Active assailants: An overview of school attacks
Editor
Attacks at educational institutions are often depicted as an issue most prominently affecting the US. While the US is in a league of its own in terms of the numbers of both attacks and fatalities, to date in 2023, there have been at least 14 attacks (three involving firearms) across all levels of educational institutions in countries outside of the US. Four have taken place in Brazil, two in Canada and Finland, and one in each of Bosnia, Germany, Pakistan, Sweden, Serbia and South Korea. This is broadly similar to numbers from previous years, with 14 attacks in 2022 and 10 in 2021. In the US, by contrast, the Education Week news organisation’s 2023 School Shooting Tracker lists 30 shootings at primary and secondary schools that have resulted in injuries or deaths this year so far, compared to 51 for the whole of 2022.
Between 1966-2022, there have additionally been at least 12 mass shootings - defined as those in which three or more people were killed - at US tertiary institutions. Most recently, a mass shooting at Michigan State University in February 2023 resulted in three deaths and five injuries. During this time there have also been 300 shooting incidents at tertiary institutions not defined as mass shootings, in which 94 people were killed and 215 injured. Educational institutions globally continue to seek solutions to limit both the occurrence and impacts of school attacks, but few easy answers are available.
Patterns and motivations in school attacks are seldom clear. While perpetrators are often affiliated with the institutions they target, this is not always the case. Similarly, accurate characterisations of attackers’ or would-be attackers’ traits remain elusive. But perhaps it is the target, schools – which we perceive as safe places of learning for children and youths – that makes any attacks against them so jarring. And as such, parents, police, and school and government officials are equally interested in understanding the phenomenon and identifying ways to prevent attacks and casualties.
The next school attacker: A profile?
There is no clear demographical, psychological, societal, or circumstance-informed profile of a school attacker. This presents a limitation for carrying out methodical threat assessments. Experts have warned against profiling individuals along certain traits to identify prospective school shooters. For example, the National Association of School Psychologists in the US points out that attempts to develop profiles runs the risk of both including parties who would never carry out an act of violence, as well as excluding many who may. In a report on school shooters the US Federal Bureau of Investigation has separately noted that a profile of a school shooter does “not exist”. Similarly, a 2013 journal article on school violence around the world described it as a “multidimensional phenomena” that needs to consider a complex mix of social, political and cultural drivers. That said, examining some of the commonalities in shooter characteristics could allow for appropriate mitigation and prevention measures to be taken at the institutional level.
As with other active assailant or mass shooter incidents, the specific circumstances under which a given perpetrator chooses to carry out an attack are murky. But past incidents shed some light on factors that can point to ‘typical’ cases of school attacks. Globally, most attackers are male – in the US, for instance, women have carried out or been involved in only two percent of mass shootings historically, of which just five have taken place at educational institutions. Audrey Hale’s March 2023 shooting attack at an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, can therefore be considered an anomaly. Globally, only a handful of these incidents have been perpetrated by females.
Educational institutions are by their nature soft targets, and particularly if an attack is carried out by a student or staff member with legitimate access, access restrictions will only do so much to prevent attacks.
Still, common characteristics to both and male and female perpetrators of violence at education institutions are present. They tend to feel marginalised, rejected or have been subject to bullying. More than half of school shooters in the US, for example, have a history of psychological problems including depression and suicidal ideation. However, these figures are not easy to pin down globally, namely because many legal systems do not allow for personal health records to be made public. Many have displayed a fascination with weapons or violence, or have some ties to the military, including through family connections. The personality of the individual, for example how well they deal with disappointment or anger, as well as prevailing family dynamics can play a role too.
Preventing attacks
The presence of certain “risk” factors alone does not of course mean that a person will carry out an attack against a school or otherwise. But educational institutions are by their nature soft targets, and particularly if an attack is carried out by a student or staff member with legitimate access – as is most often the case – access restrictions will only do so much to prevent attacks. In the US, for instance, 97 percent of schools control access to their premises, yet school attacks occur more frequently there than anywhere in the world. Research has also shown that many efforts to prevent or prepare for school attacks are misplaced. Excessive security measures can cause distress to learners, and detailed repeated drills demonstrate the nature of security measures to would-be attackers.
Finally, in the US in particular, but increasingly in other countries such as Canada, the ease of access to firearms plays a key role. Most school attackers are underage, and so are limited in their ability to purchase firearms, but legally bought guns taken from parents or older relatives are arguably far easier to obtain where civilian gun ownership is more common. While this is not the only factor in explaining the high numbers of school shootings in the US, it does account for far higher casualty figures when attacks do happen – axe or knife attacks can be countered more readily by bystanders, and they are simply not as deadly.
Because school attacks as a phenomena and the characterisation of school attackers as individuals are so complex, effective interventions require coordinated resolve. But precedent shows that policy divergence and competing priorities across all relevant sectors – healthcare, policing, social services, and civil society among others – are likely to hamper most national level initiatives to effectively curb these incidents. As a result, the next school attack is more a question of ‘when’ than ‘if’ and the phenomena will remain a topic of persistent concern for education institutions the world over.