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Before we look into methods, we need a consistent definition of what criminal event we are trying to reduce. “Mass shooting" is a fairly broad term whose primary criteria is victim count; typical definitions range from 3 to 5 victims in one time and place, and differ on whether those victims must be killed or only injured. This definition is intentionally broad, encompassing a larger number of events including familicides, gang shootings, drive-bys, home invasions gone bad, and a number of other crimes with relatively limited total targets and with specific intent regarding those targets.The term, however, immediately conjures images of a particular type of crime, often markedly different in many key ways from the above types of multi-victim shootings. The most recognized form of mass shooting, I will call a “rampage shooting" for purposes of this answer. This is a criminal event perpetrated by between one and three actors, usually unaffiliated with any larger criminal group (though this is not a disqualifier as these are commonly inspired by terror groups), who target a large group of individuals gathered at a localized venue with gunfire without discrimination as to their individual victims, with the primary motive of simply causing as much harm as they can. This describes the bulk of large shootings that get national attention, including Columbine, Newtown, Aurora, Pulse, Sutherland Springs, Las Vegas and Parkland.What are the underlying elements of these attacks? They’re all slightly different, as humans tend to be, but there are some prevalent themes:Mental illness - rampage shooters have commonly received treatment for mental disorders ranging from depression and anxiety to autism spectrum and even paranoid schizophrenia.Difficulties in home and/or social life - rampage shooters are commonly bullied or abused either at school or at home.History of violent tendencies - Regardless of provocation or other cause, almost all mass shooters have shown some signs of aggression toward their eventual targets. However, it’s often repressed and limited to fantasizing.Desire for recognition - A very common but not universal trait theorized by various analysts is that the shooter wants to be remembered. Potential motivations range from narcissism to a desire to “erase” a current reputation or history among people who know them.Triggering event - The above stew of problems in a mass shooter’s life is typically punctuated by a significant event involving or close to the shooter. This could be a rejection by a love interest; expulsion from school or a social group; loss of wealth, income or employment; loss of a loved one; or a number of other common significant downturns in one’s outlook.Trend toward severe violence as a solution to problems - Some analysts, most notably a writer for the New Yorker, identify an underlying motive for the increase in recent mass shootings, akin to mob or riot behavior. The theory is that we are witnessing a “slow-motion riot” in the United States, in which the most motivated individuals have been the first ones to “throw a brick” by committing a rampage shooting, and the behavior of these previous actors makes it “more okay” for others to do the same thing, creating a vicious cycle where the increasing prevalence of these shootings is its own reason.These are all fairly intuitive; well-adjusted people with supporting family and friends, for whom things are generally going at least “OK”, do not pick up a gun and start firing indiscriminately into a crowd of people. However, individually, or even in combination, these common traits describe millions of Americans with serious problems in their daily lives, who aren’t following in the footsteps of rampage shooters (though these events have been increasing in frequency as I noted in the last point). So, these identifying criteria can narrow the scope of individuals who may need close attention of varying kinds, but we cannot simply incarcerate or commit anyone for whom we can pre-emptively “check all the boxes”. Even if we focus on people who end up doing harm as a result of any or all of these, there are 20,000 suicides involving a firearm annually, compared to 300 “mass shootings” and single-digit “rampage shootings”. So even among people with proven tendencies towards inflicting harm with a gun, the tendencies for harm are overwhelmingly self-directed. That makes an exact “profile” of rampage shooters (or anyone likely to cause harm, including potential suicides) that exhaustively identifies these people difficult, perhaps impossible. In any case, most of what we know about why anyone did what they did is learned in hindsight, after it’s no longer speculative whether that individual is a danger to themselves or others.With all that said, the common threads behind an individual’s typical motivation for a rampage shooting, as well as the general elements of their crime, still give us indications for reducing the risk factors in society at large as well as containing and limiting the damage these individuals can cause:Improved mental health counseling in general, especially among high school and college students - High school and college are high-stress environments, and the age range of the individuals in these places is known to be a common range at which various mental illnesses such as schizophrenia tend to manifest. Generally speaking, however, mental health care has seen a significant decline in availability, scope and resources in the past 30 to 40 years, due to a combination of social, political and economic factors. For instance, the ACLU won a pivotal series of court cases in the late 70s that mandated sweeping changes in inpatient mental health treatment nationwide; the response by many agencies responsible for these hospitals and treatment centers was simply to shutter them entirely, and transition patients to outpatient forms of treatment not covered by the court’s orders.Parallel to this, the rising cost of healthcare and a shortage of clinical psychiatrists in the U.S. has led to a transition in this outpatient care from more traditional “talk therapy” towards medication. An hour of a shrink’s time can cost insurers over $500, often with several hours over weeks and months required to establish a rapport and trust between doctor and patient and get to the real roots of their issues. Meanwhile, 10 minutes and a script for Valium or Abilify improves on that on-paper cost considerably. That is, until “intangibles” such as side effects of these medications (including exactly the thoughts and tendencies the medication is intended to prevent) and higher risk of catastrophic failures of the system to properly identify and treat individuals with mental illness are calculated.Reform of school policies concerning bullying and violence - The response of many schools to a general uptick in violence in the 90s was to crack down on any violent episode with “zero tolerance policies”. These policies handed down lengthy suspensions or expulsions to students involved in fisticuffs, even if they were not the instigator or aggressor in the fight, and even if the fight occurred off of school grounds or outside classroom hours. In addition, a teacher with their back turned tends to see the “second punch thrown”; the initial provocation goes unseen but attracts the teacher’s attention, allowing them to witness the reaction. This tendency allows traditional physical bullies to operate efficiently and virtually unchallenged in modern schools simply by waiting until the teacher’s back is turned.The result, somewhat counterintuitively, is that problems between students or groups of students within a school cannot be resolved with lesser forms of violence like fisticuffs without triggering the same harsh punishments that would be handed down for more serious offenses like weapons. These problems simply fester and build on themselves until one side or the other decides that enough is enough, that getting even is worth whatever punishment they get, and if they’re going to be given a punishment that will negatively impact them for the rest of their lives, might as well earn it.More attention to “social bullying” including cyberbullying - This element is a radically different piece of the puzzle from anything Gen X or the Boomers were dealing with prior to the Information Age. “Cliques” or “social circles” among school students are by no means a new thing; jocks and nerds have been at odds since interscholastic athletics first became a status symbol in public schools, a trend going back to the World Wars, and additional interest groups (goths/punks, “aggs”/”urban cowboys”, LGBTers etc), simply add diversity and specific interest to this dynamic. However, prior to the Internet, the scope of inter-group rivalries was more limited; the worst you’d probably have to deal with is having to erase a slur against you or your group from a highway overpass, blank billboard or water tower. With the advent of social media, there is now a national and even global audience for this behavior. Now, a billion Facebook users can potentially know that Megan Whatsherface is a slut.This creates a new form of bully, one that doesn’t have to be physically imposing, or even throw a punch. All they have to do is like or share a Facebook post. Increasing corporate and parental monitoring of the more popular social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram just pushes the cyberbullying further underground into less outwardly visible and more anonymous forms of communication, like group texts, Snapchat, Kik etc. These activities can ruin lives for real; $50 and a couple hours with a “website-in-a-box” product can make a smear page the first result of a Google search for that person’s name, and with colleges and employers increasingly attentive to the online image of their students and employees, a difficult-to-trace PhotoShopped image posted to a blog site created under a pseudonym and administered via anonymous proxy can be what keeps Megan Whatsherface from getting that Ivy League admission letter. This kind of stuff really isn’t difficult to do, and even the forms of cyberbullying that are much easier to trace have typically been just as hard to combat, as until relatively recently the social media providers adopted a “hands-off” approach to their content and subscribers; they were just a service provider, their members were totally responsible for content.Reduce media coverage of mass shootings and other violence - Several analysts have pointed out that, far beyond the reach of the average Facebook page, American mass media creates a global, near-captive audience for rampage shooters and their crimes. Not only is the event reported nationwide and repeated by other news agencies around the world, that coverage goes on for hours every day, for weeks or even months at a time. Famous newscasters watched by an audience of millions will comment on every detail they can find of a shooter and their crime. Legal experts will speculate about you. The President himself will know your name and repeat it in his speeches to the nation. There’s a saying, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”, and while the veracity of it is disputed, what’s not in dispute is that America, and indeed the world, are morbidly fascinated with mass murderers, and these mass shootings tend to be the biggest story the news outlets can use to sell themselves for a very long time.The trend among many news outlets, after this revelation became widespread, has been to reduce the coverage of the shooter; minimize how many times his name is said, reduce analyst speculation of his background, motivation etc, and instead focus on the victims. News outlets can’t not report on these events, and the certainly can’t be forced not to do so, but they can change how the story is covered and how much total airtime it gets. The result in many cases is that the very people the shooter may have wanted to erase from people’s minds get the spotlight once more instead of the shooter. That reduces or even flips the incentive to commit such crimes to gain media attention; your name won’t be on the tip of anyone’s tongue, but they will know you’re a piece of human garbage, while your victims are held up as heroes and their lives celebrated in the best possible light that friends, family and the media can shine on them.The above measures will, hopefully, reduce the tendency of individuals to become rampage shooters. That’s the “demand side” of the equation; the demand being for the means to commit such acts and the places in which to do so. Like any amateur economist knows, there is also a “supply side” of these means and settings, and manipulating the supply side of a market can be as effective if not more so in discouraging unwanted behaviors:Control access to firearms - It’s an option. It’s one I personally don’t agree will do much, especially in isolation from these other options, but it’s a commonly-espoused option and therefore in the interest of a complete answer it has to be mentioned. Universal background checks, stricter safe storage laws, mental health screenings, purchase permits or FOIDs, “red flag” laws, “no-fly, no-buy” interaction regarding terror suspects and other people known to have disrupted air travel security, and restricted market access to the kinds of weapons favored in these attacks are all commonly suggested as solutions.Some options have more potential effectiveness (and public support) than others, and generally speaking, the goal of reducing criminal access to firearms is a widely-accepted one. It’s fairly intuitive logic that a potential rampage shooter who cannot access a firearm can’t be a rampage shooter. However, there’s ample evidence that people intent on a murder rampage don’t need a gun to do it. Bombs, trucks, poison gas, knives and other weapons have all caused mass death in similar overall circumstances as those of a typical mass shooting. So, these efforts are effective only in that they force individuals intent on such crimes to change strategy, and reduce shootings in favor of other forms of attack, many of which involve components or devices that cannot be practically limited in society. That’s not to say they can’t be part of a comprehensive solution, but they cannot be the only part of such a solution.Harden the targets - The rampage shootings that have become part of the public consciousness have a common thread; overwhelmingly, they occur in venues where people are forbidden by law to carry weapons, but the methods for enforcing that prohibition are limited to signs or to unarmed security. Schools, shopping malls, churches, places of employment, entertainment venues, etc. The result is a concentrated group of people with an extremely low probable occurrence of armed individuals.Several methods have been proposed to reduce access by people in possession of the weapons typically used in rampage attacks have been proposed, and or to dramatically reduce the response time by someone equipped to stop the threat. These include physical barriers preventing vehicle incursion into pedestrian spaces, additional security including armed police, increased access to licensed armed civilians, metal detectors and bag/body searches, reduced points of entry with required fire exits hardened against entry from outside, and reforms to procedures traditionally calling for mass evacuation, including fire alarms and bomb threats (which get people out of these well-secured venues and into fields and parking lots some distance away where they’re more vulnerable).No individual method is totally effective, practical and desirable in all cases. Additional armed security at the concert in Las Vegas would not have prevented the shooting there, as the shooter was firing from an elevated position hundreds of yards from any security for the location itself. Metal detectors at the Boston Marathon would be totally impractical as the event takes place on public streets with hundreds of entry points that cannot be closed off in any practical way without taking a significant amount of the BPD away from normal duties. “Places of public accommodation”, such as public businesses, would also not want to put metal detectors and armed police at every entry, as this not only slows the inflow of consumer traffic, it discourages people from patronizing that business in the first place. Increased security is a site-specific consideration, but that consideration paid to the individual needs of each likely venue of mass humanity can make it impractically difficult for a potential rampage shooter to target that venue, and should they do so anyway, security measures can reduce casualties by increasing the time the shooter has to spend without any available targets, and simultaneously reducing the response time of someone who can engage and subdue the shooter.Finally, even with low demand and restricted supply of the means and circumstances of a rampage shooting, there will still be some. The only sure way to stop an observed human behavior pattern is for there to be no more humans. Short of that fairly grim prospect, again in economic terms, the supplier and consumer have to meet for the transaction to occur. Case in point, a potential rampage shooter can have the intent, the means, and the opportunity, and can still be stopped. The means by which we do so tend to be inherent in the same means by which we can help prevent them, mainly by activating the measures in place as a deterrent. This is the difference between a sign saying “no guns allowed” and an armed police officer saying the same. It’s the difference between a law saying it’s illegal for a mentally disturbed person to have a gun and a law that allows members of the community to alert law enforcement to such a person. It’s the difference between a one-size-fits-all zero-tolerance reactive policy to violence, and a policy that requires faculty and staff to engage with the student body one-on-one, proactively, and not just maintain an “open door”.