School shooting

A school shooting refers to an armed individual entering an elementary school, middle school, high school, or college or university and opening fire, shooting at least one student or faculty member. Most school shootings are also mass shootings, which are most often defined as the shooting and killing of at least four individuals other than the perpetrator. Most are random, meaning the shooter does not target a specific individual. In the United States, school shootings have sparked intense debates over gun control and gun violence, with most Democrats favoring a ban on semi-automatic rifles and other high-powered weapons, a higher minimum age to purchase a gun, and stricter background checks, and most Republicans purporting that the problem has more to do with mental health than gun control. Among the solutions proposed by Republicans are fortifying schools and arming school staff.

Prevalence

While school shootings have occurred in many countries and throughout history, most have taken place in the United States since the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colorado. During that incident, two shooters murdered twelve students and a teacher before taking their own lives. Experts estimate that 80 to 90 percent of school shootings occur in the United States, where gun violence is the leading cause of death among children and adolescents.

According to World Population Review, from January 2009 to May 2018, the United States had 288 school shootings, more than any other country. The second-highest country was Mexico, which had eight school shootings during the same timeframe. The situation has worsened in the United States since 2018. In 2025, the gun safety advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety reported that in 2024 alone, at least 219 incidents of gunfire took place on the grounds of preschool and K-12 schools in the US, resulting in 59 deaths and hundreds of injuries.

Warning Signs

Psychiatrists and investigators have worked to identify the risk factors for school shooters to thwart attacks before they occur. The most common and serious risk factors are social rejection, social isolation, and bullying or another type of trauma. At the time of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were described by the media as social outcasts who were bullied in school. However, whether Harris and Klebold were bullied has been debated, but they appeared to have targeted individuals for past humiliations. Adam Lanza, the shooter in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, who killed twenty students and six teachers, was a social outcast who had been bullied and beaten while attending the elementary school. The bullying and bruises were serious enough that Lanza’s mother considered suing the school. Salvador Ramos, who killed nineteen students and two teachers in 2022 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, returned to his former fourth-grade classroom to carry out the attacks. Members of his family said he had been rejected by peers and badly bullied during that year over a speech impediment.

Nearly all school shootings in the United States have been carried out by adolescent White, middle-class males. Most lived in suburban or rural areas. Experts contend that adolescence is a time when the pre-frontal cortex, which is responsible for high-order cognitive functions, is still developing. Adolescents may rely more on the amygdala, a part of the brain responsible for aggressiveness and impulsiveness. This may explain why teenagers take more risks than adults.

The humiliation of being bullied threatens young males’ masculinity, which is often the reason they do not report it to parents and school authorities. School shooters have often been teased about their bodies and called names such as “scrawny” or “fat.” Bullying takes place in front of bystanders, which makes victims angry and likely to act out aggressively.

Experts theorize as to why school shooters are usually White. Some have speculated that Black families better prepare their children to face bullying, which often includes racist comments. By opening the lines of communication, their children are more likely to reveal being tormented to family members who will help them work through their emotions.

The communities in which most White male shooters resided are predominantly White, with parents and school staff indicating that they did not try to stop the bullying or help the victims deal with being demoralized. In many cases, the young males who became shooters felt emasculated and embarrassed and did not report the bullying, so parents and school staff were not aware of what was happening. In other cases, parents and school staff simply ignored the bullying, most likely because of the culture in the communities where the White school shooters lived. People within these regions may feel that male victims of bullying are weak and need to toughen up, leaving them to fend for themselves.

Mental illness may also play a role in an adolescent becoming a school shooter. It is important to note that most individuals with a mental illness are not violent. This is especially true of those with serious mental illnesses such as severe bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. A 2022 Columbia University research study published by CBS News investigated the background of 1,800 mass murderers and found that only 8 percent had a severe mental illness. However, the study also found that 25 percent of the mass shooters suffered from less severe mental illnesses, such as anxiety and depression. The research also indicated that 72 percent were suicidal before the time of their attack.

Often, school shooters’ mental illnesses are undiagnosed or untreated. Nine years before Adam Lanza shot and killed twenty-six people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, medical experts at Yale University called for drastic measures to be taken to treat his psychiatric and physical health. However, Lanza was not treated for his mental illnesses, which included anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The experts also believed that his anorexia could have affected his mental state. Seung-Hui Cho, the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007 in Blacksburg, Virginia, that killed thirty-three people, had a history of mental illness. Cho was diagnosed with a mood disorder and was believed to have been suicidal. He was briefly held at a psychiatric hospital and ordered to undergo outpatient treatment upon release but did not do so.

Not surprisingly, most school shooters come from dysfunctional homes. They have a turbulent relationship with a parent or parents. They have suffered loss, such as the death of a parent. The family often moves and violence is commonplace. Parents or guardians set few, if any, rules. In some cases, parents are intimidated by the child, who often demands privacy. The family may be unconcerned when the teen displays disturbing behavior and may minimize the problem if they are contacted by school officials or teachers. Ramos, the Robb Elementary school shooter, moved to Uvalde when he was young to live with his mother, who had a history of drug abuse. His father was largely absent from his life. Ramos told a girlfriend that one of his mother’s boyfriends had molested him, but his mother did not believe him when he told her about the incident. Ramos was mostly raised by his grandmother, whom he shot in the face before heading to Robb Elementary to carry out his attack.

Some school shootings occur, at least in part, because the shooters seek notoriety. They believe the intense media coverage after a school shooting will make them famous. Seventeen-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis sought to emulate the Columbine shooters by wearing a black trench coat during his shooting at Sante Fe High School in 2018. Pagourtzis killed eight students and two teachers, later saying that he let some people live so they could tell his story.

Investigators believe that notoriety may be the reason that copycat school and mass shootings are carried out days or weeks after the first attack. For example, the racially motivated mass shooting at a Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York, occurred on May 14, 2022. Eighteen-year-old Payton Gendron killed ten people in the store’s parking lot and in the store, and livestreamed his attack on Twitch. The Robb Elementary School shooting occurred on May 24 of the same year.

Further Insights

Whenever a school shooting occurs in the United States, it sparks heated debates between Democrats and Republicans about strengthening gun-control laws. Most Democrats contend that high-powered and mass-firing weapons should not be used outside the military. They seek a ban on the sale and ownership of these rifles, which have been used in nearly every school shooting since Columbine. A federal ban on semi-automatic and high-capacity magazines was in effect in the United States from 1994 to 2004, but Congress allowed it to expire. Democrats also support raising the minimum age to purchase a firearm from eighteen to twenty-one and implementing stricter background checks.

Most Republicans, on the other hand, support the philosophy that school shootings are not a “gun problem” but are instead a “people problem.” Republicans contend that the key to reducing mass shootings is not to curtail gun rights but to increase school security and mental health services.

Because the Second Amendment to the US Constitution gives people the right to keep and bear arms, many Republicans do not support gun-control legislation, despite the number of children who have been gunned down in school. It should also be noted that many Republican politicians receive campaign money from gun rights supporters and organizations such as the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Federal laws cover the regulation of firearms in the entire country, but states and cities can enact additional restrictions. After the Robb Elementary School shooting, President Joe Biden once again pushed for stricter federal gun control regulations including a ban on AR-15 and similar semi-automatic rifles, but met opposition from Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate. However, on June 24, 2023, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Gun Control Act was passed. It does not raise the minimum age to buy a gun but calls for stronger background checks on buyers under the age of twenty-one and encourages states to implement red-flag laws for buyers who may be a threat. It also provides billions of dollars in funding for better school security and school-based mental health services.

Viewpoints

Experts agree that preventing school shootings involves a comprehensive effort from lawmakers, law enforcement, and school staff as well as parents, other family members, and friends of potential school shooters. At the very least, lawmakers need to raise the minimum age to purchase semi-automatic firearms, such as AR-15s, to twenty-one. According to the New York Times, 77 percent of mass shooters from 1966 to 2019 legally purchased the guns they used to carry out their attacks. This is also true of the school shooters in the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Law enforcement officers need tactical training to deal with active school shooters. They also need to clearly understand the chain of command when confronted with an active shooter on a campus; training in coordination and communication procedures are essential to avoid systemic failures, such as the one at Robb Elementary School, where 376 officers let students remain alone in adjoining classrooms with the shooter for more than an hour before entering.

Schools need to update buildings to provide better security. Measures should be taken that do not traumatize students. According to experts, deterrent measures such as metal detectors, clear backpacks, and armed staff members have not been shown to prevent school shootings. They recommend limiting entrances to school grounds as well as school buildings and installing additional security cameras.

They also recommend implementing security measures such as locks on classroom doors. No active shooter has ever breached a locked classroom door. Unfortunately, many classroom doors have external instead of internal locks. Exterior locking doors put teachers in danger because they try to protect students by going into the hallway to lock the door. Doors with interior locks must still be accessible from the outside using a key, so emergency personnel can enter classrooms. If windows exist on classroom doors, they should be covered so that an active shooter cannot see into the classroom.

Bulletproof glass should be installed in all windows to prevent shooters from shooting their way into a school, as was the case at Sandy Hook Elementary School. When Nikolas Cruz, the shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, reached the third floor, he tried to shoot teachers and students who were fleeing the building through a window but was unable to harm them because his bullets could not penetrate the hurricane glass in the window.

Ending bullying within a school is also paramount. Programs that rely on raising awareness and having zero-tolerance have been shown to be ineffective. Furthermore, programs such as peer mediation that place the responsibility on students to resolve their own conflicts have been shown to increase bullying. Programs that foster a positive school climate are a better option. Schools with a positive climate emphasize tolerance and quality of character, while those with a negative climate are associated with aggression and bullying. Leadership is key to creating a positive school climate. Leaders should recognize bullying as harmful peer abuse. Teachers need training on how to handle bullying in the classroom because most say they are unprepared to do so.

Parents can help by ensuring that firearms are in locked storage places where children cannot access them. According to Sandy Hook School Promise, a foundation dedicated to preventing school violence, 4.6 million children live in a house where at least one weapon is loaded and unlocked, and most parents falsely believe that their children do not know the location of a gun kept in the house. In 68 percent of gun-related incidents at schools, the guns used were taken from the home. Lawmakers can help by enacting and enforcing firearm storage laws.

Friends can prevent school shootings by reporting suspected school shooters to multiple authorities as quickly as possible. In four out of five school shootings, at least one other person had knowledge of the shooter’s plan but did not report it to authorities. School shooters nearly always plan their attack in advance and mention it to others. In the case of the Robb Elementary School shooting, Ramos gave off so many warning signs that his friends dubbed him “school shooter.”

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