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According to Wikipedia a school shooting is “an attack at an educational institution, such as a primary school, secondary school, high school or university, involving the use of firearms. Many school shootings are also categorized as mass shootings due to multiple casualties.”

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Map: What Are States Doing to Prevent School Shootings?

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In 2016, the American Medical Association declared gun violence to be a public health crisis and it’s “unrivaled in any other developed country.”

Patrick Carter, co-director of the Institute for Firearm Injury Protection at the University of Michigan says, “We do know that states with more comprehensive policies in place have lower rates of firearm injury outcomes.”

So why is America so afraid to implement more restrictions in the states with higher gun violence incidents? This is a question that is still yet to be answered.

Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of AASA (School Superintendents Association), says, “How are we going to continue the important work of academic recovery and mental health supports in repossessed to the pandemic when we can’t reasonably ensure the core need for physical safety?”

Later Domenech states, “How many more students have to walk into a school only to never walk out? Our children have a right to live and learn in a safe environment. If these tragedies do not serve as a serious wake-up call to our nation to take action, I don’t know what will.”

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The shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, was the worst since Sandy Hook but far from the first of the year. “In 2022 alone, there have been 27 school shootings,” said Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association, in response to the tragedy.

“How are we going to continue the important work of academic recovery and mental health supports in response to the pandemic when we can’t reasonably ensure the core need for physical safety?” Domenech said.

“Gun violence is a cancer, and it’s one that none of us should tolerate for one single moment longer,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). “We have made a choice to let this continue, and we can make a choice to finally do something — do anything — to put a stop to this madness.”

AFT collaborated with Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund and the National Education Association (NEA) to produce “Keeping Our Schools Safe,” a report that outlines a comprehensive plan to end gun violence in American schools. It remains to be seen whether events in Uvalde will spur Congress into action, but the report makes it clear that states can play a much bigger role.

One strategy is the enactment of extreme risk laws, which empower community members to work with courts and remove firearms from persons they feel pose a danger to others. Depending on the provisions in a particular state, a request for an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) can be initiated by law enforcement, a family or household member, a health professional or even a school administrator. Such laws are currently in place in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

States can also enact and enforce firearm storage laws. A letter published by the American Medical Association that reviewed findings from the 2021 National Firearms Survey reported that about 30 million American children live in households with firearms, 7 million more than in 2015. An estimated 4.6 million live in households with unlocked and loaded firearms.

According to the Giffords Law Center, only 13 states have laws mandating safe storage. Even these have loopholes, with some requiring storage “sometimes,” some applying to handguns only, some vague on the standards for locks. Only two, Massachusetts and Oregon, require all firearms to be stored with a lock in place.

AFT and its partners also urge stricter age requirements for gun purchases and possession, noting that most school shooters have been school-age. “Data show that 18-to-20-year-olds commit gun homicides at a rate four times higher than adults 21,” they say.

“Research shows the 18-20-year-old age group is among the highest risk to commit violence with firearms, yet in most states the ability to purchase these deadly weapons is less restricted than the ability to purchase beer,” said Joshua Horwitz, JD, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. “This is a clear example of how weaknesses in gun laws continue to pose threats to communities across the country."

Only 10 states limit gun possession to persons 21 and older; just 17 set this standard for handgun purchases.

States can also do much more to ensure that guns stay out of the hands of persons likely to misuse them, those with criminal records, histories of severe mental problems or addiction, or persons subject to restraining orders. At present, only 14 states and the District of Columbia require that purchases of all classes of firearms, whether from a licensed dealer or unlicensed seller, include a background check. This is out of sync with attitudes reported by the Pew Research Center, which found that 93 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans approve of them.

A strategy that NEA and AFT don’t support is arming school personnel. While this might seem sensible to some gun enthusiasts, law enforcement disagrees. J. Thomas Manger, the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police and a past president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, has put it this way: “A cop shows up and there’s people with guns in their hand. We don’t know who’s the good guy, who’s the bad guy. That’s very dangerous for the police. And it’s dangerous for the community.”

Gun violence isn’t just a public safety problem. A recent analysis of CDC mortality data found that firearm-related injuries had become the leading cause of death among children and adolescents. As long ago as 2016, the American Medical Association declared gun violence to be a public health crisis “unrivaled in any other developed country.”

Researchers are working to understand which policies work best to reduce firearm risk, says Patrick Carter, co-director of the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan. “We do know that states with more comprehensive policies in place have lower rates of firearm injury outcomes.”

As more states implement policy interventions such as ERPO laws, researchers will have more opportunities to understand how and why they work, Carter says. This will make it possible to develop evidence-based solutions for this complex public health problem.

“How many more students have to walk into a school, only to never walk out?” asks AASA’s Domenech. “Our children have a right to live and learn in a safe environment. If these tragedies do not serve as a serious wake-up call to our nation to take action, I don’t know what will.”

Editor's Note: The map in this article was updated to clarify that some states require an individual to be 21 for a handgun purchases, not all classes of firearms.

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Map: What Are States Doing to Prevent School Shootings?

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The most devastating school shooting in decades is prompting calls for Congress to act on gun control. State leaders don’t have to wait.

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“Gun violence and school shootings are a uniquely American epidemic.” Sandy Hook Promise

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“Gun violence and school shootings are a uniquely American epidemic.” Sandy Hook Promise

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“Firearms now the top cause of death among children, adolescents” Alex Piazza, Lab Report from University of Michigan

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“Firearms now the top cause of death among children, adolescents” Alex Piazza, Lab Report from University of Michigan

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April 21, 2022

A data analysis shows firearm-related deaths among children and adolescents increased by 29% from 2019-2020.

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School Shooters: What's Their Path To Violence?

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“About half of the school shooters I’ve studied had died by suicide in their attack,” says Peter Langman, psychologist. “It’s often a mix of severe depression and anguish and desperation driving them to end their own lives.”

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“About half of the school shooters I’ve studied had died by suicide in their attack,” says Peter Langman, psychologist. “It’s often a mix of severe depression and anguish and desperation driving them to end their own lives.”

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It's hard to empathize with someone who carries out a school shooting. The brutality of their crimes is unspeakable. Whether the shootings were in Uvalde, Columbine, or Parkland, they have traumatized students and communities across the U.S.

Psychologist John Van Dreal understands that. "Someone went out of their way to target and kill children who look like our children, teachers who look like our teachers - and did it for no other reason than to hurt them," says Van Dreal. "And that's very personal."

Van Dreal is the director of safety and risk management at Salem-Keizer Public Schools in Oregon, a state that has had its share of school shootings. In 2014, about 60 miles from Salem, where Van Dreal is based, a 15-year-old boy shot one student and a teacher at his high school before killing himself.

But even though it's hard, psychologists like Van Dreal and law enforcement agents as well spend a lot of time thinking about what it's like to be one of these school shooters. Understanding who the shooters are,they say, is key to prevention.
How many school shootings?
To gain insights, the interested parties look to the past.

Tallying up all shootings and instances of school violence is difficult, researchers say; there's no official count, and various organizations differ in their definitions of school shootings.

For example, an open source database put together by Mother Jones suggests there have been 12 mass shootings (where four or more people died) in schools since the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado in 1999, and 134 children and adults died in those attacks.

Psychologists and law enforcement agencies have been analyzing how these sorts of multivictim attacks came to be, because of what they tell us about many other people who are at risk of becoming violent in schools and the ways we might intervene early, before anger becomes violence.

In the two decades since the Columbine High School shooting, researchers have learned a lot about school shooters. For one thing, many are themselves students, or former students, at the schools they attack. A significant majority tend to be teenagers or young adults.

"There's no one thing, [but] maybe a couple of dozen different things that come together to put someone on the path to committing an act of mass violence," says Peter Langman, a clinical psychologist in Allentown, Pa., and the author of two books and several studies about school shootings.

Multiple factors contribute in each case

Most shooters in these cases had led difficult lives, the studies find.

"Adolescent school shooters, there's no question that they're struggling and there have been multiple failures in their lives," says Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist who has consulted with the FBI.

Manystruggle with psychological problems, Meloy says.

"We know that mental health issues are very much in the mix," he says. "The child might be just, you know, very depressed. We also found in one of our early studies that you've got this curious combination of both depression and paranoia."

Studies by the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service have also found that many of the shooterswere feeling desperate before the event.

"Whether or not they've been diagnosed, or whether or not they're severely mentally ill, something is going on that could [have been] addressed through some kind of treatment," says Langman.

But most never got that treatment.

The role of mental health problems

Mental health issues don't cause school shootings, Van Dreal emphasizes. After all, only a tiny, tiny percentage of kids with psychological issuesgo on to become school shooters.

But mental health problems are a risk factor, he says, because they can decrease one's ability to cope with other stresses. And studies have shown that most school shooters have led particularlystressful lives.

Many, though not all, of the perpetrators have experienced childhood traumas such as physical or emotional abuse,and unstable families, with violent, absent or alcoholic parents or siblings, for example. And most have experienced significant losses.

For example, the defendant in the case of the Parkland, Fla., shooting in 2018 had lost his adoptive mother to complications from the flu just a couple of months before the school attack. His adoptive father had died when he was a little boy.

Feeling like an outcast at school may also play a role. Initial media reports suggest that the perpetrator in Uvalde had been bullied and harassed at school for years for a speech impediment.

"A lot of these people have felt excluded, socially left out or rejected," says Van Dreal. Studies show that social rejection at school is associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, aggression and antisocial behavior in children.

A 2004 study by the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education found that nearly three-quarters of school shooters had been bullied or harassed at school.

Marginalized kids don't have anchors at school, says Van Dreal. "They don't have any adult connection - no one watching out for them. Or no one knows who they are anymore."

And the absence of social support at the school, Meloy says, is a big risk factor.

"People who do these kinds of targeted attacks don't feel very good about themselves or where they're headed in their lives," says Van Dreal. "They may wish someone would kill them. Or they may wish they could kill themselves."

For example, Dylan Klebold, one of the perpetrators of the Columbine shooting, had been depressed and suicidal two years prior.

"About half of the school shooters I've studied have died by suicide in their attack," says Langman. "It's often a mix of severe depression and anguish and desperation driving them to end their own lives."

Of course, most people who feel suicidal don't kill others.

So what makes a small minority of kids who have mental health issues and thoughts of suicide turn to violence and homicide?

Meloy and Van Dreal think it's because these individuals had been struggling alone - either because they were unable to ask for help or their cries went unheard when the adults in their lives didn't realize the child needed support.

When despair turns to anger and a desire for revenge

When someone has been struggling alone for a while and failing, their despair can turn into anger, the researchers say.

"There's loss. There's humiliation. There's anger. There's blame," says Meloy.

That sort of anger can lead to homicidal thoughts, Van Dreal says.

They start out fantasizing about revenge, says Meloy.

"So the fantasy is one where the teenager starts to identify with other individuals who have become school shooters and have used violence," he says.

These days, Meloy adds, it's easy for a troubled kid to go online and research how previous shooters planned and executed their attacks.

Easy access to guns - one of the biggest risk factors - then turns these fantasies into reality.

Psychologists say these attacks can be prevented - they are often weeks or months in the planning.

The keys to prevention are to spot the earliest behavioral signs that a student is struggling, Langman says, and also to watch for signs that someone may be veering toward violence.

Some signs can seem obvious in hindsight."So, I've stopped being the kid who went to Boy Scouts, and church and loved his grandmother," Van Dreal says, "and now I want to be that kid with camouflage who's isolated and attacks people and hurts them."

But sometimes, even professionals who see the signs miss their significance.

About a year and a half before he attacked students at Columbine High School, Dylan Klebold, who was a gifted student, started to get into trouble.

He and some friends hacked into his school's computer system. Then, a couple of months later, he and his friend Eric Harris broke into a van and stole some equipment. They were arrested at that point and sent to a diversion program - an alternative to jail for first-time juvenile offenders - that offered counseling and required community service.

Sue Klebold, Dylan's mother and subsequent author of the book A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy, told NPR she was upset and concerned to see the sudden change in her son's behavior. She says she asked the diversion counselor if his behavior meant something and whether he needed a therapist. The counselor asked Dylan if he wanted therapyand Dylan said no.

Sue Klebold says she never realized how deep the problem was.

"The piece that I think I failed [in] is, we tend to underestimate the level of pain that someone may be in," Klebold told NPR. "We all have a responsibility to stop and think - someone we love may be suffering, may be in a crisis."

Beware pitfalls in the search for a solution

The solution, according to psychologists who study kids who become violent, isn't to expel or suspend a student like Dylan - though that is what happened to him in the fall of 1997 after he hacked into his school's computer system.

A student like that who's expelled "can now be bored, can be isolated at home, can be living in a dysfunctional family and can be ruminating and thinking all the time about how he's going to avenge what has happened to him," says Meloy.

Eric Harris, who was Dylan Klebold's friend and fellow killer that day at Columbine, didn't seem depressed. But he was self-absorbed, lacked empathy and was prone to angry outbursts, according to those who analyzed his journals and earlier behavior.

While Klebold's journals were "full of loneliness and depression," Langman says, the writings of Harris were "full of narcissism and rage and rants against people - a lot of contempt."

Harris' contempt extended to himself. Significant surgeries during his early teen years to correct a birth condition contributed to self-loathing, Langman's study of Harris' journal suggests.

"I have always hated how I looked," Harris wrote in his journal. "That's where a lot of my hate grows from." In his last journal entry, Harris refers to himself as "the weird looking Eric KID."

"Anyone contemplating getting a gun and killing people needs to be seen as a person in crisis," says Langman.

Time and time again, psychologists and educators have found that surrounding a young person with the right kind of support and supervisionearly on can turn most away from violence.

Connecting with these students, listening to them and supporting them, getting them the help they need, these researchers say, can help prevent future attacks and make schools a safer place for all children.

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School Shooters: Understanding their path to violence is key to prevention

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Psychologists and the FBI say they are getting a better understanding of the mix of factors that lead some kids to open fire on a classroom. The shooting can be an act of desperation fueled by anger.

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Map: What Are States Doing to Prevent School Shootings?

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The NEA (National Education Association) and the AFT (American Federation of Teachers) don’t agree. While this may sound like a good idea to some gun-enthusiasts, law enforcement does not agree. J. Thomas Manger, the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, puts it this way: “A cop shows up and there’s people with guns in their hand. We don’t know who’s the good guy, and who’s the bad guy. That’s very dangerous for the police. And it’s dangerous for the community.”

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The shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, was the worst since Sandy Hook but far from the first of the year. “In 2022 alone, there have been 27 school shootings,” said Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association, in response to the tragedy.

“How are we going to continue the important work of academic recovery and mental health supports in response to the pandemic when we can’t reasonably ensure the core need for physical safety?” Domenech said.

“Gun violence is a cancer, and it’s one that none of us should tolerate for one single moment longer,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). “We have made a choice to let this continue, and we can make a choice to finally do something — do anything — to put a stop to this madness.”

AFT collaborated with Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund and the National Education Association (NEA) to produce “Keeping Our Schools Safe,” a report that outlines a comprehensive plan to end gun violence in American schools. It remains to be seen whether events in Uvalde will spur Congress into action, but the report makes it clear that states can play a much bigger role.

One strategy is the enactment of extreme risk laws, which empower community members to work with courts and remove firearms from persons they feel pose a danger to others. Depending on the provisions in a particular state, a request for an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) can be initiated by law enforcement, a family or household member, a health professional or even a school administrator. Such laws are currently in place in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

States can also enact and enforce firearm storage laws. A letter published by the American Medical Association that reviewed findings from the 2021 National Firearms Survey reported that about 30 million American children live in households with firearms, 7 million more than in 2015. An estimated 4.6 million live in households with unlocked and loaded firearms.

According to the Giffords Law Center, only 13 states have laws mandating safe storage. Even these have loopholes, with some requiring storage “sometimes,” some applying to handguns only, some vague on the standards for locks. Only two, Massachusetts and Oregon, require all firearms to be stored with a lock in place.

AFT and its partners also urge stricter age requirements for gun purchases and possession, noting that most school shooters have been school-age. “Data show that 18-to-20-year-olds commit gun homicides at a rate four times higher than adults 21,” they say.

“Research shows the 18-20-year-old age group is among the highest risk to commit violence with firearms, yet in most states the ability to purchase these deadly weapons is less restricted than the ability to purchase beer,” said Joshua Horwitz, JD, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. “This is a clear example of how weaknesses in gun laws continue to pose threats to communities across the country."

Only 10 states limit gun possession to persons 21 and older; just 17 set this standard for handgun purchases.

States can also do much more to ensure that guns stay out of the hands of persons likely to misuse them, those with criminal records, histories of severe mental problems or addiction, or persons subject to restraining orders. At present, only 14 states and the District of Columbia require that purchases of all classes of firearms, whether from a licensed dealer or unlicensed seller, include a background check. This is out of sync with attitudes reported by the Pew Research Center, which found that 93 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans approve of them.

A strategy that NEA and AFT don’t support is arming school personnel. While this might seem sensible to some gun enthusiasts, law enforcement disagrees. J. Thomas Manger, the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police and a past president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, has put it this way: “A cop shows up and there’s people with guns in their hand. We don’t know who’s the good guy, who’s the bad guy. That’s very dangerous for the police. And it’s dangerous for the community.”

Gun violence isn’t just a public safety problem. A recent analysis of CDC mortality data found that firearm-related injuries had become the leading cause of death among children and adolescents. As long ago as 2016, the American Medical Association declared gun violence to be a public health crisis “unrivaled in any other developed country.”

Researchers are working to understand which policies work best to reduce firearm risk, says Patrick Carter, co-director of the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan. “We do know that states with more comprehensive policies in place have lower rates of firearm injury outcomes.”

As more states implement policy interventions such as ERPO laws, researchers will have more opportunities to understand how and why they work, Carter says. This will make it possible to develop evidence-based solutions for this complex public health problem.

“How many more students have to walk into a school, only to never walk out?” asks AASA’s Domenech. “Our children have a right to live and learn in a safe environment. If these tragedies do not serve as a serious wake-up call to our nation to take action, I don’t know what will.”

Editor's Note: The map in this article was updated to clarify that some states require an individual to be 21 for a handgun purchases, not all classes of firearms.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Map: What Are States Doing to Prevent School Shootings?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The most devastating school shooting in decades is prompting calls for Congress to act on gun control. State leaders don’t have to wait.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Map: What Are States Doing to Prevent School Shootings?

# data[].attributes.headline
“Research shows the eighteen to twenty year old age group is among the highest risk to commit violence with firearms, yet in most states the ability to purchase these deadly weapons is less restricted than the ability to purchase beer. This is a clear example of how weaknesses in gun laws continue to pose  threats to communities across the country.” said Joshua Horwitz, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. 

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“Research shows the eighteen to twenty year old age group is among the highest risk to commit violence with firearms, yet in most states the ability to purchase these deadly weapons is less restricted than the ability to purchase beer. This is a clear example of how weaknesses in gun laws continue to pose  threats to communities across the country.” said Joshua Horwitz, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. 

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Only 10 states limit gun possession to persons 21 and older; 17 states just implemented this standard for handgun purchases.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, was the worst since Sandy Hook but far from the first of the year. “In 2022 alone, there have been 27 school shootings,” said Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association, in response to the tragedy.

“How are we going to continue the important work of academic recovery and mental health supports in response to the pandemic when we can’t reasonably ensure the core need for physical safety?” Domenech said.

“Gun violence is a cancer, and it’s one that none of us should tolerate for one single moment longer,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). “We have made a choice to let this continue, and we can make a choice to finally do something — do anything — to put a stop to this madness.”

AFT collaborated with Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund and the National Education Association (NEA) to produce “Keeping Our Schools Safe,” a report that outlines a comprehensive plan to end gun violence in American schools. It remains to be seen whether events in Uvalde will spur Congress into action, but the report makes it clear that states can play a much bigger role.

One strategy is the enactment of extreme risk laws, which empower community members to work with courts and remove firearms from persons they feel pose a danger to others. Depending on the provisions in a particular state, a request for an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) can be initiated by law enforcement, a family or household member, a health professional or even a school administrator. Such laws are currently in place in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

States can also enact and enforce firearm storage laws. A letter published by the American Medical Association that reviewed findings from the 2021 National Firearms Survey reported that about 30 million American children live in households with firearms, 7 million more than in 2015. An estimated 4.6 million live in households with unlocked and loaded firearms.

According to the Giffords Law Center, only 13 states have laws mandating safe storage. Even these have loopholes, with some requiring storage “sometimes,” some applying to handguns only, some vague on the standards for locks. Only two, Massachusetts and Oregon, require all firearms to be stored with a lock in place.

AFT and its partners also urge stricter age requirements for gun purchases and possession, noting that most school shooters have been school-age. “Data show that 18-to-20-year-olds commit gun homicides at a rate four times higher than adults 21,” they say.

“Research shows the 18-20-year-old age group is among the highest risk to commit violence with firearms, yet in most states the ability to purchase these deadly weapons is less restricted than the ability to purchase beer,” said Joshua Horwitz, JD, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. “This is a clear example of how weaknesses in gun laws continue to pose threats to communities across the country."

Only 10 states limit gun possession to persons 21 and older; just 17 set this standard for handgun purchases.

States can also do much more to ensure that guns stay out of the hands of persons likely to misuse them, those with criminal records, histories of severe mental problems or addiction, or persons subject to restraining orders. At present, only 14 states and the District of Columbia require that purchases of all classes of firearms, whether from a licensed dealer or unlicensed seller, include a background check. This is out of sync with attitudes reported by the Pew Research Center, which found that 93 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans approve of them.

A strategy that NEA and AFT don’t support is arming school personnel. While this might seem sensible to some gun enthusiasts, law enforcement disagrees. J. Thomas Manger, the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police and a past president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, has put it this way: “A cop shows up and there’s people with guns in their hand. We don’t know who’s the good guy, who’s the bad guy. That’s very dangerous for the police. And it’s dangerous for the community.”

Gun violence isn’t just a public safety problem. A recent analysis of CDC mortality data found that firearm-related injuries had become the leading cause of death among children and adolescents. As long ago as 2016, the American Medical Association declared gun violence to be a public health crisis “unrivaled in any other developed country.”

Researchers are working to understand which policies work best to reduce firearm risk, says Patrick Carter, co-director of the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan. “We do know that states with more comprehensive policies in place have lower rates of firearm injury outcomes.”

As more states implement policy interventions such as ERPO laws, researchers will have more opportunities to understand how and why they work, Carter says. This will make it possible to develop evidence-based solutions for this complex public health problem.

“How many more students have to walk into a school, only to never walk out?” asks AASA’s Domenech. “Our children have a right to live and learn in a safe environment. If these tragedies do not serve as a serious wake-up call to our nation to take action, I don’t know what will.”

Editor's Note: The map in this article was updated to clarify that some states require an individual to be 21 for a handgun purchases, not all classes of firearms.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Map: What Are States Doing to Prevent School Shootings?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The most devastating school shooting in decades is prompting calls for Congress to act on gun control. State leaders don’t have to wait.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
School Shooters: What's Their Path To Violence?

# data[].attributes.headline
Why do kids that are suicidal and have mental health issues turn to violence and homicide?

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Why do kids that are suicidal and have mental health issues turn to violence and homicide?

# data[].attributes.body
Most people who feel suicidal don’t end up killing others.
Van Dreal and other psychologists think taking out anger through mass shootings is because these individuals have been struggling for help and trying to get someone to notice that they are silently struggling, either because they were unable to ask for help or their cries went unheard when the adults or peers in their lives didn’t realize the child needed support.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It's hard to empathize with someone who carries out a school shooting. The brutality of their crimes is unspeakable. Whether the shootings were in Uvalde, Columbine, or Parkland, they have traumatized students and communities across the U.S.

Psychologist John Van Dreal understands that. "Someone went out of their way to target and kill children who look like our children, teachers who look like our teachers - and did it for no other reason than to hurt them," says Van Dreal. "And that's very personal."

Van Dreal is the director of safety and risk management at Salem-Keizer Public Schools in Oregon, a state that has had its share of school shootings. In 2014, about 60 miles from Salem, where Van Dreal is based, a 15-year-old boy shot one student and a teacher at his high school before killing himself.

But even though it's hard, psychologists like Van Dreal and law enforcement agents as well spend a lot of time thinking about what it's like to be one of these school shooters. Understanding who the shooters are,they say, is key to prevention.
How many school shootings?
To gain insights, the interested parties look to the past.

Tallying up all shootings and instances of school violence is difficult, researchers say; there's no official count, and various organizations differ in their definitions of school shootings.

For example, an open source database put together by Mother Jones suggests there have been 12 mass shootings (where four or more people died) in schools since the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado in 1999, and 134 children and adults died in those attacks.

Psychologists and law enforcement agencies have been analyzing how these sorts of multivictim attacks came to be, because of what they tell us about many other people who are at risk of becoming violent in schools and the ways we might intervene early, before anger becomes violence.

In the two decades since the Columbine High School shooting, researchers have learned a lot about school shooters. For one thing, many are themselves students, or former students, at the schools they attack. A significant majority tend to be teenagers or young adults.

"There's no one thing, [but] maybe a couple of dozen different things that come together to put someone on the path to committing an act of mass violence," says Peter Langman, a clinical psychologist in Allentown, Pa., and the author of two books and several studies about school shootings.

Multiple factors contribute in each case

Most shooters in these cases had led difficult lives, the studies find.

"Adolescent school shooters, there's no question that they're struggling and there have been multiple failures in their lives," says Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist who has consulted with the FBI.

Manystruggle with psychological problems, Meloy says.

"We know that mental health issues are very much in the mix," he says. "The child might be just, you know, very depressed. We also found in one of our early studies that you've got this curious combination of both depression and paranoia."

Studies by the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service have also found that many of the shooterswere feeling desperate before the event.

"Whether or not they've been diagnosed, or whether or not they're severely mentally ill, something is going on that could [have been] addressed through some kind of treatment," says Langman.

But most never got that treatment.

The role of mental health problems

Mental health issues don't cause school shootings, Van Dreal emphasizes. After all, only a tiny, tiny percentage of kids with psychological issuesgo on to become school shooters.

But mental health problems are a risk factor, he says, because they can decrease one's ability to cope with other stresses. And studies have shown that most school shooters have led particularlystressful lives.

Many, though not all, of the perpetrators have experienced childhood traumas such as physical or emotional abuse,and unstable families, with violent, absent or alcoholic parents or siblings, for example. And most have experienced significant losses.

For example, the defendant in the case of the Parkland, Fla., shooting in 2018 had lost his adoptive mother to complications from the flu just a couple of months before the school attack. His adoptive father had died when he was a little boy.

Feeling like an outcast at school may also play a role. Initial media reports suggest that the perpetrator in Uvalde had been bullied and harassed at school for years for a speech impediment.

"A lot of these people have felt excluded, socially left out or rejected," says Van Dreal. Studies show that social rejection at school is associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, aggression and antisocial behavior in children.

A 2004 study by the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education found that nearly three-quarters of school shooters had been bullied or harassed at school.

Marginalized kids don't have anchors at school, says Van Dreal. "They don't have any adult connection - no one watching out for them. Or no one knows who they are anymore."

And the absence of social support at the school, Meloy says, is a big risk factor.

"People who do these kinds of targeted attacks don't feel very good about themselves or where they're headed in their lives," says Van Dreal. "They may wish someone would kill them. Or they may wish they could kill themselves."

For example, Dylan Klebold, one of the perpetrators of the Columbine shooting, had been depressed and suicidal two years prior.

"About half of the school shooters I've studied have died by suicide in their attack," says Langman. "It's often a mix of severe depression and anguish and desperation driving them to end their own lives."

Of course, most people who feel suicidal don't kill others.

So what makes a small minority of kids who have mental health issues and thoughts of suicide turn to violence and homicide?

Meloy and Van Dreal think it's because these individuals had been struggling alone - either because they were unable to ask for help or their cries went unheard when the adults in their lives didn't realize the child needed support.

When despair turns to anger and a desire for revenge

When someone has been struggling alone for a while and failing, their despair can turn into anger, the researchers say.

"There's loss. There's humiliation. There's anger. There's blame," says Meloy.

That sort of anger can lead to homicidal thoughts, Van Dreal says.

They start out fantasizing about revenge, says Meloy.

"So the fantasy is one where the teenager starts to identify with other individuals who have become school shooters and have used violence," he says.

These days, Meloy adds, it's easy for a troubled kid to go online and research how previous shooters planned and executed their attacks.

Easy access to guns - one of the biggest risk factors - then turns these fantasies into reality.

Psychologists say these attacks can be prevented - they are often weeks or months in the planning.

The keys to prevention are to spot the earliest behavioral signs that a student is struggling, Langman says, and also to watch for signs that someone may be veering toward violence.

Some signs can seem obvious in hindsight."So, I've stopped being the kid who went to Boy Scouts, and church and loved his grandmother," Van Dreal says, "and now I want to be that kid with camouflage who's isolated and attacks people and hurts them."

But sometimes, even professionals who see the signs miss their significance.

About a year and a half before he attacked students at Columbine High School, Dylan Klebold, who was a gifted student, started to get into trouble.

He and some friends hacked into his school's computer system. Then, a couple of months later, he and his friend Eric Harris broke into a van and stole some equipment. They were arrested at that point and sent to a diversion program - an alternative to jail for first-time juvenile offenders - that offered counseling and required community service.

Sue Klebold, Dylan's mother and subsequent author of the book A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy, told NPR she was upset and concerned to see the sudden change in her son's behavior. She says she asked the diversion counselor if his behavior meant something and whether he needed a therapist. The counselor asked Dylan if he wanted therapyand Dylan said no.

Sue Klebold says she never realized how deep the problem was.

"The piece that I think I failed [in] is, we tend to underestimate the level of pain that someone may be in," Klebold told NPR. "We all have a responsibility to stop and think - someone we love may be suffering, may be in a crisis."

Beware pitfalls in the search for a solution

The solution, according to psychologists who study kids who become violent, isn't to expel or suspend a student like Dylan - though that is what happened to him in the fall of 1997 after he hacked into his school's computer system.

A student like that who's expelled "can now be bored, can be isolated at home, can be living in a dysfunctional family and can be ruminating and thinking all the time about how he's going to avenge what has happened to him," says Meloy.

Eric Harris, who was Dylan Klebold's friend and fellow killer that day at Columbine, didn't seem depressed. But he was self-absorbed, lacked empathy and was prone to angry outbursts, according to those who analyzed his journals and earlier behavior.

While Klebold's journals were "full of loneliness and depression," Langman says, the writings of Harris were "full of narcissism and rage and rants against people - a lot of contempt."

Harris' contempt extended to himself. Significant surgeries during his early teen years to correct a birth condition contributed to self-loathing, Langman's study of Harris' journal suggests.

"I have always hated how I looked," Harris wrote in his journal. "That's where a lot of my hate grows from." In his last journal entry, Harris refers to himself as "the weird looking Eric KID."

"Anyone contemplating getting a gun and killing people needs to be seen as a person in crisis," says Langman.

Time and time again, psychologists and educators have found that surrounding a young person with the right kind of support and supervisionearly on can turn most away from violence.

Connecting with these students, listening to them and supporting them, getting them the help they need, these researchers say, can help prevent future attacks and make schools a safer place for all children.

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School Shooters: Understanding their path to violence is key to prevention

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Psychologists and the FBI say they are getting a better understanding of the mix of factors that lead some kids to open fire on a classroom. The shooting can be an act of desperation fueled by anger.

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Map: What Are States Doing to Prevent School Shootings?

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According to AFT (American Federation of Teachers), data shows that “18-to-20-year-olds commit gun homicides at a rate four times higher than adults 21”.

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According to AFT (American Federation of Teachers), data shows that “18-to-20-year-olds commit gun homicides at a rate four times higher than adults 21”.

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The shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, was the worst since Sandy Hook but far from the first of the year. “In 2022 alone, there have been 27 school shootings,” said Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association, in response to the tragedy.

“How are we going to continue the important work of academic recovery and mental health supports in response to the pandemic when we can’t reasonably ensure the core need for physical safety?” Domenech said.

“Gun violence is a cancer, and it’s one that none of us should tolerate for one single moment longer,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). “We have made a choice to let this continue, and we can make a choice to finally do something — do anything — to put a stop to this madness.”

AFT collaborated with Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund and the National Education Association (NEA) to produce “Keeping Our Schools Safe,” a report that outlines a comprehensive plan to end gun violence in American schools. It remains to be seen whether events in Uvalde will spur Congress into action, but the report makes it clear that states can play a much bigger role.

One strategy is the enactment of extreme risk laws, which empower community members to work with courts and remove firearms from persons they feel pose a danger to others. Depending on the provisions in a particular state, a request for an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) can be initiated by law enforcement, a family or household member, a health professional or even a school administrator. Such laws are currently in place in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

States can also enact and enforce firearm storage laws. A letter published by the American Medical Association that reviewed findings from the 2021 National Firearms Survey reported that about 30 million American children live in households with firearms, 7 million more than in 2015. An estimated 4.6 million live in households with unlocked and loaded firearms.

According to the Giffords Law Center, only 13 states have laws mandating safe storage. Even these have loopholes, with some requiring storage “sometimes,” some applying to handguns only, some vague on the standards for locks. Only two, Massachusetts and Oregon, require all firearms to be stored with a lock in place.

AFT and its partners also urge stricter age requirements for gun purchases and possession, noting that most school shooters have been school-age. “Data show that 18-to-20-year-olds commit gun homicides at a rate four times higher than adults 21,” they say.

“Research shows the 18-20-year-old age group is among the highest risk to commit violence with firearms, yet in most states the ability to purchase these deadly weapons is less restricted than the ability to purchase beer,” said Joshua Horwitz, JD, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. “This is a clear example of how weaknesses in gun laws continue to pose threats to communities across the country."

Only 10 states limit gun possession to persons 21 and older; just 17 set this standard for handgun purchases.

States can also do much more to ensure that guns stay out of the hands of persons likely to misuse them, those with criminal records, histories of severe mental problems or addiction, or persons subject to restraining orders. At present, only 14 states and the District of Columbia require that purchases of all classes of firearms, whether from a licensed dealer or unlicensed seller, include a background check. This is out of sync with attitudes reported by the Pew Research Center, which found that 93 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans approve of them.

A strategy that NEA and AFT don’t support is arming school personnel. While this might seem sensible to some gun enthusiasts, law enforcement disagrees. J. Thomas Manger, the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police and a past president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, has put it this way: “A cop shows up and there’s people with guns in their hand. We don’t know who’s the good guy, who’s the bad guy. That’s very dangerous for the police. And it’s dangerous for the community.”

Gun violence isn’t just a public safety problem. A recent analysis of CDC mortality data found that firearm-related injuries had become the leading cause of death among children and adolescents. As long ago as 2016, the American Medical Association declared gun violence to be a public health crisis “unrivaled in any other developed country.”

Researchers are working to understand which policies work best to reduce firearm risk, says Patrick Carter, co-director of the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan. “We do know that states with more comprehensive policies in place have lower rates of firearm injury outcomes.”

As more states implement policy interventions such as ERPO laws, researchers will have more opportunities to understand how and why they work, Carter says. This will make it possible to develop evidence-based solutions for this complex public health problem.

“How many more students have to walk into a school, only to never walk out?” asks AASA’s Domenech. “Our children have a right to live and learn in a safe environment. If these tragedies do not serve as a serious wake-up call to our nation to take action, I don’t know what will.”

Editor's Note: The map in this article was updated to clarify that some states require an individual to be 21 for a handgun purchases, not all classes of firearms.

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Map: What Are States Doing to Prevent School Shootings?

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The most devastating school shooting in decades is prompting calls for Congress to act on gun control. State leaders don’t have to wait.

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The U.S. Is Seeing a Surge in School Shooting Victims

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What state has had the most amount of shootings and what is the amount of shootings there have been in the United States?

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What state has had the most amount of shootings and what is the amount of shootings there have been in the United States?

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The state that has had the highest amount of shootings since the year 2012 is… Texas with a total of 43.

The total amount of gunfire incidents in the United States since 2012, is 540 which have resulted in at least one person being killed or injured. This is according to the data found by the Center for Homeland Defense and security at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

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The massacre in Uvalde, Texas this week illustrates a troubling trend: More and more people are falling victim to school shootings, with Texas leading the pack as the state with the highest number of incidents in the past 10 years.

From 2012 to the present, there have been 540 school shooting incidents nationwide that resulted in at least one victim killed or wounded, according to data compiled by the Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. That includes 43 incidents in Texas, 41 in California, 37 in Illinois, 31 in Florida and 26 in Pennsylvania.

Researchers scoured news reports and court records to build a database of school shootings going back to 1970. They defined a school shooting as any incident where a gun is brandished or fired on school property or a bullet hits school property, including buses, whether or not school is in session. Incidents in which there are no victims are also included.

School shootings have been claiming more and more victims since 2012, the year when 20 children and six adults died at Sandy Hook. The only exception to this trend was the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic when many school buildings were closed.

The year 2021 was the most violent on record with 193 people killed or wounded in school shootings, not including the shooters themselves. There have been 145 victims in just the first half of 2022. (As of May 27, these numbers included at least 21 people killed and 19 wounded at the shooting in Uvalde, but may be adjusted as more information comes out.)

Overall, however, the database shows that school shootings are still quite rare. Since 1970, there have been 681 total recorded deaths from school shootings, of which 441 victims were under the age of 20. That means more children have died in car crashes in one year than been victims of school shootings in the past 52 years.

But while improved safety laws have helped the rate of kids dying from car crashes steadily fall since the 1970s, child gun deaths have taken a completely different turn. A research letter published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine found there was a 29.5% spike in firearm-related deaths for children and adolescents in 2020. As a result, firearms became the leading cause of death for young people, surpassing car accidents.

In terms of which states have seen the most school shootings, it's largely a matter of population size. Since 1970, the most populous states like California and Texas have had the largest number of shootings that resulted in deaths or injuries, and the least populous states, Vermont and Wyoming, have had the fewest.

What's more illuminating are the states that have more school shootings than expected considering their size. For example, Maryland is on the top 10 list of states with the most school shootings that resulted in deaths or injuries, even though it's not a particularly large state. (It's the 19th-largest in terms of population.) Alabama and Louisiana are even smaller, being respectively the 24th- and 25th-largest states, yet they both nearly made the top 10 list as well (Both tied for 11th place.) Similarly, Arkansas and Mississippi tie for 21st place in terms of number of incidents, which is higher than expected based on their population. (They are only the 33rd- and 34th-most populous states, respectively.)

On the opposite end, Arizona is a large state (14th in population) that has far fewer school shootings than expected, ranking in the bottom half of the list (31st). Other states that have managed to at least somewhat avoid the scourge of school shootings include Massachusetts (15th in population, but only 30th in incidents), New Jersey (11th in population, 25th in incidents), Minnesota (22nd in population, 34th in incidents) and West Virginia (38th in population, 44th lowest in incidents). All five states have had 15 or fewer school shootings recorded in the database in the past 52 years, including only two in West Virginia.
Here are the states with the highest number of school shooting incidents since 1970:

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The U.S. Is Seeing a Surge in School Shooting Victims

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The massacre in Uvalde, Texas this week illustrates a troubling trend: More and more people are falling victim to school shootings, with Texas leading the pack as the state with the highest number of incidents in the past 10 years.

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16 Facts About Gun Violence And School Shootings - Sandy Hook Promise

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Statistics and Facts about Gun violence:

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Statistics and Facts about Gun violence:

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- Each day 12 children die from gun violence in America. Another 32 are shot and injured.

- Guns are the leading cause of death among American children and teens.

- Firearm deaths happen at a rate 5 times higher than drownings.

- The U.S. has had 2,032 school shootings since the year 1970, and 948 of these have taken place since Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

- School shootings have returned to pre-COVID levels and have also started to raise.

- An estimate of 4.6 million children live in a home where at least one gun is kept loaded and unlocked. Improperly stored weapons have contributed to school shootings, suicides and the deaths of family members, including infants and toddlers.

- Four out five school shootings, at least one person had knowledge of the attacker’s plan but failed to report it.

-93% of school shooters planned the attack in advance.

- Children living in poverty - urban and rural - are more likely to die due to gun violence than their more affluent peers.

- About 1 out of 5 gay or lesbian youth have been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property.

- black youth are four times more likely to be killed with guns than their white peers.

- The majority of individuals with diagnosed mental illness do not engage in violence against others.

- 90% of teenagers killed in an act of dating violence were girls.

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17 Facts About Gun Violence And School Shootings

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Gun violence and school shootings are a uniquely American epidemic. Sandy Hook Promise is shining a light on these important facts and statistics.

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The long, shameful list of gunfire on school grounds in America.

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                         What year has had the most school shootings?

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                         What year has had the most school shootings?

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The year with the most school shootings is 2021, with 202 gunfire incidents happening on school grounds.

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Everytown for Gun Safety started tracking incidents of gunfire on school grounds in 2013 to gain a better understanding of how often children and teens are affected by gun violence at their schools and colleges, and in response to a lack of research and data on the issue.

Over several years of tracking, this data has shown us that gunfire on school grounds takes many forms and mirrors the problem of gun violence in the US. Gunfire on school grounds occurs most often at schools with a high proportion of students of color-disproportionately affecting Black students. For more information, read the analysis of this data and learn about proven solutions that can make schools in the US safer.

When it comes to how American children are exposed to gun violence, gunfire at schools is just the tip of the iceberg-every year, nearly 4,000 children and teens are shot and killed and 15,000 more are shot and injured. An estimated 3 million children in the US are exposed to shootings per year. Firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teens. Witnessing shootings-whether in their schools, their communities or their homes-can have a devastating impact. Children exposed to violence, crime, and abuse are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol; suffer from depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder; fail or have difficulties in school; and engage in criminal activity.

Everytown tracks every time a firearm discharges a live round inside or into a school building or on or onto a school campus or grounds, as documented by the press. Incidents in which guns were brought into schools but not discharged are not included. The map reflects incidents that resulted in death or injury-as well as those in which no one was injured. The information provided is primarily sourced from media reports and the K-12 School Shooting Database. We conduct an annual, comprehensive review of our database, which incorporates new information that may have emerged since we originally tracked the incidents as well as any new incidents that weren't initially identified but found through later research.

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The long, shameful list of gunfire on school grounds in America.

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This list keeps growing. How many more before our leaders act?

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What is the United States trying to do to stop these shootings?

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What is the United States trying to do to stop these shootings?

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Here are some things that the United States are implementing. *Note: only SOME states are doing these not all states*

1. Extreme risk laws: which empower people of a community to work with courts and remove firearms from people that they think may pose a threat or may be dangerous to other with the ownership of a gun.

Depending on the requirements of a certain state, an ERPO (Extreme Risk Protection Order) can be placed by law enforcement, family or household member, a health professional or even a school administrator.

2. Firearm storage laws: this requires a gun owner to store their firearm(s) in a locked container or have a device that can be locked if there is a child living in the household or residence or even if a child is present.

According to Gifford Law Center, only 13 states have laws mandating safe storage. The only two states that require all firearms to be stored with a lock in place is Massachusetts and Oregon.

3. Background checks: Only 14 states and the District of Colombia require that purchases of all classes of firearms, whether from a licensed dealer or unlicensed seller, include a background check.

Pew Research found in a study that 93% of Democrats and 82% of Republicans approve of background checks.

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School Shooters: What's Their Path To Violence?

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What role does mental health come into play with school shootings?

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What role does mental health come into play with school shootings?

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Mental health does not cause these school shootings and it turns out that only a tiny, tiny percentage of kids with psychological problems turn out to be school shooters.
Many (but not all), perpetrators have experienced childhood trauma such as emotional or physical abuse, unstable families, with violent, absent, or alcoholic parents or siblings. Along with this, a lot have suffered significant loss.

One example, the defendant in the case of the Parkland Florida shooting in 2018, had lost his adoptive mother to complications with sickness just a couple months before the school attack. His adoptive father had died when he was a little boy.

Feeling like an outcast at school, bullying, and harassment can also play a big role. An example, is the perpetrator of Uvalde had been bullied and harassed at school for years for a speech impediment.

Feeling excluded, left out or rejected socially are other reasons for mental health becoming a big reason of these outbursts. Social rejection is associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, aggression and antisocial behaviors in children. A study that was taken in 2004, showed that almost three-quarters of school shooters had been bullied or harassed at school.

The absence of support. “People who do these kinds of targeted attacks don’t feel very good about themselves or where their headed in their lives. They may wish someone would kill them. Or they wish they could kill themselves.” Says Van Dreal, psychologist. Dylan Klebold, one of the perpetrators of the Columbine shooting, had been depressed and suicidal for two years prior.

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It's hard to empathize with someone who carries out a school shooting. The brutality of their crimes is unspeakable. Whether the shootings were in Uvalde, Columbine, or Parkland, they have traumatized students and communities across the U.S.

Psychologist John Van Dreal understands that. "Someone went out of their way to target and kill children who look like our children, teachers who look like our teachers - and did it for no other reason than to hurt them," says Van Dreal. "And that's very personal."

Van Dreal is the director of safety and risk management at Salem-Keizer Public Schools in Oregon, a state that has had its share of school shootings. In 2014, about 60 miles from Salem, where Van Dreal is based, a 15-year-old boy shot one student and a teacher at his high school before killing himself.

But even though it's hard, psychologists like Van Dreal and law enforcement agents as well spend a lot of time thinking about what it's like to be one of these school shooters. Understanding who the shooters are,they say, is key to prevention.
How many school shootings?
To gain insights, the interested parties look to the past.

Tallying up all shootings and instances of school violence is difficult, researchers say; there's no official count, and various organizations differ in their definitions of school shootings.

For example, an open source database put together by Mother Jones suggests there have been 12 mass shootings (where four or more people died) in schools since the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado in 1999, and 134 children and adults died in those attacks.

Psychologists and law enforcement agencies have been analyzing how these sorts of multivictim attacks came to be, because of what they tell us about many other people who are at risk of becoming violent in schools and the ways we might intervene early, before anger becomes violence.

In the two decades since the Columbine High School shooting, researchers have learned a lot about school shooters. For one thing, many are themselves students, or former students, at the schools they attack. A significant majority tend to be teenagers or young adults.

"There's no one thing, [but] maybe a couple of dozen different things that come together to put someone on the path to committing an act of mass violence," says Peter Langman, a clinical psychologist in Allentown, Pa., and the author of two books and several studies about school shootings.

Multiple factors contribute in each case

Most shooters in these cases had led difficult lives, the studies find.

"Adolescent school shooters, there's no question that they're struggling and there have been multiple failures in their lives," says Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist who has consulted with the FBI.

Manystruggle with psychological problems, Meloy says.

"We know that mental health issues are very much in the mix," he says. "The child might be just, you know, very depressed. We also found in one of our early studies that you've got this curious combination of both depression and paranoia."

Studies by the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service have also found that many of the shooterswere feeling desperate before the event.

"Whether or not they've been diagnosed, or whether or not they're severely mentally ill, something is going on that could [have been] addressed through some kind of treatment," says Langman.

But most never got that treatment.

The role of mental health problems

Mental health issues don't cause school shootings, Van Dreal emphasizes. After all, only a tiny, tiny percentage of kids with psychological issuesgo on to become school shooters.

But mental health problems are a risk factor, he says, because they can decrease one's ability to cope with other stresses. And studies have shown that most school shooters have led particularlystressful lives.

Many, though not all, of the perpetrators have experienced childhood traumas such as physical or emotional abuse,and unstable families, with violent, absent or alcoholic parents or siblings, for example. And most have experienced significant losses.

For example, the defendant in the case of the Parkland, Fla., shooting in 2018 had lost his adoptive mother to complications from the flu just a couple of months before the school attack. His adoptive father had died when he was a little boy.

Feeling like an outcast at school may also play a role. Initial media reports suggest that the perpetrator in Uvalde had been bullied and harassed at school for years for a speech impediment.

"A lot of these people have felt excluded, socially left out or rejected," says Van Dreal. Studies show that social rejection at school is associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, aggression and antisocial behavior in children.

A 2004 study by the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education found that nearly three-quarters of school shooters had been bullied or harassed at school.

Marginalized kids don't have anchors at school, says Van Dreal. "They don't have any adult connection - no one watching out for them. Or no one knows who they are anymore."

And the absence of social support at the school, Meloy says, is a big risk factor.

"People who do these kinds of targeted attacks don't feel very good about themselves or where they're headed in their lives," says Van Dreal. "They may wish someone would kill them. Or they may wish they could kill themselves."

For example, Dylan Klebold, one of the perpetrators of the Columbine shooting, had been depressed and suicidal two years prior.

"About half of the school shooters I've studied have died by suicide in their attack," says Langman. "It's often a mix of severe depression and anguish and desperation driving them to end their own lives."

Of course, most people who feel suicidal don't kill others.

So what makes a small minority of kids who have mental health issues and thoughts of suicide turn to violence and homicide?

Meloy and Van Dreal think it's because these individuals had been struggling alone - either because they were unable to ask for help or their cries went unheard when the adults in their lives didn't realize the child needed support.

When despair turns to anger and a desire for revenge

When someone has been struggling alone for a while and failing, their despair can turn into anger, the researchers say.

"There's loss. There's humiliation. There's anger. There's blame," says Meloy.

That sort of anger can lead to homicidal thoughts, Van Dreal says.

They start out fantasizing about revenge, says Meloy.

"So the fantasy is one where the teenager starts to identify with other individuals who have become school shooters and have used violence," he says.

These days, Meloy adds, it's easy for a troubled kid to go online and research how previous shooters planned and executed their attacks.

Easy access to guns - one of the biggest risk factors - then turns these fantasies into reality.

Psychologists say these attacks can be prevented - they are often weeks or months in the planning.

The keys to prevention are to spot the earliest behavioral signs that a student is struggling, Langman says, and also to watch for signs that someone may be veering toward violence.

Some signs can seem obvious in hindsight."So, I've stopped being the kid who went to Boy Scouts, and church and loved his grandmother," Van Dreal says, "and now I want to be that kid with camouflage who's isolated and attacks people and hurts them."

But sometimes, even professionals who see the signs miss their significance.

About a year and a half before he attacked students at Columbine High School, Dylan Klebold, who was a gifted student, started to get into trouble.

He and some friends hacked into his school's computer system. Then, a couple of months later, he and his friend Eric Harris broke into a van and stole some equipment. They were arrested at that point and sent to a diversion program - an alternative to jail for first-time juvenile offenders - that offered counseling and required community service.

Sue Klebold, Dylan's mother and subsequent author of the book A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy, told NPR she was upset and concerned to see the sudden change in her son's behavior. She says she asked the diversion counselor if his behavior meant something and whether he needed a therapist. The counselor asked Dylan if he wanted therapyand Dylan said no.

Sue Klebold says she never realized how deep the problem was.

"The piece that I think I failed [in] is, we tend to underestimate the level of pain that someone may be in," Klebold told NPR. "We all have a responsibility to stop and think - someone we love may be suffering, may be in a crisis."

Beware pitfalls in the search for a solution

The solution, according to psychologists who study kids who become violent, isn't to expel or suspend a student like Dylan - though that is what happened to him in the fall of 1997 after he hacked into his school's computer system.

A student like that who's expelled "can now be bored, can be isolated at home, can be living in a dysfunctional family and can be ruminating and thinking all the time about how he's going to avenge what has happened to him," says Meloy.

Eric Harris, who was Dylan Klebold's friend and fellow killer that day at Columbine, didn't seem depressed. But he was self-absorbed, lacked empathy and was prone to angry outbursts, according to those who analyzed his journals and earlier behavior.

While Klebold's journals were "full of loneliness and depression," Langman says, the writings of Harris were "full of narcissism and rage and rants against people - a lot of contempt."

Harris' contempt extended to himself. Significant surgeries during his early teen years to correct a birth condition contributed to self-loathing, Langman's study of Harris' journal suggests.

"I have always hated how I looked," Harris wrote in his journal. "That's where a lot of my hate grows from." In his last journal entry, Harris refers to himself as "the weird looking Eric KID."

"Anyone contemplating getting a gun and killing people needs to be seen as a person in crisis," says Langman.

Time and time again, psychologists and educators have found that surrounding a young person with the right kind of support and supervisionearly on can turn most away from violence.

Connecting with these students, listening to them and supporting them, getting them the help they need, these researchers say, can help prevent future attacks and make schools a safer place for all children.

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School Shooters: Understanding their path to violence is key to prevention

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Psychologists and the FBI say they are getting a better understanding of the mix of factors that lead some kids to open fire on a classroom. The shooting can be an act of desperation fueled by anger.

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School Shooters: What's Their Path To Violence?

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“There’s no one thing, [but] maybe a couple dozen different things that come together to put someone on the path to committing an act of mass violence,” says Peter Langman, a clinical psychologist in Allentown, Pennsylvania and the author of two books and several studies about school shootings.

Some of these causes may include:

- difficult life
- psychological problems
- depression
- paranoia
- desperation
- mental illness

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It's hard to empathize with someone who carries out a school shooting. The brutality of their crimes is unspeakable. Whether the shootings were in Uvalde, Columbine, or Parkland, they have traumatized students and communities across the U.S.

Psychologist John Van Dreal understands that. "Someone went out of their way to target and kill children who look like our children, teachers who look like our teachers - and did it for no other reason than to hurt them," says Van Dreal. "And that's very personal."

Van Dreal is the director of safety and risk management at Salem-Keizer Public Schools in Oregon, a state that has had its share of school shootings. In 2014, about 60 miles from Salem, where Van Dreal is based, a 15-year-old boy shot one student and a teacher at his high school before killing himself.

But even though it's hard, psychologists like Van Dreal and law enforcement agents as well spend a lot of time thinking about what it's like to be one of these school shooters. Understanding who the shooters are,they say, is key to prevention.
How many school shootings?
To gain insights, the interested parties look to the past.

Tallying up all shootings and instances of school violence is difficult, researchers say; there's no official count, and various organizations differ in their definitions of school shootings.

For example, an open source database put together by Mother Jones suggests there have been 12 mass shootings (where four or more people died) in schools since the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado in 1999, and 134 children and adults died in those attacks.

Psychologists and law enforcement agencies have been analyzing how these sorts of multivictim attacks came to be, because of what they tell us about many other people who are at risk of becoming violent in schools and the ways we might intervene early, before anger becomes violence.

In the two decades since the Columbine High School shooting, researchers have learned a lot about school shooters. For one thing, many are themselves students, or former students, at the schools they attack. A significant majority tend to be teenagers or young adults.

"There's no one thing, [but] maybe a couple of dozen different things that come together to put someone on the path to committing an act of mass violence," says Peter Langman, a clinical psychologist in Allentown, Pa., and the author of two books and several studies about school shootings.

Multiple factors contribute in each case

Most shooters in these cases had led difficult lives, the studies find.

"Adolescent school shooters, there's no question that they're struggling and there have been multiple failures in their lives," says Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist who has consulted with the FBI.

Manystruggle with psychological problems, Meloy says.

"We know that mental health issues are very much in the mix," he says. "The child might be just, you know, very depressed. We also found in one of our early studies that you've got this curious combination of both depression and paranoia."

Studies by the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service have also found that many of the shooterswere feeling desperate before the event.

"Whether or not they've been diagnosed, or whether or not they're severely mentally ill, something is going on that could [have been] addressed through some kind of treatment," says Langman.

But most never got that treatment.

The role of mental health problems

Mental health issues don't cause school shootings, Van Dreal emphasizes. After all, only a tiny, tiny percentage of kids with psychological issuesgo on to become school shooters.

But mental health problems are a risk factor, he says, because they can decrease one's ability to cope with other stresses. And studies have shown that most school shooters have led particularlystressful lives.

Many, though not all, of the perpetrators have experienced childhood traumas such as physical or emotional abuse,and unstable families, with violent, absent or alcoholic parents or siblings, for example. And most have experienced significant losses.

For example, the defendant in the case of the Parkland, Fla., shooting in 2018 had lost his adoptive mother to complications from the flu just a couple of months before the school attack. His adoptive father had died when he was a little boy.

Feeling like an outcast at school may also play a role. Initial media reports suggest that the perpetrator in Uvalde had been bullied and harassed at school for years for a speech impediment.

"A lot of these people have felt excluded, socially left out or rejected," says Van Dreal. Studies show that social rejection at school is associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, aggression and antisocial behavior in children.

A 2004 study by the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education found that nearly three-quarters of school shooters had been bullied or harassed at school.

Marginalized kids don't have anchors at school, says Van Dreal. "They don't have any adult connection - no one watching out for them. Or no one knows who they are anymore."

And the absence of social support at the school, Meloy says, is a big risk factor.

"People who do these kinds of targeted attacks don't feel very good about themselves or where they're headed in their lives," says Van Dreal. "They may wish someone would kill them. Or they may wish they could kill themselves."

For example, Dylan Klebold, one of the perpetrators of the Columbine shooting, had been depressed and suicidal two years prior.

"About half of the school shooters I've studied have died by suicide in their attack," says Langman. "It's often a mix of severe depression and anguish and desperation driving them to end their own lives."

Of course, most people who feel suicidal don't kill others.

So what makes a small minority of kids who have mental health issues and thoughts of suicide turn to violence and homicide?

Meloy and Van Dreal think it's because these individuals had been struggling alone - either because they were unable to ask for help or their cries went unheard when the adults in their lives didn't realize the child needed support.

When despair turns to anger and a desire for revenge

When someone has been struggling alone for a while and failing, their despair can turn into anger, the researchers say.

"There's loss. There's humiliation. There's anger. There's blame," says Meloy.

That sort of anger can lead to homicidal thoughts, Van Dreal says.

They start out fantasizing about revenge, says Meloy.

"So the fantasy is one where the teenager starts to identify with other individuals who have become school shooters and have used violence," he says.

These days, Meloy adds, it's easy for a troubled kid to go online and research how previous shooters planned and executed their attacks.

Easy access to guns - one of the biggest risk factors - then turns these fantasies into reality.

Psychologists say these attacks can be prevented - they are often weeks or months in the planning.

The keys to prevention are to spot the earliest behavioral signs that a student is struggling, Langman says, and also to watch for signs that someone may be veering toward violence.

Some signs can seem obvious in hindsight."So, I've stopped being the kid who went to Boy Scouts, and church and loved his grandmother," Van Dreal says, "and now I want to be that kid with camouflage who's isolated and attacks people and hurts them."

But sometimes, even professionals who see the signs miss their significance.

About a year and a half before he attacked students at Columbine High School, Dylan Klebold, who was a gifted student, started to get into trouble.

He and some friends hacked into his school's computer system. Then, a couple of months later, he and his friend Eric Harris broke into a van and stole some equipment. They were arrested at that point and sent to a diversion program - an alternative to jail for first-time juvenile offenders - that offered counseling and required community service.

Sue Klebold, Dylan's mother and subsequent author of the book A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy, told NPR she was upset and concerned to see the sudden change in her son's behavior. She says she asked the diversion counselor if his behavior meant something and whether he needed a therapist. The counselor asked Dylan if he wanted therapyand Dylan said no.

Sue Klebold says she never realized how deep the problem was.

"The piece that I think I failed [in] is, we tend to underestimate the level of pain that someone may be in," Klebold told NPR. "We all have a responsibility to stop and think - someone we love may be suffering, may be in a crisis."

Beware pitfalls in the search for a solution

The solution, according to psychologists who study kids who become violent, isn't to expel or suspend a student like Dylan - though that is what happened to him in the fall of 1997 after he hacked into his school's computer system.

A student like that who's expelled "can now be bored, can be isolated at home, can be living in a dysfunctional family and can be ruminating and thinking all the time about how he's going to avenge what has happened to him," says Meloy.

Eric Harris, who was Dylan Klebold's friend and fellow killer that day at Columbine, didn't seem depressed. But he was self-absorbed, lacked empathy and was prone to angry outbursts, according to those who analyzed his journals and earlier behavior.

While Klebold's journals were "full of loneliness and depression," Langman says, the writings of Harris were "full of narcissism and rage and rants against people - a lot of contempt."

Harris' contempt extended to himself. Significant surgeries during his early teen years to correct a birth condition contributed to self-loathing, Langman's study of Harris' journal suggests.

"I have always hated how I looked," Harris wrote in his journal. "That's where a lot of my hate grows from." In his last journal entry, Harris refers to himself as "the weird looking Eric KID."

"Anyone contemplating getting a gun and killing people needs to be seen as a person in crisis," says Langman.

Time and time again, psychologists and educators have found that surrounding a young person with the right kind of support and supervisionearly on can turn most away from violence.

Connecting with these students, listening to them and supporting them, getting them the help they need, these researchers say, can help prevent future attacks and make schools a safer place for all children.

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School Shooters: Understanding their path to violence is key to prevention

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Psychologists and the FBI say they are getting a better understanding of the mix of factors that lead some kids to open fire on a classroom. The shooting can be an act of desperation fueled by anger.

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Are school shootings a problem in other countries?

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Are school shootings a problem in other countries?

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The country with the highest amount of mass shootings in the year 2022, was America with a total of 199.

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That said, mass shootings actually comprise only a fraction of the overall gun deaths in the United States. In fact, roughly two-thirds of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. are suicides. In 2016, for example, 37,353 gun deaths occurred in the United States. Of these, 22,938 were suicides, and 14,415 were homicides. Within the homicides, 71 were classified as the result of a mass shooting.

How Differing Definitions of "Mass Shooting" Confound Country Comparisons

One of the main causes for the vast range of stances on mass shootings is that reliable data on mass shootings can be notoriously difficult to obtain-what's more, the data that does exist is often incompatible with data from other sources. No official, universally accepted definition for a mass shooting exists. Rather, each stat-tracking organization has its own qualifying criteria. For example, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) defines a mass shooting as a single attack that happens in a public place and in which three or more people are killed with a firearm. However, most other stat trackers require at least four fatalities. As a result of these mismatched definitions, database-to-database differences are both common and confounding.

Similarly, some databases include events in which at least four people were wounded, but not necessarily killed. Others do not. Some databases include occurrences in which the shooter killed only family members (but still in a public place, such as a restaurant). Others do not. Some databases include organized terrorist attacks, armed robberies gone wrong, and gang-related shootings. Other databases discard some or all of these incidents. In fact, in a 2019 study that compared four different databases, the number of mass shooting events recorded in the U.S. for the year 2017 ranged from a low of 11 to a high of 346. Clearly, a significant error margin exists, particularly when creating country-to-country comparisons.

Although events in the U.S. tend to get the lion's share of media exposure, mass shootings are clearly a worldwide issue. The following is an alphabetized list of just some of the [developed countries] other than the United States that have experienced one or more mass shootings in the past few decades: Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Nigeria, Norway, the Philippines, Russia, Serbia, Spain, and Switzerland.

Does the United States have more mass shootings than other countries? It depends on the data.

Exactly how mass shootings in the U.S. compare to those in other countries is a highly disputed subject. In a widely publicized study originally released in 2015, the pro-gun nonprofit Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) compared the annual number of mass shooting deaths per million people in the U.S. to that of Canada and several European countries from 2009 to 2015. The result? Norway led the world with 1.88 deaths per million, followed by Serbia, France, and Macedonia. Where did the U.S. rank? 11th place.

Average (Mean) Annual Death Rate per Million People from Mass Public Shootings (U.S., Canada, and Europe, 2009-2015):

In addition, a 2018 CRPC study ranked the U.S. at number sixty-four in the world in terms of mass shooting rates per capita.

Statistics under scrutiny: Why some experts disagree with the CRPC report on mass shooters

Many statisticians believe the reason the CRPC study's results seem so counterintuitive is that they are incorrect. One of the more detailed analyses appeared on the fact-checking website snopes.com and concluded that the CRPC report used "inappropriate statistical methods" which led to misleading results.

According to the fact-checkers' analysis, one of those inappropriate methods was the leaving out of the many European countries that had not experienced a single mass shooting between 2009-2015. This data would not have changed the position of the U.S. on the list, but its absence could lead a reader to believe-incorrectly-that the U.S. experienced fewer mass shooting fatalities per capita than all but a handful of countries in Europe.

A more important oversight was the report's use of average deaths per capita instead of a more stable metric. Because of the smaller populations of most European countries, individual events in those countries had statistically oversized influence and warped the results. For example, Norway's world-leading annual rate was due to a single devastating 2011 event, in which far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik gunned down 69 people at a summer camp on the island of Utøya. Norway had zero mass shootings in 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.

An easy, though arguably insensitive, way to illustrate the shortcomings of this approach is to apply it to the 9/11 attacks, which killed 2,977 people in the United States on a single day in 2001. Running that data through the CRPC formula yields the following statistic: Plane hijackings by terrorists caused an average of 297.7 deaths per year in the U.S. from 2001-2010. This is mathematically accurate, but it gives a badly distorted impression of what actually happened during those ten years.

In addition, the CRPC study went a step further and computed average annual deaths per capita. Critics argue this further warps the data, because Norway's population is a fraction of the U.S. population. As a result, Norway's death rate came out more than 20 times higher than that of the U.S.-which tallied 66 deaths in 2012 alone (nearly matching Norway's total for the full study) and averaged at least one mass shooting death per month for the entire seven-year data set.

A possible better alternative to the CPRC mass shooter report

The fact-checking analysis goes on to suggest that instead of computing each country's average, or mean mass shooting deaths, a better method would be to compute the median, or typical, number of deaths. The median is considered by many statisticians to be better insulated against individual outlier events (such as the Norway massacre) that can skew results. This leads to a more accurate day-to-day impression and country-to-country comparison. Using the CPRC's own data and more precise per-year population data from World Bank (the original study used only 2015 population data) to solve for the median, the more statistically sound analysis results in a notably different list:

Typical (Median) Annual Death Rate per Million People from Mass Public Shootings (U.S., Canada, and Europe, 2009-2015):

Using the median analysis, the United States is the only country examined that shows a propensity for mass shootings. The data itself supports this interpretation, as the United States endured mass shooting events all seven years, but the other countries all experienced mass shootings during only one or two years. Thus, in a typical year, most countries experience zero mass shooting deaths, while the US experiences at least a few.

Additional reports on mass shootings in the United States and the world

Many other studies and articles also offer opinions or interpretations counter to that of the CPRC. For example, a 2019 paper from Econ Journal Watch, a scholarly economics journal, notes that the CPRC data included many events that would be considered military or terrorist actions, such as when 200 insurgents in Ethiopia attacked an oil field and shot 74 people. While these are undeniably tragic deaths, the EJW proposes that they are not what most people associate with the term "mass shooting" and should not be included.

Additionally, a 2021 BBC article used data from the FBI and the Las Vegas Police to point out that eleven of the thirteen deadliest mass shootings in the past 30 years in the United States occurred between 2001 and 2021 (implying that mass shootings are becoming more frequent and more deadly). A 2016 paper from the University of Alabama compared 171 countries from 1966 to 2012 and concluded that the United States accounted for only 5% of the world's population, but 31% of its mass shootings. CPRC has questioned the legitimacy of this report's data.

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That said, mass shootings actually comprise only a fraction of the overall gun deaths in the United States. In fact, roughly two-thirds of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. are suicides. In 2016, for example, 37,353 gun deaths occurred in the United States. Of these, 22,938 were suicides, and 14,415 were homicides.

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The long, shameful list of gunfire on school grounds in America.

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How often do school shootings happen in the United States?

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How often do school shootings happen in the United States?

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According to everytownresearch.org, in 2022 there have been at least 113 incidents of gunfire on school grounds, resulting in 41 deaths and 82 injuries.

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Everytown for Gun Safety started tracking incidents of gunfire on school grounds in 2013 to gain a better understanding of how often children and teens are affected by gun violence at their schools and colleges, and in response to a lack of research and data on the issue.

Over several years of tracking, this data has shown us that gunfire on school grounds takes many forms and mirrors the problem of gun violence in the US. Gunfire on school grounds occurs most often at schools with a high proportion of students of color-disproportionately affecting Black students. For more information, read the analysis of this data and learn about proven solutions that can make schools in the US safer.

When it comes to how American children are exposed to gun violence, gunfire at schools is just the tip of the iceberg-every year, nearly 4,000 children and teens are shot and killed and 15,000 more are shot and injured. An estimated 3 million children in the US are exposed to shootings per year. Firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teens. Witnessing shootings-whether in their schools, their communities or their homes-can have a devastating impact. Children exposed to violence, crime, and abuse are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol; suffer from depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder; fail or have difficulties in school; and engage in criminal activity.

Everytown tracks every time a firearm discharges a live round inside or into a school building or on or onto a school campus or grounds, as documented by the press. Incidents in which guns were brought into schools but not discharged are not included. The map reflects incidents that resulted in death or injury-as well as those in which no one was injured. The information provided is primarily sourced from media reports and the K-12 School Shooting Database. We conduct an annual, comprehensive review of our database, which incorporates new information that may have emerged since we originally tracked the incidents as well as any new incidents that weren't initially identified but found through later research.

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The long, shameful list of gunfire on school grounds in America.

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This list keeps growing. How many more before our leaders act?