The Dec. 16 shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, shocked the nation not only for its horror but also for its unique profile. This time, a young girl opened fire in her school, killing a teacher, another student and apparently herself, and wounding six others. Although female school shooters are extremely rare, the patterns that lead to such tragedies are painfully familiar.
School shootings are a quintessentially American crisis. According to the K-12 School Shooting Database, which tracks whenever a weapon is brandished or fired on school grounds, there were 323 such incidents on school grounds in 2024.
The gender of the perpetrators is often in the public eye. After the mass shooting at Covenant School in Nashville in March 2023, the shooter's transgender identity was widely discussed. Following other school shootings, “toxic masculinity” has been highlighted, along with the well-documented fact that most mass shootings are carried out by men and boys.
In our recently released K-12 school homicide database, which details 349 K-12 school homicides since 2020, only 12 (3%) of the perpetrators were female. There have been some notable cases involving female school shooters. In 1988, a babysitter walked into a second-grade classroom in Winnetka, Illinois, and told students she was there to teach them about guns; She opened fire, killing an 8-year-old boy and wounding five other students.
In Rigby, Idaho, in 2021, a 12-year-old girl plotted to kill 20 to 30 classmates. Armed with two handguns, she left a bathroom and began shooting in the hallway, wounding two students and the custodian. A teacher heard the shots, left the classroom and hugged the shooter to disarm her.
The earliest case in our records occurred in 1979, when a 16-year-old girl opened fire at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, killing two people and injuring nine. This was the first time the American public was introduced to a female school shooter. Her infamous explanation for her actions—“I just don’t like Mondays”—is deeply embedded in pop culture. But it was less about a flippant attitude and more about desperation. At a parole hearing years later, the shooter admitted the truth: “I wanted to die.” She viewed her attack as a way to get killed by police.
Her story reflects what we know today: Most school shooters are suicidal, in crisis, and driven by a mix of hopelessness and anger.
Decades of research reveal a number of consistent truths. School shooters are usually insiders, meaning they are current or former students. They know the procedures, security measures and weaknesses of their schools. And while investigators don't yet know what led to the Madison shootings, school shootings are almost never spontaneous acts of violence.
Instead, in most cases, school shootings are the culmination of a profound unraveling, a final and terrible cry for help. More than 90% of perpetrators show clear signs of crisis – depression, mood swings, restlessness, isolation or an inability to cope with daily life – in the months or weeks before their attacks. And crucially, more than 90% reveal their plans in advance by passing on warnings to colleagues, posting threatening messages, or even being open about their intentions.
With any school shooting, we tend to focus on details: the rare shooter, the high-profile massacre, the immediate response of authorities. But when we step back, we often see the same story repeating itself over and over again. A student insider. In crisis. Suicidal.
Finally, there is access to weapons – the bridge between crisis and catastrophe. As of Friday afternoon, we don't know where the Madison shooter got the gun she used. In Wisconsin, it is illegal for anyone under 18 to own a firearm, although there are exceptions.
In almost every school shooting, the gun is obtained from the shooter's home or from a complicit adult. This was true in 1979 when the Cleveland Elementary shooter used a rifle her father gave her as a Christmas present, and this remains true in the data today. When firearms are stored safely—locked, unloaded, and separated from ammunition—the risk of impulsive violence decreases dramatically. But this basic precaution is far too often ignored.
Parents and guardians must understand their role in preventing a tragedy. Safe gun storage is the easiest and most effective way to ensure guns don't end up in the hands of teens in crisis. Many states have enacted laws that hold adults accountable when minors access their firearms. For purposes of this Wisconsin law, a child is defined as a person 14 years of age or younger. The shooter was 15 years old.
At the same time, families must be vigilant and schools must create an environment where students feel safe reporting troubling behavior without fear of punishment or stigma. This year alone, several teenage girls have threatened violence against their schools and have sometimes come shockingly close to taking actual action.
On September 7, a 15-year-old girl was arrested in Temperance, Michigan, after sending a group text message threatening a school shooting at Whiteford Agricultural Schools. Two weeks earlier, on August 26 in Austin, Texas, a tip to the FBI led to the arrest of a 17-year-old girl who was upset and openly planning a shooting at her former elementary school. In March, an 18-year-old woman was taken into custody after threatening to “shoot up” a school in Knoxville, Tennessee.
But if we simply criminalize threats without meaningful intervention, we risk reinforcing the very grievances that lead to violence. We must address the broader culture of desperation and anger that typically drives these attacks. Social isolation, bullying and untreated mental health issues are not trivial problems among young people – they can be harbingers of violence for those who see no other way out.
School shootings should be remembered not for the novelty of individual details, but as a reminder of what we already know and what we can prevent. We cannot erase the trauma these events cause, but we can use the lessons learned from them. The warning signs are usually visible. The tools for prevention are there. And every school shooting that we cannot stop is a tragedy that we could have prevented.
