School shooters: why do they do it?

Uvalde, in southern Texas last week joined a list of horror stretching across America as the scene of another school shooting in which far too many young lives were taken.

The whys are many.

Why did a teenager boy arm his self with high-powered gun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition and target a school full of children? Why was he able to buy a gun at 18, an age when buying a beer is absolutely illegal across the US? Why did the police descend on the school and then stand outside the classroom where the shooter had barricaded himself in for more than an hour?

Marin Wall is The Irish Time Washington Correspondent and he has spent much of the time since the shooting in the town. He talks to In The New about the latest news including a Department of Justice investigation into the shooting and how the town has been broken for generations to come by the horror attack.

Dr Robin Kowalski is a Centennial professor of psychology at Clemson University and she has spent much of her career asking why do children and young adults shoot other children?

She has published a significant volume of research on the issue with the hope that some answers can be found that might save lives in the future.

She believes that the availability of guns is a significant problem – as do the majority of Americans – while the sense of isolation and rejection that far too many young Americans feel also needs to be recognised and addressed.

However she is acutely aware of the dangers and futility of profiling and using mental illness as an excuse while refusing to adequately resource those with the skills to deal with such issues.

She shares some of the findings of her years of research with In The News, presented by Conor Pope and Sorcha Pollack and produced by Declan Conlan, Suzanne Brennan and Jennifer Ryan.