Title: Campus Attacks: Targeted Violence Affecting Institutions of Higher Learning

Publication Date: April 2010

What does it say?

As part of the follow-up to the VA Tech shooting, the Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center, the Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, and the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit analyzed 272 attacks on “institutes of higher education” reported in newspapers and other public documents. 

From 1900 to 2008, the number of premeditated incidents of violence involving victims affiliated with an institute of higher learning rose from 1 in the 1900s to 79 in the 1990s and 83 in the 2000s.  To account for the increase, the authors point to increased enrollment levels at institutes of higher learning as well as the increase in media coverage and digital reporting throughout the United States over the past few decades.

Firearms were used most often in the attacks (54 percent, n = 148), followed by knives/bladed weapons (21 percent, n = 57), a combination of weapons/methods (10 percent, n = 26), and strangulation either manually or with an implement (5 percent, n = 14). The remaining 27 incidents (10 percent) involved a blunt object, firebomb/incendiary/arson, explosives, poison, a vehicle, or a physical assault without a weapon.

The most common reason for an incident was "related to an intimate relationship" at 34 percent, followed by "retaliation for a specific action" at 14 percent.  For more detail on the reasons for attacks, see Table 7 here: http://www.fbi.gov/publications/campus/campus.htm#qualitative. 

In approximately one-fifth of the incidents, the assailant targeted people at random.

How can I use it?

Motivations for the attacks included “domestic violence, workplace violence, stalking and obsessions, sexual assaults, individualistic stressors, subjects acting on delusional beliefs and serial killers.”  In other words, attacks on campus targets are much like attacks elsewhere in the community. 

Stronger gun laws can reduce the lethality of these attacks by making it harder for assailants to obtain guns. 

Citation

Drysdale, Diana A, Modzeleski, William, Simons, Andre B, Campus Attacks: Targeted Violence Affecting Institutions of Higher Learning, Washington, DC: United States Secret Service, United States Department of Education, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, April 2010

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