America has failed to curb its horrific culture of gun violence. Every year the United States is plagued by mass shootings, including at schools, that result in the deaths of innocent people.
Now another tragic school shooting has hit the country. A 15-year-old student opened fire at a small Christian school in Wisconsin on Monday (December 16), killing two people and wounding six others.
This is a rare case of an active shooting involving a female attacker in the United States.
Let's take a closer look.
What happened?
A teenager opened fire in a study hall at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, on Monday morning.
She killed a teacher and a classmate and injured six others, two of whom were critically injured, said Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes Associated Press (AP).
Barnes said the two victims were in critical condition with life-threatening injuries.
“One teacher and three students were treated for non-life-threatening injuries and two of them were released,” he added.
Police identified the shooter as Natalie Rupnow, who went by the name “Samantha.”
The Madison police chief said Rupnow died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and was pronounced dead en route to the hospital. He did not provide any further information about the shooter.
This was announced by a police officer AP that the shooter used a 9mm pistol.
Police said they were trying to determine the motive for the attack. “I don’t know why, and I feel like if we knew why, we could prevent these things,” Barnes told reporters.
In conversation with CNNA police official familiar with the investigation said the attack was planned in advance by the suspect. The source said the 15-year-old was struggling with some issues, which she expressed in writing.
Police are speaking with the suspect's father and other family members, the Madison police chief said.
The shooting was reported by a second-grader who was probably 7 or 8 years old, he said, adding, “Let that sink in for a moment.”
President Joe Biden called the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School “shocking and irresponsible.”
“We need Congress to act. Now,” he said in a statement.
“From Newtown to Uvalde, from Parkland to Madison and so many other shootings that go unnoticed, it is unacceptable that we cannot protect our children from this scourge of gun violence. We cannot continue to accept it as normal,” he said. “Every child deserves to feel safe in their classroom. Students across our country should learn to read and write – not learn to duck and hide.”
US school shootings
According to the Gun Violence Archive, mass shootings have been on the rise in the United States since 2020. The American non-profit organization describes a mass shooting as an attack in which four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter.
The Congressional Research Service states that a mass shooting occurs when the shooter kills four or more people and selects the victims at random in a public place.
According to the K-12 School Shooting Database website, school shootings have also become a grim reality in the United States. There have been 322 incidents this year.
This is the highest in a year since 1966 and is second only to the total of 349 such shootings last year. Reuters reported citing the database.
According to CNNThe Wisconsin school shooting is at least the 83rd such attack at a school in the United States this year.
How common are female shooters?
Studies show that only about 3 percent of all mass shootings in the United States were carried out by women.
According to the nonpartisan nonprofit group Violence Prevention Project, there have been 195 mass shootings in the U.S. between 1966 and 2024, involving 200 shooters, only four of whom were female.
It defines a “mass shooting” as an event in which “four or more people, excluding the shooter, are shot and killed in a public place without any connection to underlying criminal activity such as gangs or drugs.”
David Riedman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database, said last year that school shootings by girls are extremely rare in U.S. history AP.
He said the perpetrators in most school shootings are men in their teens and 20s.
Only a handful of shooters were female, making the Wisconsin shooting a rarity.
According to NewsweekThere is little evidence that mass shootings by women or girls have increased significantly in the United States in recent years.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines an active shooter incident as “a person killing or attempting to kill people in a limited and populated area.”
Data from the top law enforcement agency shows that of the 226 incidents involving an active shooter since 2019, only seven involved women. There were three active shooters in 2020 alone.
Last year, 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who reportedly identified as “both a woman and a transgender man,” killed six people at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee.
In 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Spencer opened fire at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, killing two adults and wounding nine, including eight children.
In 2006, Jennifer San Marco opened fire at a sorting center where she worked in Goleta, California, killing six postal workers before taking her own life. She had also reportedly shot and killed a former neighbor earlier that day New York Post.
In 2015, Tashfeen Malik and her husband Syed Farook shot and killed 14 people and injured another 17 people at a welfare facility in San Bernardino, California.
In a separate incident, Nasim Aghdam shot and wounded three people at YouTube headquarters near San Francisco in 2018 before fatally shooting herself. Police said they were upset by the video platform's practices and policies.
That same year, a former worker at the Rite Aid support facility in the city of Aberdeen, Maryland, 26-year-old Snochia Moseley, shot three people and injured three others before taking her own life.
READ ALSO: Texas school shooting, 2012 Sandy Hook massacre and more: A look back at the deadliest school attacks in the United States
Why are female shootings rare?
There is no clear answer to this question.
Dewey G. Cornell, a licensed forensic clinical psychologist, recounted CNN in 2018 that it is difficult to answer why women are rarely involved in active shooters because there is no consistent profile of such perpetrators.
“Men commit the vast majority of mass shootings for essentially the same reasons that they commit most violent crimes,” he said.
“Men tend to be more violent than women due to a complex interplay of evolutionary and psychosocial factors. “Men tend to be more aggressive and have fewer empathy inhibitions, and men in distress appear to be less willing to turn to others for help,” Cornell added.
With input from agencies
