americans' pride in their nation's material prosperity, thriving democracy, and often admirable role in world affairs is tempered, for many, by concern and puzzlement over another American distinction – her perennial presence at the top of the list of the most violent industrial nations. Violence has been a major theme in public discussion for decades, and apprehension about it was intensified by the sharp rise in violence in the mid-1980s, a development most pronounced among inner-city minority youth. Despite the remarkable decline in violence that began in the early 1990s, a preoccupation with criminal violence persists among the citizenry as well as among scholars of violence, who are intent on understanding what has happened and predicting what will be.

Anxiety about violence was heightened considerably by the spate of school shootings in the late 1990s, which occurred after inner-city violence had declined appreciably. These incidents resonated in a broader constituency because, in contrast to what has come to be the standard image of American violence, they typically involved white, middle-class perpetrators and victims in rural or suburban settings. Thus, the late 1990s appeared to many to be a time of increasing suburban violence. In fact, however horrendous each of these school shootings was, fatal assaults in or around schools remain rare events, making up less than one percent of the violent deaths of school-age children.