Studies show that men make up more than 95 percent of the perpetuators in active shooting incidents. The shooter in Monday’s incident was a woman.
The suspect in Monday’s school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, bucked the typical shooter profile in these types of tragedies, as most mass shooters are men.
Experts, like Peter Langman, warn against using sex, age or race to identify and prevent school shootings, and instead urge others to focus on the individual’s behavior before the shooting.
Most cases involve individuals who people had prior concerns about, so any expression of intent to shoot should be taken seriously.
The suspect in Monday’s shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, has upended the typical shooter “profile” in these types of tragedies—a deduction that many experts in the field have long warned as being problematic or misleading in cases of gun violence.
Authorities with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department confirmed on Monday afternoon that the heavily armed person who entered the Christian school earlier in the morning and fatally shot three children and three staff members was a 28-year-old woman.
The description is unlike that of the average school shooter. The gunmen in the infamous 1999 Columbine shooting in Colorado, the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut, the 2018 Parkland shooting in Florida, and last year’s Uvalde shooting in Texas were all committed by young men.
A recent study conducted by the National institute of Justice (NIJ) that was published last February found that 97.
