Copilot:
Bend shooting; been rumaging on the Internet fot information on the 16 year old shooter. Nothing from officials, yet. One commentator stated; 'Must have been his hormones!'. Another wanted to know why it is always schools that are hit, and never government buildings or officials. Has anyone from the academic world ever produced a general theory on all this kind of event??
Yes. In fact, one of the strongest conclusions from the academic literature is that there is no single-cause theory. Researchers have spent more than 25 years looking for "the reason" behind school shootings and have largely abandoned that search. Instead, most modern theories view these attacks as the result of a constellation of factors that come together in a small number of individuals.
The "hormones" explanation would be regarded by most scholars as far too simplistic. Adolescence matters because it is a period of emotional volatility and identity formation, but that alone cannot explain why millions of teenagers do not become shooters.
A few major theories have emerged:
1. The "Constellation Theory" approach
This was developed by sociologist Katherine Newman and colleagues and has been influential in school-shooting research. The idea is that attacks generally involve several elements occurring together:
A personal grievance or humiliation
Failure of social support systems
A cultural script that makes violence seem imaginable
Access to weapons
Circumstances that allow the plan to proceed
The theory argues that no single factor is sufficient by itself.
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2. The "Pathway to Violence" model
This is widely used by threat-assessment professionals. Instead of asking "What kind of person becomes a shooter?", it asks "What process leads somebody toward violence?" Researchers describe a progression:
Grievance → Violent ideation → Planning → Preparation → Attack
This model has become influential because many attackers appear to move through recognisable stages rather than "snapping" suddenly.
3. Social-Control Theories
Some criminologists focus on weakened social bonds. The argument is not that bullying or loneliness automatically creates a shooter, but that people who become detached from family, school, friends, and community may lose some of the restraints that ordinarily prevent violence.
4. Developmental and Life-Course Theories
Researchers have applied broader criminological theories that examine a person's life history. They look at long-term patterns involving family problems, trauma, social isolation, disciplinary issues, personal crises, and other experiences that accumulate over time.
As for the commentator's question:
Why schools, and not government buildings?
Academics have discussed this a great deal.
One explanation is that school shooters are often acting out a grievance rooted in their own immediate social world. Their humiliation, anger, rejection, romantic disappointment, bullying experiences, status anxieties, or feelings of exclusion are connected to the school environment. The school is symbolically important because it is where their daily social life occurs.
By contrast, attacks on government officials are usually studied under somewhat different categories, such as political violence, terrorism, or assassination attempts, where the perpetrator's grievance is directed at political institutions rather than peers and teachers.
One other interesting finding is that many attackers seem less interested in achieving a concrete political goal than in making a dramatic statement, gaining notoriety, or expressing despair and revenge. Scholars often describe these events as targeted violence driven by grievance rather than conventional political action.
Regarding the 16-year-old in Bend, if officials have not yet released details, it is wise to be sceptical of early internet theories. After many previous shootings, initial explanations turned out to be wrong because people tend to seize on a single factor, such as bullying, antidepressants, violent games, hormones, or mental illness, whereas the research generally points to a more complicated mix of influences.
I liked the 'must have been' comment; seems both rueful and sarcastic at once...
I know exactly what you mean. "Must have been his hormones!" works on two levels at once.
On the surface, it sounds like a serious attempt at explanation: teenagers have hormones, therefore perhaps hormones are to blame.
But the wording "must have been..." is often used sarcastically to mock an explanation that is far too simple. It is rather like saying:
"Must have been the video games."
"Must have been the full moon."
"Must have been the coffee."
The speaker is implying that people are reaching for a convenient, catch-all explanation instead of grappling with a much more complicated reality.
"Rueful" is a good word here because it can convey a sort of weary recognition. The remark may be expressing: Here we are again, trying to explain an incomprehensible event with a single factor. The humour, if there is humour, is dark and bitter rather than cheerful.
In fact, many criminologists have expressed a similar frustration. After a major attack, public discussion often becomes a hunt for the cause:
mental illness
bullying
violent media
hormones
guns
social media
family breakdown
Yet when researchers examine individual cases closely, they usually find a tangled combination of factors rather than one decisive cause.
Your commentator's second question, about why schools are attacked so often, strikes me as a more penetrating observation. Schools are places where adolescents spend most of their waking lives, where status hierarchies are very visible, and where grudges, humiliations, exclusions and social comparisons are experienced daily. If someone's grievance is against the immediate social world around them, the school becomes the symbolic stage on which they act it out.
So "must have been his hormones" can be read not merely as a claim, but as a criticism of reductionism: the tendency to reduce a tragic and complex human event to a single biological explanation.
And, from a literary point of view, it is quite a neat phrase. Five words that can be heard either as earnest explanation or as exasperated mockery of earnest explanations. That's probably why it stuck in your mind.
As someone who is following events in France at the same time, I am struck by how different the two societies are. In France, students are expressing discontent collectively and now, there is call for a massive demonstrations on Saturday with an expected presence of the 'black blocs', the anarchists sure to move things to a more violent level. The police will be there... but not the Army!
That is a fascinating contrast, and I think you're noticing something real.
In France, there is a very old and deeply rooted tradition of collective political action. If students, workers, pensioners, farmers, or public-sector employees are angry, there is an established cultural script:
Organise → Demonstrate → Strike → Occupy public space → Confront the government if necessary.
The state expects this. The police expect this. The demonstrators expect this. In a sense, everyone knows their role.
Even the appearance of the black blocs follows a familiar pattern. They are not representative of most demonstrators, but they are a recognised phenomenon within French protest culture. The authorities deploy large numbers of riot police because they anticipate the possibility of clashes.
By contrast, many American school shooters are not attempting to mobilise a crowd at all. They often appear profoundly isolated. Their grievance is personal rather than collective. They do not say:
"Come with me. Let's change society."
Instead, the attitude can be:
"I have been wronged. I will make everyone notice."
That is a very different psychological and social dynamic.
Some sociologists have argued that if people have effective channels for expressing grievances collectively, individual acts of spectacular violence may become less attractive. That does not mean demonstrations prevent violence or that France is immune from lone-actor attacks. France has had its share of terrorism and other violent incidents. But the country's repertoire of protest is much richer and more normalised.
What also strikes me is your observation about the Army.
In France, even during very large demonstrations, the visible force is normally the police, particularly units such as the CRS and gendarmerie mobile. The confrontation is framed as a matter of public order between citizens and the state. The Army is generally not deployed against demonstrators.
The United States likewise does not normally use the Army against protesters. But when violence occurs there, it is often discussed through the lenses of criminal justice, mental health, and security rather than through the language of social movements.
In a way, the two situations express anger at opposite ends of a spectrum:
The French student protester says, "Many of us are angry."
The school shooter says, "I alone am angry."
One is fundamentally collective, even when disorderly. The other is intensely individual.
That difference may help explain why a French observer can look at an American school shooting and think, "Why didn't he join a movement, a demonstration, a cause?" while an American observer might look at a French street protest involving tear gas and burning bins and wonder, "Why are they all in the streets?"
Both societies have discontent. They just tend to channel it through very different institutions and traditions.
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From the Guardian UK, Saturday 17 October, 2026...
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