Lethal School Shootings Resemble Workplace Rampages, Report Says

By Darcia Harris Bowman

The mass shootings that have hit rural and suburban schools over the past decade may have little connection with the type of lethal violence long associated with urban districts, according to a new study.

While inner-city school violence is fueled by poverty, racial segregation, and the drug trade, write the authors of the National Research Council report released last week, the lethal gunplay in rural and suburban schools more closely resembles "rampage shootings" that occurred during roughly the same period in workplaces in the United States.

The researchers found no instances of that type of...