The Wisconsin school shooting appears to be an anomaly.
School shootings have become all too common in the U.S. The latest one in Madison, Wisconsin, is the 83rd in the country to take place this year alone, according to a CNN analysis. But what’s considered unique about it is that the perpetrator was a 15-year-old girl.
Natalie Rupnow, who went by Samantha, has been identified by law enforcement as the shooter who claimed the lives of a teacher and another student and injured six others at the Abundant Life Christian School before apparently dying by suicide. “Everyone was targeted in this incident,” Madison Chief of Police Shon F. Barnes said at a news conference. “Everyone was put in equal danger.”
As more details about the shooting come to light, many are also fixated on the shooter’s gender and whether we’ll see an increase in female assailants. We’re taking a closer look at what the data shows about women shooting suspects and why they’re considered rare.
And before we begin, an important note about language: There’s no universal definition for a “mass” shooter. The FBI defines these as any incident in which “at least four people are murdered with a gun,” which wouldn’t include the incident in Wisconsin. The Gun Violence Archive, however, defines a mass shooting as affecting “a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed,” which would include the Wisconsin shooting.
How often are mass shooters female?
Female shooters are relatively unusual in general, meaning the shooting in Wisconsin is something of an anomaly. Out of active shooter incidents from 2000 to 2019, men committed 332, and just 13 were carried out by women, according to an FBI analysis.
These statistics are similar when it comes to mass shootings. An astonishing 97.7 percent of mass shootings in the U.S. from 1966 to 2019 were carried out by male assailants, according to the Justice Department’s database.
The nonprofit Violence Prevention Project found that out of the almost 200 shooters between 1966 and 2024, four were identified as female. And only nine female students have been behind a shooting on school grounds since 1999, according to a Washington Post analysis.
What makes female shooters different
Studies show that female shooters are motivated differently than their male counterparts.
In a 2021 article published in the Journal of Mass Violence Research, researchers Jason Silva, Ph.D., and Margaret Schmuhl, Ph.D., found that not only are mass shootings “an overwhelmingly male phenomenon,” but existing studies attribute mass shootings by men to “some form of male aggrieved entitlement or crisis of masculinity,” which are often “motivated by grievances with women.”
By contrast, they found that female mass shooters appear to be motivated by relationship disputes, familicides, or both. (In the Wisconsin school shooting, police say it was due to a “combination of factors” but didn’t offer any further details as they continue to try to confirm the authenticity of Rupnow’s manifesto.) “In other words, it is rare for women to engage in gun violence targeting random individuals in a public setting,” they concluded.
Since there aren’t as many female shooters, few studies focus on them, which leaves a gap in understanding what drives their violence. “Just as women have exhibited distinct trends and patterns in homicide offending…it is important for research to also distinguish and understand female mass shooters,” Drs. Silva and Schmuhl wrote.
Examples of female shooters in U.S. history
The most infamous female school shooter was 16-year-old Brenda Spencer. In 1979, she fired out of the window of her home across the street at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, killing two men and wounding nine children.
When asked for an explanation for what prompted the murderous attack, Spencer allegedly said, “I just don’t like Mondays. I did this because it’s a way to cheer up the day. Nobody likes Mondays.” Her comments inspired a hit song by the Irish band the Boomtown Rats, “I Don’t Like Mondays.”
There are more recent examples as well. In 2006, former U.S. Postal Service employee Jennifer San Marco fatally shot six people at a postal facility in Goleta, Calif., before taking her own life. With a history of mental illness, she believed the post office was out to get her when she committed her deadly rampage.
Then in 2018, vegan activist and fitness personality Nasim Najafi Aghdam opened fire at YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, Calif., wounding several people before fatally shooting herself. She apparently held a grudge against the company, claiming that the platform was censoring and de-monetizing her videos.
There are also incidents of women carrying out deadly shootings with a male counterpart, such as the 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., and the 2019 shooting at a Jewish deli in Jersey City.
As you can see, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to the profile of female shooters, and more research is needed to better understand their motivations.
