Anti-bullying and social-emotional studying haven’t decreased college violence. Minimizing public consideration on shooters may.
(Jeff Swensen/Getty Pictures)
Scientists hardly ever announce that certainly one of their long-held concepts has failed.
However that’s precisely what Ron Avi Astor, one of many nation’s main students of faculty violence and a professor on the College of California, Los Angeles, mentioned earlier than fellow researchers on the annual assembly in April of the American Academic Analysis Affiliation (AERA).
“We had been incorrect,” Astor informed the viewers.
For many years, Astor believed that enhancing college local weather and lowering bullying would assist forestall college shootings. He suggested nationwide policymakers and issued suggestions. Colleges responded by investing closely in social-emotional studying, restorative justice, trauma-informed care, counseling and different efforts to make colleges safer and extra welcoming.
These initiatives have benefited college students in some ways. Fewer college students report bringing weapons or knives to high school, and colleges have typically change into safer.
However college shootings haven’t declined.
“I’ve had an entire change” in my pondering, Astor informed me in an interview after the convention.
That shift got here after he stepped again and seemed on the proof. Throughout his AERA presentation, Astor confirmed a slide with two stark graphs. One traced a gentle decline in college students bringing weapons to California colleges over the quarter century for the reason that Columbine Excessive Faculty bloodbath in Colorado. The opposite graph confirmed a pointy rise at school shootings throughout the nation.
Diverging tendencies
Supply: A slide from Ron Avi Astor’s presentation throughout an AERA session on April 11, 2026, “Faculty Lively Shooter Drills: Mitigating Dangers to Psychological, Emotional, and Behavioral Well being – A Report from the Nationwide Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Drugs.”
The graphs seize a painful realization. Astor says he and different researchers had misunderstood what was driving many college shootings.
Astor famous that many college shooters had been bullied, had been bullies themselves or had skilled trauma, and he believed that shootings would decline if educators decreased bullying and strengthened relationships amongst college students regionally, one college constructing at a time. “We had been adamant,” Astor mentioned. “Let’s concentrate on prevention.”
“What was missed, I consider, was that every shooter wished to ensure that this was nationwide,” Astor mentioned. “Their primary viewers was the media. That’s actually clear to me now.”
Astor now believes many perpetrators are pushed by a need for notoriety. Shooters research earlier massacres, be taught from on-line communities and search the publicity that follows a mass assault.
“Most of them are suicidal, and so they determined to be homicidal in order that they’d be remembered,” Astor mentioned.
That new mind-set has led him to a really totally different advice. Somewhat than specializing in prevention inside colleges, Astor believes journalists and social media corporations ought to undertake tips that scale back consideration on perpetrators, delay publication of manifestos and movies, and focus extra protection on victims.
“I’m not saying don’t do social-emotional or anti-gun” efforts, Astor mentioned. “These issues are essential. But when we need to see a discount at school shootings, we have to work with the media.”
Astor compares college shootings to suicide contagions or spates of terrorism, the place intensive publicity can encourage copycats. He acknowledges that it’s an extended shot to steer social media corporations or the darkish internet to vary, and he can not show that altering will work to scale back college shootings. “However it’s price a attempt,” he mentioned.
What makes Astor’s argument noteworthy isn’t merely his new speculation. It’s his willingness to publicly abandon an previous one after concluding that the proof not supported it. It’s by no means straightforward to vary course however Astor’s openness might save lives.
This story about preventing school shootings was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, impartial information group that covers training. Join Proof Points and different Hechinger newsletters.
