Staying focused on the full behavioral picture, not a single data point
On September 10, 2025, the targeted killing of Charlie Kirk jolted the country and thrust the issue of political violence back into the spotlight.
On August 27, 2025, during a back-to-school Mass at a Catholic school in Minneapolis, a 23-year-old assailant opened fire, killing two children and injuring 17 others, most of them children, before dying by suicide at the scene.
This issue of Left of Boom is not intended to provide detailed case studies of these attacks or speculate on motives. Those answers will come later, once law enforcement completes its investigations. Instead, our focus is on helping Threat Management Teams (TMTs) maintain clarity, open-mindedness, and discipline in the middle of a noisy, politicized, and often oversimplified information ecosystem.
The Rush to Explain and Understand
Echoes and distortions: Finding the signal in the noise
Like many of you, we’ve been following developments in these cases, balancing real-time updates with the restraint and analytical perspective that comes from years of experience in Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management (BTAM). Despite the headlines and speculation, we do not yet know the motives, influences, or pathway behaviors leading up to these attacks. The Kirk killing most likely has a political component, but the actual motives and behavioral drivers of the shooter are currently unknown. The motives of the Minneapolis shooter are even murkier.
That uncertainty is exactly where a disciplined, evidence-based threat assessment process becomes most critical.
In the immediate aftermath of high-profile attacks, two things almost always happen:
- Public and political narratives take shape before the facts are known.
- Threat management teams face heightened scrutiny and pressure to “act” quickly.
Digital media experts reviewing online activity after the Kirk killing found extremist elements across the political spectrum exploiting the tragedy. In the absence of facts and with emphasis on emotional appeals, these actors rapidly advanced narratives that encouraged division and, in some cases, promoted violence. Calls for retaliatory attacks on political leaders appeared alongside claims of imminent civil war. Conspiracy theories pinned blame on government agencies or “globalist” plots. Others claimed the attack had been fabricated using AI-generated video. Antisemitic narratives targeted Jewish communities, while scapegoating extended to media, institutions, and minority groups.
The speed and scale of this discourse demonstrate how moments of national crisis can be leveraged to inflame hatred, normalize violent rhetoric, and intensify partisan conflict. For threat management teams, these rapid-fire narratives represent the very “shiny objects” we caution against, loud, politicized speculation that diverts attention from disciplined behavioral threat assessment.
The Danger of Shiny Objects
The Comfort and Cost of Simple Explanations
Whenever targeted violence occurs, media outlets and public figures rush to fill the vacuum of uncertainty with explanations. Guns, untreated mental illness, antidepressants, ideology, and even gender identity are routinely offered as the driving cause. These can be sources of motivation for an attack but they are most often only one of several factors.
In reality, most attacks emerge from multiple, interacting factors, often rooted in long-simmering grievances. A quick, politically convenient answer may offer clarity in the moment but ignores key elements that not only explain motivation but also provide critical insight for preventing future violence.
These simple, linear narratives are tempting because they give us something tangible to hold onto in moments of chaos and uncertainty. A simple answer is easier to process than the complex truth. But for threat assessment professionals and TMTs, this is where the danger lies.
Distraction by shiny objects can:
Oversimplify complex dynamics.
Rarely is there a single motivator for an attack, Simplistic explanations can blind teams to other important risk factors. TMTs must consider all possible factors.
Create analytical blind spots.
Narrow focus leaves organizations vulnerable to missing cases that don’t fit the prevailing narrative, a risk amplified by confirmation bias and narrative bias, natural tendencies to favor evidence that supports an existing story while overlooking contradictory indicators.
Fuel stigma and silence.
Stigmatizing explanations create barriers to reporting and early intervention, discouraging people of concern from seeking help.
Navigating a Politically Charged Threat Environment
Holding the rudder steady in rough seas
Events like the Kirk killing highlight how threat cases often unfold in environments already charged with political tension. In the past year, assassination attempts and attacks have struck figures across the spectrum, former presidents, members of Congress, business leaders, and activists. While support for political murder remains extremely low, public perception is distorted; many Americans believe their political opponents are far more violent than they actually are. This fear-driven misperception fuels division and creates a climate in which isolated individuals may see their private rage as socially sanctioned. For TMTs and organizational threat managers, this context matters. It shapes how employees interpret threats, how leaders feel pressure to respond, and how external narratives can spill into the workplace.
The challenge is not only evaluating individuals on a potential pathway to violence but also navigating the wider information environment. Political rhetoric, partisan narratives, and online incitement can quickly escalate tensions and create new risks, even when the direct threat to an organization seems remote. In this environment, teams should:
- Maintain strict neutrality in assessments. Focus on observable behaviors and risk factors rather than public and political narratives.
- Anticipate spillover effects. Extremist rhetoric and scapegoating can escalate risk and influence persons of concern, making it essential to monitor both direct threats and the broader climate of incitement. The risk of contagion and copycat attacks is escalated.
- Centralize organizational communication. Encourage restraint in public commentary, reducing the likelihood of inflaming tensions or drawing unwanted attention.
- Document decisions carefully. Show that assessments are grounded in evidence-based practices, not political pressures or public speculation.
Applying a deliberate, structured, and methodical process in politically charged cases protects credibility, reinforces neutrality, and ensures interventions remain focused on the totality of behaviors, stressors, and protective factors at play.
Mental Illness and Targeted Violence
Evidence over stigma
We want to be clear: mental illness can be a relevant risk factor, but it is one of many and rarely serves as a standalone driver of targeted violence.
- Most individuals living with mental illness do not engage in violence. In fact, many studies show that individuals living with serious mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence.
- Where mental illness is present in attackers, it typically interacts with other key elements such as personal grievances, social isolation, fixation on perceived injustices, and situational stressors.
- Overemphasizing any one factor distorts threat assessment, leading teams toward incomplete conclusions and away from observable behaviors that identify risk and guide effective interventions.
What the Research Shows
Over 20 years of research from the FBI, U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC), and other leading studies converge on the same conclusion: acts of targeted violence are rarely spontaneous. Instead, they evolve through identifiable phases, often referred to as the Pathway to Violence, involving escalating patterns of stress, grievance, preparation, and leakage of intent.
Key Warning Behaviors
- Pathway to Violence behaviors: Planning, target selection, reconnaissance, and weapons acquisition almost always precede attacks.
- Leakage: Many attackers make statements to peers, family, or online about their intent, directly or indirectly.
- Fixation and identification: Obsessive focus on grievances, idolizing previous attackers, or aligning with violent ideologies is common.
- Multiple stressors: Relationship breakdowns, humiliation, financial instability, workplace conflict, or academic failure are frequently present
- Access to weapons: A significant contributing factor, but rarely the singular driver of violence.
Politicized narratives and the oversimplification of attacks as matters of mental illness alone are shiny objects that distort analysis and undermine prevention efforts. The lesson is simple but critical: focus on behaviors, patterns, and convergence of risk factors, not assumptions about singular causes.
Staying the course in threat management
Practical tools for teams, strategic guidance for leaders
Process guidance for threat management teams
- Stay grounded in process. Use Structured Professional Judgment (SPJ) tools such as WAVR-21, HCR-20 V3, TRAP-18, and CTAP-25 when appropriate. These instruments provide structure and defensibility, but they must only be used by professionals specifically trained in their administration and interpretation. Misuse or overreliance without proper expertise can lead to inaccurate assessments and unnecessary risk exposure.
- Build multidisciplinary reviews. Every case discussion should involve voices from security, HR, behavioral health, legal, and operational leadership. Shared perspectives reduce blind spots and strengthen defensibility.
- Prioritize proven behavioral indicators. Monitor planning and rehearsal, weapons acquisition, target mapping, leakage of intent, fixation on grievances or prior attackers, escalating stressors, and the presence of protective factors such as treatment engagement, supportive relationships, and community ties.
- Maintain independence. Keep assessments insulated from political narratives, media headlines, and public speculation. Credibility depends on disciplined adherence to evidence-based practice, not external pressure.
Strategic takeaways for leaders
- Prevention requires a multi-factor lens. Acts of targeted violence are rarely driven by a single cause; effective programs integrate stressors, behaviors, and protective factors into the assessment.
- Behavior matters more than headlines. Observable patterns of planning, leakage, or fixation provide better guidance than politicized narratives or oversimplified explanations.
- Multidisciplinary processes protect credibility. When teams document their decisions and demonstrate balanced input across disciplines, they not only strengthen prevention but also reinforce organizational defensibility.
- Use sentinel events as catalysts. High-profile incidents are opportunities to review, reinforce, and refine BTAM protocols before the next crisis tests them.
Final Thoughts
Every act of targeted violence sparks a rush for simple answers to complex behavioral motivators.
Prevention, however, requires something much harder: nuance, discipline, and a refusal to chase shiny-object explanations. Threat management teams succeed when they stay anchored in evidence-based BTAM principles, focusing on the totality of behaviors and risk factors rather than isolated narratives. By applying structured processes, documenting decisions, and holding steady even in moments of national crisis, teams protect credibility, strengthen defensibility, and create the conditions for genuine prevention.
The stakes could not be higher. The current climate of political violence, online incitement, and polarized narratives creates pressure on organizations to react quickly, sometimes rashly. This is exactly when threat managers must slow the decision velocity, trust their process, and separate noise from signal. Leaders cannot afford shortcuts or distractions; the risks are too great, and the margin for error too small.
Yet there is reason for hope. A disciplined BTAM process, rooted in proven best practices, consistently applied, gives organizations the tools to rise to this challenge. By focusing on behaviors, leveraging multidisciplinary expertise, and reinforcing protective factors, teams can safeguard leaders, staff, visitors, customers, and the communities they serve.
In turbulent times, slowing the decision velocity and keeping the rudder steady is how organizations push back against fear, resist division, and protect what matters most—people.
