiveness, it’s this. Media critics have derided the crop of newspaper columns empathizing with Griffith’s chronic schoolyard victimization, as if it’s only kneejerk emotionalism from isolated others unlucky enough to have had a history of being bullied themselves. I agree that the shooters shouldn’t be exonerated by a blaming-the-victim defense, but the social intolerance and anomie that epitomize American social life guarantee a continuing crop of these incidents. I’m a psychiatrist with a special interest in clinical populations with impulsivity, aggressiveness and irritability, but those whose violence-proneness is neurobiologically mediated form only the smallest segment of our societal violence epidemic, IMHO. The Surgeon General’s Report on Youth Violence is more thoughtful, providing a public health perspective and expressing prominent concern about the availability of firearms.