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A 17-year-old student opened fire at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, on Monday, killing a teacher and a classmate before they died by suicide, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. Several other students were injured.

Newsweek emailed Madison police and the FBI seeking comment on Monday.

Why it matters

According to the Gun Violence Archive, the total number of mass shootings in the U.S. rose significantly in 2020 with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and has remained high ever since.

But the overwhelming majority of assailants in major mass shootings are male, and only a handful of female shooters have ever been identified, making Monday’s shooting an anomaly.

What you should know

Crime data shows little evidence to suggest that there has been an increase in mass shootings committed by women or girls in recent years, although there may have been an increase over the decades.

FBI statistics on incidents involving an “active shooter” — defined as a person who is “actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area” — show that since 2019, only seven female shooters have been killed out of a total of 226 incidents were involved.

Only one woman was an active shooter in each year except 2020, when there were three. The FBI notes that the 2023 lone gunman who killed six people at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, identified “as both a woman and a transgender man.”

According to the nonpartisan nonprofit group Violence Prevention Project, of the 200 shooters involved in 195 mass shootings between 1966 and 2024, only four were female. The Nashville shooter is there, but the group lists him as “transgender,” not a woman.

While the data shows that there have been no mass shootings of women in recent years, the small number of mass shootings involving women have all occurred in the last 18 years – in 2006, 2014, 2015 and 2019.

The Violence Prevention Project defines a “mass shooting” as an event in which “four or more people, excluding the shooter, are shot and killed in a public place, with no connection to underlying criminal activity such as gangs or drugs” – criteria that which would rule out the incident on Monday.

What people say

Stuart Kaplan, a lawyer and former FBI special agent, said Newsweek On Monday night, he said law enforcement needs to “evolve” and recognize that profiling a shooter’s identity may no longer be “a one-size-fits-all solution.”

“Ten years ago, 15 years ago, the discussion about what an active shooter might or might not look like was pretty gendered,” Kaplan said. “One would assume it was a male. I think as we evolve, there’s obviously no longer a one size fits all.”

“The behavioral scientists that are at Quantico and were able to give us a breakdown of (a shooting suspect) earlier… I think that ship has sailed a long time ago,” he added. “I think we need to move to a new way of looking at it.”

Kaplan added that Monday’s attacker had access to firearms even though he wasn’t old enough to own a gun. He also suggested that potential mental health issues, social media and bullying may have played a role.

What happens next

It’s not clear what role, if any, the gunman’s gender played in Monday’s deadly shooting. Investigators are expected to release further details about the shooting and the shooter in the coming days and months.