This paper sets to explore how the research on rampage school shootings may help us analyse and understand the radicalisation process of lone-wolf terrorists. School shootings and lone-wolf terrorism have been largely considered as separate phenomena. Still, they do have several things in common: both involve symbolic violence perpetrated by a single individual (or a very small group) and that the attacks have often been indiscriminate and have caused multiple casualties.
The paper has two parts. The first part focuses on the similarities and differences between school shootings and lone-wolf terrorism. What seems to set school shootings apart from terrorism is the lack of political motivation. However, this view can be questioned. Many of the post-Columbine school shootings have been accompanied with communication including political and ideological statements and suggesting a political and instrumental purpose for the shooting: to inspire others to join the struggle. These political and ideological statements are often quite weak, but at the same time they hardly pale in comparison with the communication by some of those people who are commonly seen as lone-wolf terrorists.
The second part focuses on the approaches, frameworks and methods that have been used in the school shootings literature to understand the “radicalisation” of school shooters and more generally why school shootings happen. Even if the school shootings have almost without exception been perpetrated by a single individual, the explanations for the phenomenon have been multidimensional, combining a wide range of processes ranging from cultural factors to local community dynamics and shooter’s personal problems. It is suggested that the terrorism studies literature on the radicalisation process could learn a lot from the school shooting literature in terms of how to analyse violent lone operators in their social, cultural and political context.
