Shots were fired at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, on Monday morning, leaving one student, a teacher, and the shooter dead and several others wounded. Even though school shootings have grown much too frequent in the United States, this one stands out because the perpetrator was a woman.
Natalie Rupnow, 15, who was discovered dead at the site, is one of a few female shooters who target schools and cause widespread devastation.
James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University, told Northeastern Global News that men are responsible for 95% of mass shootings. Men are responsible for the vast majority of violent crimes, especially homicide and gun homicide.
There have been 349 homicides at American K–12 schools since 2000, according to the Mass Killings Database, which compiles statistics on mass killings in the country. Nine of those shooters were females under the age of 18, and just 12 of them were female.
According to Fox, a significant difference between these genders’ approaches to violence may be a factor in the wide statistical disparity. For starters, family members are involved in a large number of cases involving female offenders.
According to Fox, who spoke to Northeastern Global News, women frequently resort to violence as a kind of self-defense when they perceive threats against them. Men frequently employ violence as an offensive tactic to gain authority.
Furthermore, according to numerous experts, men are more prone than women to commit mass shootings because they are more inclined to blame others rather than themselves, which can incite resentment and animosity, as NPR has reported over the years.
According to some research, men are more likely than women to develop negative external attributions of blame, such as: “Something outside of me is the cause of my problems,” Candice Batton, a former director of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, told NPR in 2013.
Although it is uncommon for a teenage girl to commit mass violence at her school, the facts of this case fit a pattern seen in prior school shootings.
The same story is told repeatedly if we take a step back. an insider who is a student. in a crisis. suicidal. James Densley, co-founder of the Violence Project Research Center, told KTSP that he had access to a gun.
More than 90% of school mass shooters, according to Densley, exhibit overt indications of a crisis prior to the shooting, and an equal number of them reveal their plans in advance.
According to research by The Violence Project, school shooters share a common road to violence: 92% of them were suicidal before or during the shooting, and 73% had a known history of childhood trauma. Furthermore, 58% of school shooters obtained their weapons via a friend or family member who had not properly secured them, indicating that most access to firearms occurred through friends or family. These trends are true irrespective of the gender of the shooter, indicating that although female offenders may be uncommon, the fundamental causes of school shootings are constant.
Authorities were looking into the veracity of a document that was posted online and is thought to be the shooter’s manifesto, according to a CNN story on Wednesday. Her participation in online groups honoring mass shooters and interest in neo-Nazi ideas are also being looked into on her social media accounts.
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