School shootings and stabbings: How a new wave of violence is shaping up in Europe and Ukraine
Educational institutions, which for decades were perceived as places of safe education and development of children, are increasingly becoming a space of mortal danger. Shootings, attacks with knives, attempts at terror in schools, lyceums and colleges are no longer isolated tragedies in the USA. In recent years, similar incidents have been increasingly recorded in Europe — in Germany, France, Austria, and the Scandinavian countries. The echoes of this dangerous wave are beginning to appear more and more clearly in Ukraine, especially in wartime conditions, when the general level of aggression in society, the availability of weapons and psychological tension create additional risks even within school walls. Recent episodes of schoolchildren bringing knives, air guns or violent behavior to school show that the country is entering the same space of problems that exists abroad. Why is violence in schools no longer uncommon? What are the deep reasons behind this trend? Can the state and society sufficiently prevent the transformation of educational institutions into risk zones?
How the international wave of violence in educational institutions that affects Ukraine continues and spreads
Over the past two decades, school violence involving firearms and cold weapons has become a tragic trend that is now continuing to develop and become increasingly systemic. Moreover, the attacks are mainly carried out by students themselves or former pupils of educational institutions. What once seemed like a uniquely American tragedy has gradually turned into an international problem.
In the United States, a tragic sequence of attacks in educational institutions has formed, which have become part of the stable statistics of domestic violence. So, on April 20, 1999, one of the largest episodes of school shootings occurred in the city of Littleton, Colorado. Two high school students – Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris – opened fire inside the walls of their school. 13 people became victims, another 21 people were injured of varying degrees of severity. After the attack, both attackers committed suicide. This tragedy was the first mass killing at a school that received widespread public and media attention in the United States, and in fact launched a public debate about school violence in American society.
In addition, on December 14, 2012, one of the most massive tragedies in elementary schools in the United States occurred – the shooting at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut. The attacker, armed with an automatic rifle, opened fire on the children and staff of the elementary school. 26 people died, including 20 children of primary school age.
Another episode of school shooting took place in April 2025 in the city of Dallas, Texas. This time the attack did not lead to death, but the consequences were serious. Four students were injured. One 17-year-old schoolboy suffered a gunshot wound in the leg, two other teenagers were wounded in the torso, and another suffered minor injuries in the form of scratches. The victims were between 15 and 18 years old. One of the victims was in a serious condition, the lives of the rest were not in danger.
Such incidents are being recorded more and more often in Europe. So, in September 2008, an attack was carried out in the city of Kauhaioki in Finland. College student Matti Juhani Saari arrived at the school wearing a ski mask, armed with a handgun and homemade Molotov cocktails. Having prepared for this in advance, the attacker fired approximately 150 shots, killing 11 people and injuring three others. All the dead were his classmates, some of whom he knew personally. In May 2021, another mass attack took place in Kazan, the capital of the Russian Federation, Tatarstan. A student of a local school opened fire, as a result of which eight children and employees of the institution were killed, another 12 students and four adults were injured and hospitalized.
On June 10, 2025, the largest attack in the history of Austria took place in an educational institution. In the city of Graz, 21-year-old Artur, a former student at the BORG Dreierschützengasse school, staged a mass shooting. The attacker, armed with a pistol and a shotgun, opened fire in two classrooms and several corridors of the school. A total of 11 people died, including the shooter himself. 12 people were injured, nine of them were in serious condition, one victim was in critical condition. Before the attack, the criminal left a suicide note and sent his mother a farewell video. A home-made bomb was discovered in his home, which, however, did not go off. According to the investigation, the young man complained about bullying, bullying and unfair treatment during his studies, which he left in the sixth grade. Before the attack, he had no criminal record, and the weapon he fired with was legally registered. A neighbor was the first to call the police after hearing screams and gunshots. Some of the students and employees of the school managed to barricade themselves in the classrooms. In Austria, a three-day national mourning was announced after the tragedy.
On the same day, another tragedy occurred in France. In the city of Nogent-sur-Marne, a 14-year-old teenager fatally stabbed a school employee during a bag check at the entrance to the school. The victim died in hospital a few hours after being injured. The assailant was neutralized by policemen on duty at the entrance to the school, while one of the law enforcement officers received minor injuries. We will leave the question of how the two police officers failed to protect the schoolboy so that he was not injured. The attack comes amid wider controls introduced in France following a series of similar incidents. In particular, in the suburbs of Paris, a schoolboy died after a knife fight. In response, the authorities began mass inspections in educational institutions, within a few months 186 knives were seized, 36 schoolchildren were detained.
Ukraine does not remain aloof from this alarming global trend. On June 11, 2025, in Lviv, several schoolchildren brought a pneumatic gun for shooting metal balls to school and began testing it directly in the classroom, shooting in the direction of classmates. The weapon belonged to the student’s father, fortunately this time there were no injuries or bodily harm.
It should be noted that other similar cases were recorded earlier in Ukraine. In 2021, a 19-year-old girl with a crossbow attacked teachers in Poltava, injuring two. The facts of the use of pneumatic weapons in school conflicts were also repeatedly revealed. One of the most dangerous incidents was prevented in the Cherkasy region, where the Security Service of Ukraine prevented an attempt at a mass shooting at a college. According to the investigation, two students were preparing a terrorist attack and were looking for like-minded people.
These cases are far from isolated, and they show that gun violence in educational institutions is no longer isolated tragic episodes. This has already become a permanent trend that spreads across the territories, education systems and cultures of different countries.
The root causes of school attacks and how to prevent them
School shootings (an armed attack on students or other people in a school, often with the use of firearms) and knife attacks in schools are a phenomenon that has long gone beyond isolated episodes and turned into a complex pathology of societies where educational institutions are no longer safe spaces. Each such case has its own characteristics, however, upon detailed analysis, similar patterns emerge every time, which form a common mechanism for the occurrence of these tragedies.
Among the most common causes of school shooting, several key reasons should be highlighted, among which the child’s social isolation occupies a central place. It can be bullying, exclusion from the team, humiliation by peers, unsuccessful socialization or a dead end in communication with adults. In many cases, the child does not find the internal resources to resist the pressure, so a closed circle arises, where the feeling of insult and humiliation accumulates, turning into a desire for revenge.
A study conducted in Australia in 2023 confirmed one important pattern: almost a quarter of victims of mobbing later demonstrate aggressive behavior. The mechanism here is not only direct revenge, but also the formation of behavior patterns, when a teenager learns the belief: you will be accepted only if you do to others the same as they did to you. That is, violence begets violence, creating a constant cycle of aggression.
An important factor in this phenomenon is also the lack of effective contact between the child and parents. When a teenager does not feel the opportunity to openly discuss his experiences at home, he begins to look for external compensatory models. The lack of psychological support in the family turns any problems into insurmountable internal conflicts that accumulate over the years.
In addition, the modern school is increasingly removed from the educational function, reducing its activities to purely academic training. As a result, the level of pedagogical control over the psychological atmosphere in the classroom decreases, which creates a favorable environment for conflicts and interpersonal tension among students.
Games on gadgets and the media environment in which modern children live constitute a separate layer in the formation of adolescent aggression. Constant consumption of films, series, video games, in which the plot of violence dominates, turns cruelty into a familiar element of the picture of the world. At the same time, murder, torture, and scenes of massacre are no longer perceived by children as a catastrophic limit beyond which absolute evil is, they become part of the entertainment background.
This creeping normalization of cruelty erodes the internal moral barrier. The visual heroization of murders in films, action films, and animations creates the belief that violence is a way to achieve results, a demonstration of strength, or “restoration of justice.” The adolescent brain, which is still forming a system of moral values, easily learns these models. Next, a simple internal pattern is formed: if I am humiliated in a conflict, if I am weaker, then this can be corrected by force.
It is especially dangerous that a significant part of such media products present murders as a legitimate way out of a hopeless situation. The image of the avenger, who himself punishes wrongdoers when the system does not provide protection, is one of the most common archetypes in the modern culture of violence. Such a scheme significantly affects the psychology of a child who lives in isolation for years, is bullied or accumulates oppression. At the same time, the effect of desensitization — a reduction in the emotional response to cruelty — works additionally. The more a child sees scenes of bloodshed, the less shocking they are. Eventually, there comes a point when the line between imagined virtual aggression and actual use of force begins to blur.
Therefore, the media environment forms a nourishing background that facilitates the transition of internal aggression into action. It is through the media that children receive ready-made models of scenarios every day that they can translate into reality. At the same time, a separate problem is that teenagers practically do not receive from modern games, films and programs positive models of behavior that form moral guidelines, teach kindness, self-control, empathy, the ability to sympathize and understand the consequences of their actions. What a teenager sees mostly on a daily basis is conflict resolved through force, revenge presented as justice, and aggression justified as the only way to self-assertion.
Therefore, the lack of a counterbalance in the form of bright, convincing stories about moral choice, inner dignity, overcoming aggression without violence gradually destroys in teenagers the very idea that in difficult situations, another scenario is possible, except for force. This creates another crack in the child’s psyche: violence not only becomes habitual, but it ceases to have a real alternative.
A significant role is also played by the level of availability of firearms, which is especially relevant for Ukraine, which is at war. No less dangerous is the gradual increase in the spread of cold weapons among teenagers. The availability of knives, brass knuckles, home-made items for attack, the ease of their acquisition are becoming a problem that is rapidly intensifying and getting out of control. At the same time, it is important to distinguish between the very fact of having a weapon and its use in crimes. As psychologists point out, weapons do not push for violence, they only increase the number of victims. The decisive impulse to attack is formed long before a teenager has a gun, a crossbow or a knife. In many cases, the behavior of the attackers is classified as deviant, and their mental state requires a psychiatric examination.
However, in many cases, psychological help for children remains unavailable. Even school psychologists do not have the legal right to initiate the referral of a child for psychiatric examination without the consent of the parents. Along with this, the detection of early mental disorders in children is complicated by families’ mistrust of specialists and the lack of effective response mechanisms. When a teenager starts talking about suicide or murder, it requires immediate attention. Every such statement should be taken as seriously as possible, regardless of whether it sounds like a joke or a threat.
It is worth noting that the problem of mass attacks in schools goes far beyond physical security. Pedagogical crisis, psychological neglect, destruction of trust in families, social aggression, information toxicity, unavailability of psychiatric care, availability of weapons, erosion of moral guidelines intersect here. In many cases, school shooting has the character of latent suicide. Many attackers, after killing others, kill themselves or die at the hands of the police. This allows specialists to classify these crimes as a special form of self-destructive behavior against the background of serious mental breakdowns.
Simplistic recipes for solving this crisis do not work. Metal detectors, frames at school entrances and security guards are only part of a complex system, their presence does not guarantee the prevention of tragedies themselves. In France, despite the presence of security guards during the attack in Nogent-sur-Marne, it was still not possible to avoid the death of a school employee.
The provision of physical security of educational institutions today falls on local authorities, bodies of parental self-government, and school administrations. The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine officially recognizes that the responsibility for safety in educational institutions lies precisely with local budgets and school management. Due to a lack of funding, most schools seek funds on their own, enlisting the help of parents – often bypassing the law.
The lack of single, clear legal norms regarding the access regime, checks of persons at the entrance to schools, responsibility for security only aggravates the problem. Even the so-called “charitable contributions” for the protection of schools in most cases have no legal basis.
Some local administrations, such as in Kyiv, are trying to install “panic buttons,” video surveillance cameras, and motion sensors, but these measures remain spot-on. No security system will be able to compensate for the lack of work with the psychological atmosphere among students.
Preventive state policy, which is already being discussed in the USA, Europe and Ukraine
State policy in the field of prevention of school violence has long ceased to be reduced to only the physical protection of schools. Today, the USA, European countries, and Ukraine are at a point where more complex multi-level prevention scenarios are being discussed. One of the directions of this work is the early identification of at-risk students. In many countries, interdisciplinary teams are formed: school psychologist, social worker, doctor, administrator, juvenile police. Their task is to process signals about changes in the child’s behavior: withdrawal, aggressiveness, statements about suicide, fantasies about violence, social isolation, reduced academic performance, conflicts with peers. This is not a punitive function – the task of the team is early intervention, counseling, and family support. The US is gradually expanding the system of such groups in school districts.
The second component is mandatory training of teachers in the basic signs of psycho-emotional destabilization of adolescents. The teacher must not only know his subject, but also be able to see changes in the inner state of the student. In some European countries, there are already short mandatory training courses for teachers to work with traumatized children, to identify signs of depression, panic disorders, and suicidal tendencies.
The third element is the correction of the function of school psychologists. In many education systems, they are given a much wider field of action: the right to consult parents, initiate a psychiatric examination of the child (with the permission of the family), observe the group dynamics of the class. For this purpose, a separate training standard for school psychologists is being prepared, which includes crisis psychology, work with aggressive behavior, and preparation for assessing potential danger.
At the same time, the legal block is discussed separately. In a number of countries, the powers of social services and school administrations are being extended to request help for a child, even without the initiative of the parents. A model is being formed in which the interests of the safety of the child itself can prevail over the passive position of the family.
Next is technological prevention. It is about analytical monitoring of school spaces: a system of cameras with software recognition of atypical behavior, available for observation by psychological and social services. Some U.S. districts are testing experimental video analytics programs that detect abnormal movements, suspicious crowd dynamics, or uncharacteristic behavior by individuals on school grounds.
The most important component of solving the issue of preventive measures is the problem of children’s access to weapons. The US, despite long-term political debate, is gradually introducing stricter programs to control the mental state of individuals when purchasing weapons. In some states, there is a so-called “red flag” – the ability to temporarily prohibit the possession of weapons by a person who receives signals about dangerous behavior. Europe is moving even harder, limiting the right of access to all types of weapons, even for civilians.
Changing the culture of the school environment is also a systemically important component in various states. Increasing the importance of emotional education programs, creating school anti-bullying programs, forming conflict resolution skills among students, teaching children communication in crisis situations. A separate culture of working with class groups is developed, when aggression does not accumulate secretly, but is processed in time with pedagogical tools.
A common feature of all modern scenarios in the world is the understanding that force methods are the last level of response. It can be prevented only when prevention begins long before the child becomes locked in his own aggression. No amount of increased punishment or tougher gun laws will stop the attackers who are already at the point of internal destruction. To prevent these tragedies, it is necessary to treat the root cause – the pathological mechanisms that push children and adults into a state of extreme despair or aggression. Without early detection of psychological problems, active work of school psychologists, social workers and support from families, all other measures will remain secondary.
Currently, in Ukraine, due to the war, a significant number of weapons are in the hands of the civilian population, which creates an additional level of risk when weapons can be easily accessible to children and adolescents. Parents have the key responsibility to ensure that it is out of reach of the child, to control where and how it is stored. At the same time, it is important not to ignore the psychological state of the teenager — to notice signs of withdrawal, increasing aggressiveness, depressive moods, and emotional instability. It is the timely reaction of adults that makes it possible to prevent tragic consequences at an early stage.
As we can see, the issue of safety in schools cannot be solved by simple technical means. The answer is possible only in a combination of deep preventive psychological work, legal changes, responsibility of parents, teachers and local authorities, otherwise the wave of violence will continue to grow.
