MASS SHOOTINGS IN AMERICA

What we know, what we don’t know, and what they are lying to you about.

Politicization of mass shootings is as American as apple pie. Back in 2022, when most of the shooters were white, straight males, we were told that white supremacy was the number one threat to our country. The tragedies were used to justify sweeping government surveillance of online right-wing spaces. Red flag laws and assault weapons bans were proposed, and some were passed.

Fast forward to 2025. We now have a much greater understanding of the online extremist landscape. Accelerationism, which was relatively unknown in 2022, is now a household term that consistently appears in criminal complaints pertaining to online extremist cases, and the FBI has coined a new term - Nihilistic Violent Extremists (NVEs) - to describe them.

Excerpt from MKY’s Hater’s Handbook

In spite of this progress, and in spite of our knowledge of how the politicization of mass shootings furthers the accelerationist agenda of destabilizing society, the reaction to mass shootings in America is still following the same tired model - Blame a group of people and use this to justify sweeping government surveillance or other controversial measures; blame the guns and use this to propose unconstitutional gun legislation. Misinformation abounds, and facts are lost or forgotten. We collectively ignore the most obvious causes of mass shootings and the most common-sense measures for preventing them.

And the shootings keep happening.

When reviewing the list of school shootings committed in 2024-2025 and selecting the ones that fit the FBI definition of a mass shooting - an indiscriminate, random attack of a populated area by a lone gunman, excluding gang violence and targeted hits - we come to a startling conclusion. All five shootings that meet this criteria were carried out by a shooter radicalized within online NVE communities such as 764, NLM, MKY, or TCC (short for True Crime Community, this is an online Group that glorifies and even sexualizes former mass killers). These shooters have a nihilistic/misanthropic motive along with an explicit desire to achieve notoriety by signaling their attacks online, writing manifestos, picking soft targets and focusing on a high kill count.

Read more about 764 here.

Read more about MKY/NLM here.

The shooters’ connections to these groups are apparent in the following ways:

· Affiliation - The shooters’ accounts are found in Discord servers, Telegram groups, or other online communities connected to NVE groups.

· Manifestos - Writings left behind by the shooters point to a nihilistic/misanthropic motive and cite previous attackers as motivations. They aim for notoriety/virality and often include contradictory or sensational political views curated for this goal.

· Aesthetics - Nods to Columbine, such as wearing or posting images of KMFDM band shirts or quoting the Columbine killers (“Where is your God?” written on Westman’s magazine); posting video edits glorifying previous mass killers; sharing memes and motifs specific to these communities (O9A/Tempel ov Blood symbolism, cartoon drawings or “fan art” of famous mass killers); taking bathroom selfies prior to the attack, etc.

Samantha Rupnow’s bathroom stall selfie, an aesthetic mimicked by several recent school shooters.

Now let’s take a closer look at the five most recent mass school shootings.

1. Dylan Butler, 17 – Perry High School, Iowa (Jan-2024)

Motive – Butler was confirmed to be affiliated with TCC community Discord servers.

Gun – Obtained illegally

Transgender status - Butler was an LGBTQ+ “ally” who was rumored to have identified as gender fluid.

2. Colt Gray, 14 – Apalachee High School, Georgia (Sep-2024)

Motive – Gray was confirmed to be affiliated with TCC community Discord servers.

Gun – Obtained illegally

Transgender status – Despite early misinformation on Gray’s gender identity, he was actually a cisgender male.

3. Samantha Rupnow, 15 – Abundant Life Christian School, Wisconsin (Dec-2024) (full article here.)

Motive – Rupnow had a direct link to 764, NLM, MKY and TCC as evidenced by her manifesto, her aesthetics, and her online activity within those spaces.

Gun – Obtained illegally

Transgender status – Cisgender female

4. Solomon Henderson, 17 – Antioch High School, Nashville (Jan-2025) (full article here.)

Motive – Henderson had a direct link to 764, NLM, and MKY and TCC as evidenced by his manifesto, aesthetics, and online activity within those spaces. Henderson was online friends with Rupnow and referenced her attack as inspiration.

Gun – Obtained illegally

Transgender status – Cisgender male

5. Robin Westman, 23 – Annunciation Catholic Church, Minnesota (Aug-2025)

Motive – Westman had obvious ties to TCC as evidenced by his manifesto and aesthetics. Westman referenced Rupnow on his firearm.

Gun – Westman is the only one of the five who obtained his weapons legally.

Transgender status – Westman is the only one of the five who was transgender.

Key Observations:

· 5 out of 5 shooters were associated with online NVE groups.

· 4 out of 5 shooters were under the age of 18.

· 4 out of 5 shooters obtained their guns illegally.

· 2 out of 5 shooters were explicitly associated with the LGBTQ+ movement.

· 1 out of 5 shooters were transgender.

These facts paint a very clear and very concerning picture - American youth are being radicalized into committing acts of terror against their peers within harmful online NVE communities. And yet, the standard response by US politicians and online personalities is to baselessly claim that transgenders pose a serious mass shooting risk and propose new gun control measures. Meanwhile, such online groups continue to radicalize and churn out mass shooters at an alarming rate.

There have been several newsworthy incidents of potential mass shooters who were caught prior to carrying out their attacks. In June of 2025, the FBI thwarted a mass shooting at Three Rivers Mall in Washington which was being planned by a 14-year-old member of the 764 network. On September 4, 2025, Kash Patel announced that the FBI arrested a 25-year-old North Carolina man who was threatening to shoot black children at a preschool.

There have been several other cases where local law enforcement acted to prevent a mass casualty attack. In February of 2024, California police arrested 18-year-old Sebastian Villasenor with a stockpile of weapons and ammo who had plans to shoot up a Christian High School in Ontario, CA. The youth posted photos online posing in front of a mirror dressed in a black T-shirt, gloves, and sunglasses while holding a gun and a knife – an aesthetic reminiscent of other notable mass shooters like Seung-Hui Cho and Eric Harris. In April of 2024, an 18-year-old in Maryland, allegedly transgender, was arrested and found to have a 129-page plan for a school shooting. And in May 2024, a 14-year-old in Madison, WI with a “Columbine addiction” attempted to breach a middle school with a pellet gun. The boy was tragically shot and killed by police outside the school.

Sebastian Villasenor using aesthetics common to NVE mass shooters

My small, civilian research team and I have been personally responsible for preventing mass shootings. In January of 2024, I called a DHS fusion center to warn of a self-identified incel who was actively en route to murder his ex-girlfriend and possibly commit a mass shooting at the University of Alabama. Police arrested 26-year-old Kenneth Hoover less than 12 hours later. Hoover was convicted and sentenced to 37 months in prison.

In September of 2024, I filed an FBI cybertip on a 29-year-old “targeted individual” in Phoenix who was being radicalized to commit a shooting within online groups associated with Terrorgram and the Satanic accelerationist cult Order of Nine Angles (O9A). The FBI followed up with me and let me know that local law enforcement contacted the man and were treating it as a mental health case. He hasn’t been seen online since. Earlier in 2025 I made a cybertip about a 16-year-old “brony” who was being radicalized in online groups associated with O9A and was potentially plotting a shooting. The youth, who went by “Mystic Physis”, showed up in the criminal complaint against would-be Trump assassin Nikita Casap. He also hasn’t been seen online since.

In at least one case, our efforts to prevent tragedy failed. Several people, myself included, filed FBI cybertips on specific threat actors within Samantha Rupnow’s online orbit after her attack in December of 2024. One of those individuals, who went by the online username “Groidcell”, ended up being Solomon Henderson. One month later, Henderson successfully carried out his mass shooting, murdering a 16-year-old girl. On the other hand, the FBI did make two additional arrests in connection with Samantha Rupnow’s orbit, including her 22-year-old online boyfriend, who was subsequently charged with plotting a mass casualty attack.

Solomon Henderson

Clearly, it is possible to prevent tragedies, and it does happen more than most people realize. News of thwarted mass shootings rarely make big waves online, even though many of these incidents were prevented without relying on new gun legislation or intrusive government meddling. When it comes to gun control, the bottom line is that it simply doesn’t work, and it would not have prevented 4 out of the 5 most recent school shootings, which were committed by minors with stolen guns. So, how can we prevent mass shootings? Let's brainstorm.

Educating the public

Educating and spreading awareness to the public is, in my opinion, the most obvious and effective way to stop mass shootings. 4 out of the 5 school shooters examined in this article were between the ages of 14 and 17, and they each had two very preventable things in common which led to tragedy - Unsupervised internet access and unsecured firearms.

Educating parents, teachers, community resources and the public at large about online dangers and how to look for warning signs in a child’s behavior has the potential to stop the radicalization process in its tracks or prevent it from starting in the first place. Public awareness campaigns cost very little, are easy to implement, and provide a first line of defense against the online radicalization of youth.

Pressuring platforms to crack down on harmful online groups

764, NLM, MKY, Terrorgram, and TCC all fit neatly under the umbrella of what’s known as “Com”. Short for “Community”, Com is a loosely connected cybercriminal network that organizes and operates on various social media platforms. Discord, Telegram, Roblox and X are the major platforms favored by members of Com. All four of these platforms have moderation capabilities that are more than sufficient to take action to stunt the growth of such groups, and yet, they fail time and time again to do so.

X, In particular, seems to prioritize censoring hate speech over eliminating harmful communities. Earlier this year I blew the whistle on an X Community called “The Flipside” which had over 40,000 members that posted strategies and encouragement to self-harm. Nearly all of these members claimed to be underage. X banned the community, but they didn’t follow through with any preventive actions – like suppressing specific hashtags or banning key figures within the community – that would stop the group from re-forming. And so, after a few weeks of vitriol and hate directed at me, the group members made new communities and carried on with their harmful behaviors.

Platforms’ complicity in moderating the online harms that fester under their watch open the door for government regulation such as the UK Online Safety Act. Such government regulations are smokescreens that claim to protect kids while compromising user privacy and setting the stage for sweeping AI surveillance and digital IDs. But there’s a better option – public pressure. Roblox has long been known for being a cesspool full of child predators that evade moderation. Earlier this year, we began to expose the activity of 764, TCC, and other Com groups within Roblox communities advertised to kids and young adults.

The boiling point was reached after our exposure of a 764-connected Roblox community called Spawnism, which was being used to lure kids to a Discord server where they were groomed, extorted, and manipulated into sexual exploitation, violence against others, self-harm, and even suicide. In response, Roblox made the unfortunate decision to ban the popular Roblox creator Schlep, a key figure in the anti-pedophilia advocacy space and one of the people working with me to blow the whistle on Spawnism.

Roblox’s unpopular decision catapulted the topic into virality and led to massive public backlash, class-action lawsuits, and ultimately, a dip in Roblox’s stock. Eventually, Roblox began to agree to reforms, such as banning harmful in-game communities and labeling others 18+. This is a great example of how public pressure on private companies has the potential to work even better than government regulation.

Easier ways to report

Platforms like X have robust user reporting tools that include threats of violence and child exploitation. They also include no less than a dozen different options for reporting “hate speech”, and yet, there is no option for reporting an imminent act of mass violence or terrorism. Adding this option would enable X to triage such cases, allowing for a more direct collaboration between X and law-enforcement.

In the case of Kenneth Hoover, Police were able to submit an Emergency Data Request (EDR) to X within hours of my call and successfully locate him before he carried out his planned attack. But this action required me to first stumble on the tweets and call the DHS fusion center. An imminent threat reporting option would cut out the middle man and potentially reduce the response time.

Development and utilization of community frameworks

In the case of Colt Gray, the FBI was relatively quick to report that the youth was “on their radar” for making online threats to commit a school shooting in 2023. The FBI opened an investigation and interviewed both Gray and his father on the matter. The father claimed that his son did not have unsupervised access to any weapons, and the son denied the allegations that he had made any threats at all. Because the threshold for probable cause had not been met, neither state nor local law enforcement were able to make an arrest in the matter. Instead, the school was alerted for continued monitoring of the suspect, a mitigation measure that clearly failed in a catastrophic fashion.

This is where the DHS “Local Prevention Framework” is supposed to come into the picture. Part of the DHS Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), the Local Prevention Framework “seeks to prevent acts of targeted violence and terrorism by working with the whole of society to establish and expand local prevention frameworks.” The programs that make up this framework are funded by the heavily criticized DHS Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Grant.

The overall goal of the prevention framework is to connect state and community resources with federal resources in order to identify problematic individuals and intervene prior to that person committing an act of violence. When these systems fail, the outcome is often an immeasurable tragedy.

Far be it from me to praise the DHS Prevention Framework program as a success. In my opinion, the amount of overhaul needed to fix such programs and enable them to succeed more times than they fail is daunting. More often than not, the federal money given to these programs is used to push out partisan narratives and to justify the expansion of surveillance and censorship capabilities of the US government. This end goal is prioritized over the end goal that we should expect of such a program – Fortifying local communities and giving them the tools they need to prevent mass shootings and other acts of terrorist violence. The fact of the matter is that these systems do have the potential to succeed, if only our law enforcement agencies would prioritize enforcing laws and preserving rights over furthering greedy political agendas.

Investigating and publicly prosecuting co-conspirators

The FBI may not be able to catch them all, but they should be able to investigate them all and catch a lot of them. Had the FBI worked faster on our cybertips warning them about Solomon Henderson, it’s possible that his attack could have been averted, saving the life of an innocent 16-year-old girl.

Each time a mass shooter is discovered to be part of an online NVE group, there are multiple others in the orbit who warrant a thorough and speedy investigation. The details of such investigations and any arrests that result from them deserve just as much public attention as the mass shootings that were thwarted. Every mass shooting stopped is a big story.

Arming the good guys

As an X follower of mine so eloquently put it, “Wanna know what really stops a bad guy with a gun? Killing them.” He’s right, and his logic also extends to attacks with other weapons, like knives. There have been several highly publicized instances of armed good guys stopping mass shooters in their tracks. In July of 2022, 22-year-old Eli Dicken used his lawfully carried handgun to shoot and kill a mass shooter at a mall in Greenwood, Indiana. Similarly, an armed church goer stopped a mass shooter at a church in White Settlement, TX in 2019. Perhaps most famously, the devastating mass shooting in Sutherland Springs, TX was stopped by a civilian who heard shots, retrieved his rifle, and heroically ran towards the sound of gunfire before shooting and killing the attacker.

I’m a big proponent of removing gun-free zones, loosening state carry laws, and arming teachers. Loosening state carry laws, particularly moving toward permitless or constitutional carry systems, can enhance public safety by empowering responsible citizens to intervene in life-threatening situations. The data agrees. A 2025 analysis by Ammo.com reported that 20 states with permitless carry laws enacted before 2023 saw a collective decrease in violent crime rates of 2.88 per 100,000 people, with an average violent crime rate of 354 per 100,000 - about 10% lower than the national average of 391 per 100,000. This data suggests permitless carry does not inherently increase violent crime, as some have claimed, and may actually correlate with lower crime rates in some contexts.

Arming teachers, deploying armed school resource officers, and implementing physical and procedural security measures to harden schools forms a multi-layer strategy to prevent mass shootings. In Texas, over 400 school districts use the School Marshal Program, where trained staff carry concealed weapons, with no reported incidents of misuse since its inception in 2013. Physical security measures like reinforced doors, bullet-resistant windows, access control systems, and metal detectors make schools less vulnerable to attackers, delaying or preventing entry and giving defenders time to respond.

Investigate the incidence of SSRI use among recent mass shooters

Personally, I don’t believe that a comprehensive and unbiased assessment of SSRI use among mass shooters will reveal a link. The data we have (data which I have painstakingly sorted and fact checked myself) points away from this connection. In many cases, toxicology reports and mental health records were voluntarily made public and showed the shooter was not receiving psychiatric care. In other cases, shooters’ families have spoken out to dispel media misinformation about the shooter’s use of psychiatric drugs.

This was true for Robert Crimo, the 2022 Highland Park mass shooter, who Tucker Carlson incorrectly asserted was on SSRIs. This claim was hotly disputed by Crimo’s family, who were proponents of holistic medicine. Similar rumors about Maine mass shooter Robert Card were later proven false by family members. While Card had been briefly institutionalized a year prior to his shooting, he had quickly left the mental health care system in the dust. He ignored his family's pleas to get professional help, and law enforcement also ignored the family’s pleas to re-institutionalize him.

The current available data, sourced from The Violence Project, shows that only 3 out of the most recent 15 school shooters were on SSRIs. And yes, you can definitely argue that perhaps data is being withheld in a few cases, however, you cannot argue, as many talking heads have, that “all mass shooters are on SSRIs”. This misinformation is very easy to debunk. So, why do large media figures keep sharing it?

A long time ago, I warned that blaming SSRIs for mass shootings was the first step in enacting sweeping gun control legislation which would give the government greater discretion over who can legally own firearms. And this is exactly how it’s played out. The same “right wing” talking heads that (rightfully) opposed gun control measures under Biden are now calling for banning gun ownership for people taking psychiatric medications, with no real evidence supporting the connection between SSRIs and mass shootings. Such proposals open a huge can of worms that could be weaponized against a large portion of law-abiding Americans. If a connection is found, a much better solution would be to tackle the problem of doctors receiving incentives to prescribe these drugs to vulnerable individuals.

I will always advocate for transparency and for opportunities to broaden the collective body of knowledge on such events. But I also know how people are. And I know that if the evidence debunks the connection, people will cry foul and allege a cover up. It’s much easier to fool a man than to convince him he’s been fooled. Nevertheless, I still support more research into the incidence of SSRI use in mass shooters.

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False claims and misinformation spread like wildfire each time a mass shooting occurs. Images floating around purporting that all recent mass shooters were transgender are easily debunked as false. For example, one common list cherry picks a handful of shootings from the past 7 years and includes perpetrators like Salvador Ramos, who was objectively not transgender. Rumors that Ramos was transgender originated, rather predictably, on troll sites such as 4chan. Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik, one of the first accounts to push this lie, later admitted that she knew the claim was false, published it anyways, and refused to remove her post after it was debunked. Proponents of gun control have baselessly leaned on this made-up statistic to claim that banning transgenders from owning guns will make us safer.

The data is clear: most mass shooters are young, mentally ill, radicalized online, and using stolen guns. Ignoring these truths in favor of divisive narratives advances the goals of accelerationists and incentivizes more attacks. Breaking the cycle of mass shootings requires us to shift from politicized scapegoating to targeted action against online radicalization in NVE communities. By educating parents, pressuring platforms to dismantle harmful groups, streamlining threat reporting, and empowering armed defenders like teachers and resource officers, we can prevent tragedies without compromising our rights.

Because if we give the government an inch, they will take a mile... every single time.