author of the books school shooters and why kids kill delving into the mind of a school shooter so dr langland you said that punishment is not the best option for students demonstrating violent tendencies since it can feel the student's sense of distance hartman and so how should schools treat potential shooters that they have identified. the concern about using punishment such as suspending the student for maybe two or three days or expelling the student from the school is that if that's all you're doing you're not doing an investigation so you don't really know what the risk is and simply trying to get the student out of your school doesn't prevent a bad student from coming back the same day and the next day a week later or even a month later and committing an act of violence so if your concern is a potential school shooting simply suspending or expelling the student is not really solving the problem you might not even know the depths of the problem if you don't also do an in-depth threat assessment that doesn't mean that you would never suspend or expel a student but if you don't do the thr