Fifteen-year-old Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow, who killed a teacher and a student at a Wisconsin Christian school on Tuesday, is a remarkably rare case of a female shooter, according to law enforcement data.
A report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation on 345 active-shooter incidents in the US from 2000 to 2019 found that just 13 of the shooters — or just 3.7% — were women.
When it comes to mass shootings, defined by authorities as an incident with four or more victims, a stunning 97.7% of the perpetrators were men from 1966 to 2019, according to a Justice Department database.
The Violence Prevention Project found that in the last 25 years, just four out of 200 mass shooters identified as a woman.
Meanwhile, only nine female students have committed a school shooting since 1999, according to an analysis by the Washington Post.
One shooter, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, who killed six people at a Christian elementary school in Nashville last year, identified as transgender.
Rupnow opened fire at the K-12 Abundant Life Christian School in Madison on Monday morning, killing a substitute teacher and another student before turning the gun on herself, officials said.
Five others were wounded in the gunfire, two of whom are clinging to life in the hospital.
Jillian Peterson, founder of the Violence Prevention Project, has said that school shooters are often inspired by other school shootings — who are overwhelmingly male.
“Many school shooters study Columbine, for example,” Peterson told NPR.
Rupnow appeared to have a disturbing obsession with other school shooters such as Columbine killer Eric Harris — and even wore a T-shirt of his favorite band, photos show.
An X account believed to belong to Rupnow posted a person flashing the “OK” sign with their hand — a gesture linked to other school shooters — minutes before she began shooting.
The account posted violent videos of other violent incidents as well as a picture of Parkland high school shooter Nicholas Cruz, and other posts mention a deadly 2007 school shooting in Jokela, Finland.
According to experts, men are more likely than women to blame others for their problems— which often include personal issues with women — and turn to violence in response, NPR reported.
Women are also more likely to pick up a knife rather than a gun if they intend to inflict harm, studies show.
Unlike their male counterparts, female mass shorters are less motivated by personal relationships and are more likely than more to work as a team “especially when engaging in ideologically motivated attacks,” Researchers Jason Silva and Margaret Schmuhl wrote in an article for “Journal of Mass Violence Research” in 2021.
“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,” they wrote.
