Today’s school shooter was a woman, but 98 percent of mass shooters are male. Why?

It’s not a matter of ‘boys will be boys.’

Journalism is too opaque and misunderstood. Chills gives a behind-the-scenes look at how dangerous investigative journalism gets made. 

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(Courtesy of the Violence Project)

As news continues to break about today’s shooting at a Nashville elementary school that left three children and three adults (including the shooter) dead, I’d like to talk about the fact that today’s murderer was a 28-year-old woman — and why that is highly unusual.

Most mass shootings are committed by men — and by “most,” I mean 98 percent of them, according to the Violence Project, a nonprofit research organization that has parsed data since 1966. Only four of the 191 mass public shootings tracked by the group were perpetrated by women. Today makes five.

Why so few?

I’ve looked around for expert thoughts on this. Here’s a sampling of what I found: