Natalie Rupnow, the 15-year-old student who killed a teacher and a teenage peer at Abundant Life Christian School on Monday, is among a miniscule percentage of school shooters who are female.
About 2% of all mass shootings are committed by female perpetrators, according to data from the Violence Prevention Project.
Janet Hyde, UW-Madison professor emerita of psychology and gender and women’s studies, believes socialization explains the gender gap. Hyde is an expert in both the psychology of gun violence and women.
“Of course, we don’t know the details about the motives in this particular one, but in general, women are socialized, girls are socialized, to care for others,” Hyde said. “This is such a violation of what girls are socialized to do — they’re socialized to play with baby dolls, and they’re socialized to become nurses. It’s great to be a caring person, but that’s why we see so few female shooters, because it violates the socialization.”
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The way boys and men are socialized in the United States, paired with the high prevalence of firearms, feeds into why they commit far more gun violence, Hyde added. Gun manufacturers and gun lobbyists have spent decades tying gun ownership to masculinity, with ads in Boys’ Life encouraging parents to purchase rifles for their sons for Christmas, she said.
The United States accounts for nearly half of all civilian-owned firearms and guns outnumber people, with an estimated 378 million firearms, the most of any country, according to The Trace, a journalism outlet that reports on gun violence.
“If we look cross-culturally, all other countries have masculinity norms, but they don’t result in all of these mass shootings, and the reason is they don’t have so many guns around,” Hyde said.
There’s little data available on why girls and women might commit a mass shooting because there are so few occurrences, Hyde said. But girls and women are not immune from some of the influences that would prompt them to commit violence, such as a radicalization toward guns or bullying that could cause a person to snap. It’s not clear if those factors influenced Rupnow’s actions, and Madison police are still working to determine her motives.
Besides gender, mass shooters often fit a larger profile, the report from the Violence Prevention Project states. Most shooters tend to have been exposed to some form of trauma in their childhood, whether it be abuse, neglect or “household dysfunction,” which includes mental illness, domestic violence, especially toward a mother, and substance abuse.
About 70% of K-12 mass shooters have experienced some form of trauma. And more than 80% of mass shooters are found to be in emotional duress prior to an incident, the Violence Prevention Project found. Those who carried out violence suffered from symptoms such as depression, mood swings and isolation right before an attack.
The majority of shooters under the age of 18 then either steal or borrow weapons directly from a family member or a friend. About 20% of shooters get their weapons through straw purchases or gifts from another person; 10% of shooters acquired their guns through illegal street sales.
The vast majority of K-12 school shooters — 88% — also have a connection to the school they’re targeting, the Violence Project data states. The only places with higher connection rates are colleges and universities, at 89%, and warehouses, factories and post offices, with every shooter having had a connection to the location.
