Ron Avi Astor, a University of California, Los Angeles professor and leading scholar on school violence, announced a significant shift in his research conclusions during the American Educational Research Association’s annual meeting in April. For many years, Astor had advocated for policies focused on improving school climate, reducing bullying, and implementing social-emotional learning programs to prevent school shootings. Schools across the nation invested substantial resources in these initiatives, including restorative justice programs, trauma-informed care, and enhanced counseling services.
While these efforts produced measurable benefits—fewer students reported bringing weapons to school, and overall school safety improved in some metrics—school shootings have not declined. Astor’s reassessment came after examining the evidence more carefully. He presented data showing a significant disconnect: over the quarter century following the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, rates of students bringing weapons to California schools dropped steadily, yet school shootings across the nation increased sharply.
Astor now believes his previous understanding of the phenomenon was incomplete. Rather than being primarily driven by local factors such as bullying or trauma, he contends that many perpetrators are motivated by desires for national attention and media coverage. Shooters often study previous mass attacks, participate in online communities, and seek the publicity that accompanies such events. Astor suggests most perpetrators are suicidal individuals who choose to commit homicide in order to achieve lasting notoriety.
This reframing has led Astor to recommend a fundamentally different approach. Instead of focusing prevention efforts within schools, he advocates for media outlets and social media companies to establish guidelines limiting attention on perpetrators, delaying the release of manifestos and videos, and prioritizing coverage of victims. Astor acknowledges this represents a difficult shift in strategy and that success is uncertain, but he compares the potential benefits to efforts in addressing suicide contagion and terrorism-related copycat incidents.
Astor’s willingness to publicly reverse a long-held position based on evolving evidence demonstrates a commitment to scientific integrity. He emphasized that social-emotional learning and other school-based interventions remain important but may be insufficient without addressing media dynamics that potentially motivate certain perpetrators.
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