*Not What You Might Expect*
The Secret Service studied incidents of targeted school violence involving one or multiple attackers from 1974 to 2000. Some of the study’s findings:
- The attackers ranged in age from 11 to 21
- Almost two-thirds of the attackers (63%) came from two-parent families
- The largest grouping of attackers generally received A’s and B’s in their courses at the time of the attack (41%)
- Only 5% were known to be failing in school at the time of the attack
- The largest group of attackers (41%) appeared to socialize with mainstream students or consisted of students considered mainstream themselves
- Almost half of attackers (44%) were involved in some organized social activities in or outside of school, including sports teams, school clubs, extracurricular activities and mainstream religious groups
- Nearly two-thirds of attackers (63%) had never been in trouble or rarely were in trouble in school
- Most attackers showed no marked change in academic performance (56%), friendship patterns (73%), interest in school (59%), or school disciplinary problems (68%) prior to their attack
- Almost three-quarters of the attackers (71%) felt persecuted, bullied, threatened, attacked or injured by others prior to the incident
- A few attackers even showed some improvements in academic performance (5%) or declines in disciplinary problems (7%) at school prior to the attack
- Fewer than one-third of the attackers (31%) were known to have acted violently toward others at some point prior to the incident
- Only about one-quarter (27%) had a prior history of arrest
- Almost all of the attackers (98%) perceived some major loss prior to the attack
- There almost always (98%) was some evidence from the attacker’s behavior prior to the attack that the attacker had a plan or was preparing to harm the target(s)
- Fewer than half of the attackers (44%) demonstrated any fascination or excessive interest with weapons
- More than two-thirds of the attackers (68%) acquired the gun used in the attack from their own home or that of a relative
- Almost all of the attackers (95%) were current students at the school where they carried out the attacks