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The Secret Service and National Threat Assessment Center have focused on targeted school violence, including school shootings.

They studied 41 attacks against K-12 schools in the United States from 2008 to 2017. The report focused on the background and behaviors of attackers to identify commonalities among them.

The National Threat Assessment Center has been studying these types of violent incidents for the past 20 years. builds on that research and surfaces a few important findings:

• There is no profile of a student attacker, and there is no profile of the kind of school that is targeted in these attacks.
• Attackers usually had multiple motives.
• Most attackers (61%) used firearms and those firearms were often acquired from the home.
• Half of the attackers were interested in violent topics, like the or Hitler.
• Most attackers had a history of school disciplinary actions, and many had prior contact with law enforcement.
• Most attackers were the victims of bullying, which was often observed by others.

• All attackers exhibited concerning behaviors that someone else noticed. Most also communicated their intent to attack.

Peter Langman, a psychologist specializing in the psychology of school shooters, contributed to the report. He said if nothing else, it鈥檚 crucial readers remember the first two findings: There is no profile of these types of shooters, and these individuals usually have multiple motives.

鈥淸Attackers] have remarkable diversity in terms of who they are, the families they come from, what鈥檚 driving their attack, and so on,鈥� Langman said. 鈥淲e can鈥檛 just reduce this to a soundbite and say this is who school shooters are.鈥�

The report found that while attackers were predominantly male (83%), 17% were female.

The majority (63%) were white, while 15% were 鈥淏lack or African American鈥� and 10% were multiracial.

And when it comes to motivation, Langman says there are a variety of 鈥渟tressors鈥�.

鈥淎 lot of people want to simplify it or reduce it to one thing, whether it鈥檚 or bullying,鈥� Langman said. 鈥淲hat we see in this study is just how many different kinds of 鈥榮tressors鈥� there were.鈥�

All the attackers experienced at least one social 鈥榮tressor鈥�, whether they were being bullied or if they had conflicts with classmates. Family 鈥榮tressors鈥� were also very common and included conflicts at home or abuse or neglect from a parent.

While school homicides involving multiple victims have become more frequent in the past decade, they remain in the U.S.

David Ropeik, the author of 鈥淗ow Risky Is It Really? Why Our Fears Don鈥檛 Always Match The Facts,鈥� studies the prevalence of school shootings.

鈥淚f you run the numbers on the number of people who in K through 12 public schools in the United States were killed by any kind of weapon from 2008 to 2017, you get about a 1 in 5,000,000,000 chance, per kid, per day [over nine years] that they鈥檒l be murdered in schools,鈥� Ropeik said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 crazy rare!鈥�

A fact, Ropeik points out, is not prominently mentioned in , (it isnoted in a footnote on page 59.)

According to a 2018 study from Northeastern University, a child is than in a school shooting.

But it鈥檚 still scary.

鈥淪tatistics are not how we judge how scared to be of anything,鈥� Ropeik said. 鈥淓ven if the odds are low, if the nature of the thing is scary, and there are a bunch of psychological characteristics that make that so, especially one of them being kids are involved then the numbers don鈥檛 matter that much.鈥�

Ropeik was also struck by the diversity of weapons used in these attacks.

鈥淥nly [61%] of these attacks were by guns,鈥� Ropeik said. 鈥淎 lot of the attacks are by other weapons.鈥�

While a majority of the incidents used a firearm, which included handguns, rifles and shotguns, 39% used bladed weapons, including pocket or folding knives.

Some students used a combination of weapons, including a claw hammer and a knife. One incident used both a firearm and Molotov cocktail.

The illustration, created for the U.S. Secret Service鈥� report 鈥淧rotecting America鈥� Schools: A U.S. Secret Service Analysis Of Targeted School Violence鈥�, shows 41 incidents of targeted school violence over nine years from 2008 to 2017.

The report also showed that most attackers (76%) acquired their firearm from the home of a parent or another close relative. In half of these cases, the firearm was readily accessible or

Beverly Kingston, Director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado Boulder, says this isn鈥檛 new.

鈥淭he thing about it is, they鈥檙e not surprising because we鈥檝e been seeing them across shootings for many, many years,鈥� Kingston explained.

She argues that the report does provided further evidence to implement holistic approaches to school safety.

The report encourages schools to create violence prevention plans that are inclusive of immediate threats like weapons on campus, and lower-level concerns like conflicts between students or interest in violent topics.

鈥淲e want to address these root causes of all these kinds of problem behaviors,鈥� Kingston said. 鈥淧reventing bullying in schools, making sure that young people get the mental health supports that they need, knowing that we鈥檙e preventing lots of problem behaviors, not just those who are going to go on to be a mass shooter.鈥�

Kingston wants to see more schools adopt policies that address mental healthcare support, rather than hardening schools against the dangerous, but rare, school shooter.

is a public media reporting project on the role of guns in American life.

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