150 Shootings And Violent Attacks Prevented By The FBI Through Interventions

Almost 150 shootings and violent attacks have been prevented this year with the help of the FBI by steering potential gunmen toward mental health professionals, the Associated Press reported.

There have been hundreds of these disruptions since 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder told an audience of police chiefs in October, lauding the behind-the-scenes work of a small FBI unit based out of Quantico, Va.

In most cases, the FBI has helped potential offenders get access to mental health care, the AP reported. The impact of mass shootings like the rampages in Newtown, Conn., the Washington, D.C. Navy Yard and the Aurora, Colo., have been high and represents the majority of gun violence.

During a time when President Barack Obama made curbing gun violence a priority for his administration, yet has had very little success, the FBI's achievement stands out for preventing mass shootings through threat assessments and treatment, according to the AP.

One year after the deadly mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, the White House's biggest efforts to curb gun violence - attempts to reinstate the assault weapons ban and expand background checks for all gun purchases - failed without congressional support.

For years, the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit has been working with state and local authorities to profile potential offenders with the goal of preventing violent crimes like mass shootings, the AP reported.

The "prevented" shootings and violent attacks from January through November of this year represent 148 cases that a division of that unit, the Behavioral Threat Assessment Center, has conferred on during 2013. And that number is up 33 percent from 2012, Andre Simmons, unit chief of the center, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The past year has seen the unit, staffed by agents and analysts of the FBI, the U.S. Capitol Police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives and a psychiatrist, receive about three new cases a week referred by federal, state, local and campus law enforcement, schools, businesses and houses of worship, Simmons said.

The Behavioral Threat Assessment Center gets involved when someone notifies law enforcement, for example, about some troubling behavior, and law enforcement reaches out to the center to help assess the situation.

The Behavioral Threat Assessment Center, which was launched in the fall of 2010, operates with the knowledge that mass shootings like Newtown are uncommon, said Ronald Schouten, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and expert on threat assessments.

"These occur very rarely, and there's no profile," Schouten said of those who carry out the shootings.