I have written before about the need to differentiate between active shooter incidents that happen in workplaces, public spaces/settings, and educational institutions. There is a tendency to think of them as all being extremely similar or the same, such as all events having the same root cause. This way of thinking, often leads people to conclude that there is a single and universal solution to all of these incidents, such as a greater investment in mental health services; although what these exact services are, and look like are rarely specified, along with how they would be applied etc. In this article I want to look at some of the differences between active shooter incidents at K-12 schools, and how these differ from college and university shootings i.e., events at a different type of educational institution. Hopefully by comparing and contrasting some of the core differences between shootings at such institutions, some of the motivations behind these events can be better understood.
In some ways college and university shootings share more in common with shootings in workplace settings than K-12 schools, both in the motivations and events that trigger them, and in who is targeted. College/University shootings are often triggered and motivated by inter-personal conflicts; though obviously the underlying motivations are more complex and shouldn’t be attributed to one single thing. On June 1st, 2016, Mainak Sarkar, a Ph.D student at UCLA, went to the office of Dr William Scot Klug (his thesis advisor), and shot him. He then went on an attempted killing spree of fellow students on the 4th floor where Klug worked. Fortunately, the alert that there was an active shooter in the building was announced in time, and students were able to successfully barricade themselves in rooms. Sarkar eventually shot himself when he heard police sirens outside. Sarkar, had been having issues with Klug for awhile, writing about him in his blog (“thelongdarktunnel”), and on social media, accusing him of stealing computer code he’d written and passing it on to other students etc. Police, later found at his house a “kill list”, with another professor on it – this professor was off campus at the time of the shooting. If we compare this shooting, with workplace shootings, such as Pat Sherril’s (Edmond, Oklahoma) in 1986, which was “triggered” by a disciplinary hearing, he received the previous day from two supervisors, and the 2021 shooting at the Valley Transit Authority Railyard in San Jose, that was triggered when Samuel Cassidy, heard he was about to undergo a disciplinary hearing (Cassidy deliberately passed over certain individuals and targeted others), it can be seen that a component driving all three incidents was inter-personal conflict. This is not the case with most K-12 shootings, where the relationship the shooter had with the institution appears to be more important than the relationship they had – or didn’t have – with particular individuals etc.
The choice of weapons are also often different, when comparing K-12 shootings with college/university ones, and once again university shootings share a commonality with workplace incidents. Sarkar, armed himself with two handguns, as did Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho. This was also the case in the 2019 University of North Carolina at Charlotte shooting, where Trystan Andrew Terrell, used a 9mm Glock pistol. Whilst there have been workplace shootings that have involved long-barrel weapons, such as the Edgewater Technology shooting, in Wakefield, Massachusetts (December 26th, 2000), where the shooter - Michael Morgan McDermott – used an AK-47, and a shotgun, he’d previously smuggled into the building, most workplace mass shootings feature short-barreled weapons, such as revolvers and semi-automatic pistols. In many K-12 school shootings, the killer arms themselves with long-barrel weapons, as did Kip Kinkel (responsible for the 1998, shooting at Thurston High), who armed himself with a Rutger Rifle, and Salvador Rolando Ramos (2022, Robb Elementary School, Uvalde, Texas), who was armed with an AR-15 style rifle. One of the reasons why long-barrel weapons tend to feature in K-12 school shootings, and not those in universities and workplaces, is due to the more open nature of schools, and their tendency to have fewer security measures. It is likely that McDermott was only able to smuggle in his long-barrel weapons because the facility was pretty much empty over the Christmas period. It is much easier to get a handgun, which can easily be concealed, past security and other employees, in workplace and university settings. Another reason why long-barrel weapons may feature in K-12 school shootings is due to a contagion effect. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine School shooters (1999), were armed with a carbine and two shotguns. For many school shooters, Harris and Klebold, developed the “template” for school shootings, walking around a school unobstructed and in complete control for close to an hour, taking their revenge on the institution and killing freely. It is likely that there has been to some degree a “copycat” effect, with each successive shooter, taking inspiration from previous ones. It could be that the “model” for engaging in K-12 shooting, involves using long-barrel weapons.
Whilst many mass shooters and killers share similar profiles, such as being “outsiders” (Klebold, Harris, Cho, and Cassidy) regardless of the institutions they target, there are also significant differences between workplace shootings, university killings, and K-12 mass shootings. Although it is hard to know what goes on in the mind of a shooter who engages in murder-suicide, the fact that very few who engage in workplace shootings leave a suicide note (11%), would imply that these are more spontaneous affairs that are triggered by specific events, such as disciplinary hearings, or exit interviews etc. The commonalities between workplace and university shootings should also be noted; that they are often the result of interpersonal conflict between the student and specific individuals, rather than as “punishment” against an institution and/or community e.g., in contrast, Harris and Klebold in many ways were targeting the school as a symbol of the community that they felt they didn’t belong to.