School ShootingSchool Shootings Are at a Record High This Year – but They Can Be Prevented

By James Densley and Jillian Peterson

Published 3 December 2021

Research has shown that school mass shooters tend to be current or former students of the school. They are almost always in crisis of some sort before their attack, as indicated by a noticeable change in behavior from usual. They often are inspired by other school shooters, and they also tend to leak their plans for violence in advance to their peers. And school shooters usually get their guns from family and friends who failed to store them safely and securely. The question now is how to translate these findings into policy and practice in order to prevent the next school shooting.

Whenever a school shooting takes place like the one at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit on November 30, 2021, it is typically followed by a familiar chorus of questions.

How could such a thing happen? Why doesn’t the government do more to stop these shootings from occurring?

Those questions are even more urgent in light of the fact that the shooting at Oxford High School was one of 222 school shootings in 2021, an all-time high, according to the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s K-12 School Shooting Database. That’s over 100 more school shootings in 2021 than in 2019 or 2018, respectively the second- and third-worst years on record.

In the Oxford High School case, a 15-year-old boy armed with a semiautomatic handgun is accused of killing four students and injuring six others and a teacher.

As shown in our 2021 book, “The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic,” school mass shooters tend to be current or former students of the school. They are almost always in crisis of some sort before their attack, as indicated by a noticeable change in behavior from usual. They often are inspired by other school shooters, and they also tend to leak their plans for violence in advance to their peers.

And school shooters usually get their guns from family and friends who failed to store them safely and securely.

News reports suggest a lot of this holds true for the Oxford High School shooter. For instance, the suspect’s father allegedly purchased the handgun used in the shooting just four days prior. The shooter reportedly exhibited “concerning” behavior at school and posted pictures of the gun alongside threats of violence on social media.

The question now is how to translate these findings into policy and practice in order to prevent the next school shooting.

Trouble from the Start
The data we use to track school shootings is a comprehensive database that includes information on “each and every instance a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time of day, or day of week” going back to 1970.

Working with its co-creator, David Riedman, we uncovered a record 151 school shooting threats in the “back-to-school” month of September 2021, up from a three-year average of 29. Actual school shootings also more than doubled during September 2021 compared with the same month in previous years.