Mass school shootings mostly happening in small-town America
ATLANTA — If you want to know where mass school shootings are most likely to occur, look no farther than small-town and suburban America.
The massacre that killed 10 people at a high school in Texas last week was just the latest to happen in a small or suburban city. Of the 10 deadliest school shootings in the U.S., all but one took place in a town with fewer than 75,000 residents and the vast majority of them were in cities with fewer than 50,000 people.
These are seemingly idyllic places to grow up: low crime rates, good schools and a sense of community where everyone seems to know your name. And it’s exactly those attributes, experts say, that are why small rural and suburban towns are a breeding ground for the next school shooter.
“Ironically it’s people in small towns and suburbia who think it can’t happen here. And that is exactly the type of place where it does happen,” said Peter Langman, a psychologist who has been studying school shootings for years and operates a database of school gun violence in the U.S. and abroad. “People tend to think of violence associated with cities, not violence associated with small-town America, but this type of violence is the one associated with small-town America.”