School Shootings: Where They Began, and Why They Keep Coming

All references cited in this article are part of the public record. The assertions and conclusions presented, unless otherwise noted, have not been legally contested. In keeping with research on media contagion, this article names attackers as little as possible and does not describe methods.

If you are having thoughts of hurting others or yourself, you are not alone and help is available right now. In Canada, call Kids Help Phone at 1-800-668-6868 or text CONNECT to 686868, or call or text 9-8-8. In the United States, call or text 988, or text HOME to 741741 to reach the Crisis Text Line. If anyone is in immediate danger, call 9-1-1.¹

A Note on How This Is Written

Researchers have found that heavy media coverage of mass shooters can inspire others. In 2016, a study presented to the American Psychological Association urged the media to stop naming and showing mass shooters, arguing that fame is part of what many of them seek.² This article follows that advice by naming attackers as little as possible. Most are described here by place, not by name. The one exception is Kip Kinkel, whose case is a landmark in this history and is widely studied, so he is named where his case is discussed. Their victims deserve to be remembered more than they do.

Who Thought This Up?

No one person did. Violence at schools is as old as schools. In 1764, during Pontiac's War, a schoolmaster named Enoch Brown and ten of his students were killed in a schoolhouse in colonial Pennsylvania.³ The deadliest attack on a school in American history was not a shooting at all. In 1927, a disgruntled school board member set off explosives at the school in Bath, Michigan, killing 44 people, 38 of them children.⁴

What is modern is a specific pattern: A student, or a former student, attacking their own school, and choosing the school because of what it means to them.

Jeremy Wade Delle and "Jeremy"

On the morning of January 8, 1991, a 15-year-old named Jeremy Wade Delle (pronounced DELL-ee) died by suicide in front of his teacher and his English class at his high school in Richardson, Texas.⁵ He hurt no one but himself.

Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam read a short newspaper article about Jeremy's death and wrote the song "Jeremy," released on the band's debut album Ten in 1991 and as a single in 1992. Vedder later said he felt "the need to take that small article and make something of it — to give that action, to give it reaction, to give it more importance."⁵ The song and its video became among the most famous of the decade; the video won Video of the Year at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards.

But the video also shows how easily a story about pain can be misread. MTV censored its final scene, and the edit led many viewers to believe that the boy in the video had shot his classmates, when in the story he had harmed only himself.⁵ In 1996, prosecutors in the Moses Lake, Washington school shooting said the teenage attacker had been influenced by the edited version of the video.⁶ A song written to give meaning to one boy's suffering was, in at least one case, taken by a troubled teenager as a script. In the years that followed, Pearl Jam stopped making music videos, and did not release another until 1998.⁵

Jeremy Wade Delle's name has lived on for more than thirty years, through what he did and through the music it inspired. In my view, that is also the tragedy of it. He could have been remembered for something else entirely. With someone who saw his pain in time, and with help, he might have grown up to be one of the people who changed the course of that pain for kids just like him: A counsellor, a teacher, a voice telling other struggling teenagers that what they feel is real, and that it passes. That is the history that never got to happen, and it is the history every young person in that kind of pain still has the chance to write.

The Wave Before Columbine

Most people date school shootings to Columbine, but there were several before it, and before Kip Kinkel too. Between 1996 and 1998, a run of attacks by teenagers struck schools across the United States:⁷

February 1996, Moses Lake, Washington. A 14-year-old killed two students and a teacher in his algebra class.

February 1997, Bethel, Alaska. A 16-year-old killed the principal and a student.

October 1997, Pearl, Mississippi. A 16-year-old killed his mother, then two students at his high school.

December 1997, West Paducah, Kentucky. A 14-year-old killed three students at a before-school prayer group.

March 1998, Jonesboro, Arkansas. Two boys, aged 11 and 13, killed four girls and a teacher at their middle school.

May 1998, Springfield, Oregon. Fifteen-year-old Kip Kinkel killed his parents at home, then went to Thurston High School the next morning, where he killed two students and wounded 25 others. He had been suspended the day before for bringing a stolen, loaded handgun to school. Students, including Jacob Ryker, who had been shot, tackled and disarmed him. Kinkel was later found to have serious mental illness and was sentenced to 111 years without parole.⁸

Each attack drew national coverage. Each was smaller than what came next.

Columbine: The Template

On April 20, 1999, two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado killed 12 students and a teacher. It was not the first school shooting, but it became the most influential. The attackers had planned for notoriety, and they got it: Round-the-clock coverage, magazine covers and a permanent place in popular culture.

That notoriety became a model. Researchers Adam Lankford and Sarah Tomek found that over the following 15 years, Columbine inspired at least 21 copycat shootings and 53 plots that were stopped before they were carried out.⁹ Later attackers studied it, quoted it and tried to outdo it. Researchers now speak of a "Columbine effect": A cultural script that a troubled young person can pick up and follow.

Canada Has Not Been Spared

Canada's deadliest school shooting came before Columbine. On December 6, 1989, a gunman who blamed feminists for his failures killed 14 women at the École Polytechnique in Montreal.¹⁰ Canada marks the date every year as its National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.

Columbine's influence reached Canada within days. On April 28, 1999, just eight days later, a 14-year-old opened fire at W. R. Myers High School in Taber, Alberta, killing 17-year-old Jason Lang. His family later said he had "snapped" after watching coverage of Columbine.¹¹

And on February 10, 2026, a former student killed two family members at home, then six people at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in northeastern British Columbia, wounding 27 more. It was Canada's deadliest school shooting since Montreal in 1989.¹²

Are They Accelerating?

In the United States, yes, for most of the past decade. The Washington Post has counted more than 400 shootings at primary and secondary schools since Columbine, exposing more than 394,000 students to gun violence at school.¹³ The K-12 School Shooting Database, which counts every time a gun is fired or brandished on school property, recorded three consecutive record-breaking years, with roughly 330 incidents in each school year from 2021-22 through 2023-24.¹⁴

There is one honest piece of good news. In the 2024-25 school year, incidents fell by 22.5 per cent. But the database's founder, David Riedman, warns that the total is still more than double the number before the pandemic.¹⁴

Why They Keep Coming

Contagion. A 2015 study led by Arizona State University researcher Sherry Towers found that 20 to 30 per cent of school shootings and mass killings appear to be "infected" by earlier ones, with the risk elevated for about 13 days afterward. "What we believe may be happening is national news media attention is like a 'vector' that reaches people who are vulnerable," Towers said.¹⁵ Today, online communities that celebrate past attackers spread that infection further than television ever could.

Easy access to guns at home. The U.S. Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center studied 41 attacks on American schools between 2008 and 2017. It found that most attackers used firearms, and that those firearms were most often taken from their own homes.¹⁶

Warning signs that go unanswered. The same study found that every attacker showed concerning behaviour beforehand, that most drew concern from others, and that most told someone they intended to attack. Most had been bullied, most had experienced psychological or behavioural symptoms, and most had a grievance with classmates. There was, however, no profile: No single type of student, and no single type of school.¹⁶

If You Are Having These Feelings

This part is for anyone reading who has felt it: The anger, the humiliation, the wish that the people who hurt you would finally feel what you feel. You are not a monster for having those feelings, and you do not have to act on them.

Why you might feel this way. Psychologists understand these feelings well. Being humiliated, bullied, rejected or treated unjustly naturally produces a desire for revenge. Researchers have found it in people of every culture they have studied; it is part of how human beings process being hurt.¹⁷ What makes those feelings grow is replaying the hurt over and over. Research suggests that it is not anger itself but dwelling on plans for revenge that is linked to aggression.¹⁸ Revenge fantasies can feel like relief, a moment of power after feeling powerless. But studies find that relief is short-lived, and that the fantasies tend to feed more rumination and more distress over time.¹⁹

Often there is despair underneath the anger. The Secret Service found that 60 per cent of school attackers had shown suicidal thoughts before their attacks, and that for 41 per cent, suicide was part of the reason they attacked.²⁰ Many of them did not want revenge as much as they wanted the pain to stop.

Why it is not a solution. Violence does not undo what was done to you. It does not make the pain stop. It almost never touches the people who actually caused the hurt, and instead destroys the lives of people who did nothing to you, their families, your family, and your own life. School attackers usually die in the attempt or spend the rest of their lives in prison; Kip Kinkel will be in prison for the rest of his. Every attack in this article left behind more pain than existed before it, and none of it solved the problem that started it.

Feelings this strong also do not last forever, even when it seems like they will. Despair narrows how a person sees their options, until it seems like there are only one or two. There are more. Help works: In one study of young people who had been bullied, working through their revenge fantasies with a trained professional reduced their negative feelings and increased their positive ones.¹⁷

What you can do. Tell someone: A parent, a teacher, a school counsellor, a coach, a doctor, anyone you trust. If there is no one, call or text a crisis line. In Canada, Kids Help Phone is free, confidential and open 24 hours a day at 1-800-668-6868, or text CONNECT to 686868. Anyone in Canada can call or text 9-8-8. In the United States, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or text HOME to 741741 to reach the Crisis Text Line, both free and available 24 hours a day.¹ Saying the feeling out loud to someone who can help is not weakness. It is the strongest thing a person in that much pain can do.

If someone you know is talking this way, take it seriously. Most attackers told someone what they were planning.¹⁶ Tell a trusted adult or the school, even if you are not sure. You may save lives, including theirs.

What Actually Prevents Them

The evidence points to three things that work.

Threat assessment. Because attackers almost always signal their intent, the Secret Service recommends that every school have a trained team to receive reports of concerning behaviour, assess the risk and intervene with help, not just punishment.¹⁶ In Kinkel's case, a loaded gun at school the day before the attack was a warning that the system had in its hands.

Safe storage of firearms. If most school attackers take guns from home, keeping them locked away matters. The RAND Corporation's review of the research found that child-access prevention laws, which require guns to be stored safely, reduce youth firearm homicides, suicides and accidental deaths. One study of these laws found a 19 per cent decrease in students being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property.²¹

Denying attackers the fame they seek. If attention is part of the motive and part of the contagion, then how the media, and all of us online, talk about these attacks matters. Name the victims. Tell the stories of the people who stopped attackers, like the students at Thurston High. Leave the attackers in the footnotes of history, where they belong.

No one invented the school shooting. But it has been taught, copied and celebrated for nearly three decades. What has been learned can also be unlearned, if schools listen to the warnings, families lock up their guns, and the rest of us stop making attackers famous.