What the Experts Aren’t Saying: The Suicidal Link No One Talks About

Every time a mass shooting rocks our nation, the debate starts instantly. Politicians and pundits line up their arguments: guns, gender, mental health, politics. And yet, in all the noise, something essential gets missed.

The Hidden Truth of Despair

Most mass shooters are not simply violent. They are suicidal. That’s what the experts know but rarely say out loud.

The research is clear. A vast majority of mass shooters were suicidal before or during their attack. Almost half of all active shooter incidents end in the shooter’s suicide. Nearly four out of five school shooters had a history of suicidal thoughts or attempts.

The research is clear:

• 72% of mass shooters were suicidal before or during their attack.

• 40% of active shooter incidents end in the shooter’s suicide.

• 78% of school shooters had a history of suicidal thoughts or attempts.

These tragedies are not only acts of violence—they are acts of despair.

When shooters leave journals or post manifestos, their words often confess it plainly:

“I don’t expect to live.” “This is the only way to be remembered.” “I want to die.” 

Mass shootings, in many cases, are angry suicides turned outward.

Why We Don’t Talk About It

So why don’t we hear this in the headlines?

Part of the reason is that it complicates the narrative. “Shooter was suicidal” doesn’t fit neatly into the political talking points that dominate public conversation.

 It also feels uncomfortably empathetic. To acknowledge that despair drove the attack risks sounding like we are excusing it, so most coverage avoids that path. And perhaps most of all, it demands shared responsibility.

Suicide prevention is everyone’s work—parents, teachers, neighbors, faith leaders—not something we can legislate away or pin on one institution. But when we bury this truth, we fail to see the real wound beneath the surface.

When the Wound Is Inside the Walls

Since Columbine, most school shooters have not come from the outside. They were insiders—current or former students.

In fact, twelve of the fourteen major school shooters before 2022 had direct ties to the schools they attacked. The GAO estimates that about half of all school shootings overall were committed by current or former students.

That means the story isn’t usually about strangers storming the gates. It’s about young people who carried their hurt through the hallways, and for whom the school itself became a symbol of pain, rejection, or grievance.

The Soul’s Damning Marks

The suicidal thread among school shooters pushes us to ask: what happened in those formative years that left such a mark on their souls?

• Bullying and humiliation. Sustained ridicule carved grooves of shame into already fragile identities.

• Social isolation. Some were on the margins—surrounded by peers but invisible all the same.

• Failure and frustration. Struggles with grades or discipline compounded feelings of inadequacy.

• Family fractures. Divorce, abuse, or instability at home deepened cracks in their sense of belonging.

• Unmet cries for help. Suicidal thoughts, journal entries, and online posts went unnoticed, minimized, or unanswered.

These aren’t just “bad teenage years.” They are moments that shape identity at the most fragile stage of development. In the heart of a young man or woman, they can sound like:

“I don’t belong.”

“I’ll never measure up.”

“No one cares if I live or die.”

“I’ll make them see me, even if it costs me everything.”

And beneath all of these, there may also be wounds too dark to name.

In some cases, that wound is sexual abuse or other hidden trauma. As I’ve argued in The Limbic States, trauma of this kind often traps a person in survival mode—fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or flirt—cycling endlessly in unhealed pain.

Abuse convinces the soul it is worthless. Shame teaches the heart to hide instead of heal. Trauma distorts power, turning the victim’s pain into fantasies of control.

By the time violence erupts, it is often not simply rage at others but despair rooted in wounds no one saw—or dared to name.

The Urgent Connection

If most shooters were once part of the very schools they targeted, then prevention isn’t only about keeping weapons out—it’s about keeping despair from taking root in the first place. That shifts the conversation from gates and metal detectors to belonging and healing.

It means we must build communities where pain can be voiced without fear of ridicule, where secrets can be told without shame, and where help can be found without stigma.

For too long, silence has been mistaken for strength. For too long, shame has kept people locked inside their wounds. If despair is the soil where violence grows, then care, connection, and courage must be the soil where healing begins.

This requires us to look at schools, churches, and families differently. They are not just places for academics, worship, or daily routine—they are frontlines of prevention. Every hallway, every classroom, every youth group is an opportunity to notice, to listen, to intervene. When a student isolates, when a teenager jokes about wanting to die, when a young person starts to unravel—those are not annoyances to be brushed off. They are signals. They are cracks in the wall.

And here is a sobering reality: in the name of safety, schools have often closed their doors to some of the very people who could make a difference. Where youth pastors once walked hallways as mentors, they are no longer invited. Where helping professionals could have been present, schools have limited access.

School safety protocols now dominate the landscape, but presence—the simple ministry of showing up—has been squeezed out. Even parents, who once had a more natural connection to classrooms and teachers, often feel pushed to the margins, invited only to volunteer in controlled environments or to manage fundraisers.

We have unintentionally created schools that are well-defended but relationally hollow. Students can be scanned at the door, monitored by cameras, and surrounded by officers—and still feel completely unseen. Without caring adults woven into the fabric of daily life, despair festers in silence. The very people who could notice, intervene, or build trust are often kept at arm’s length.

Prevention looks like the opposite posture. It looks like schools welcoming helping professionals, trusted mentors, and parent presence back into the conversation. It looks like partnerships with churches, counselors, and community groups that widen the circle of care rather than shrinking it. It looks like acknowledging that safety cannot be reduced to locks and drills; it is just as much about belonging and hope.

In a culture that idolizes independence, it takes courage to admit we need each other. But courage is what prevention requires. Suicide prevention, belonging, attentive listening, and the willingness to sit in uncomfortable conversations are not extras. They are lifelines. They are the bridges that stand between despair and destruction.

If most shooters were once insiders, then the question before us is haunting but clear: will we let our schools and communities continue to raise invisible kids, or will we decide to notice them before it’s too late?

Where We’ve Failed Each Other

That failure runs deep. Many shooters were profoundly isolated, carrying their pain right under the noses of peers, teachers, and communities. Their pain was visible, yet too many of us did not know how to listen. Most shooters leaked their plans ahead of time—through posts, conversations, or writings—yet those signals went unheeded. And even when the signs were noticed, it was easier to argue politics than to walk with lonely, angry, hurting people.

The result is a tragic pattern:

• We’ve failed in belonging. Too many felt unseen, disconnected, unwanted.

• We’ve failed in listening. Warning signs were present, but no one knew what to do.

• We’ve failed in presence. Debates replaced relationships.

• We’ve failed in courage. Silence felt safer than messy engagement.

And there is another haunting failure. In a world where companies collect unimaginable amounts of data—every search, every like, every click—posts that openly express suicidal despair or violent fantasy often remain hidden in plain sight. Privacy becomes a shield, not for the vulnerable, but for their pain. By the time those words are discovered, it is too late. The shooter is dead. The victims are buried. The community is shattered.

If we can target ads with surgical precision, why can’t we notice despair with the same urgency? If systems are built to watch us so closely, why aren’t they leveraged to protect us from the most obvious signs of collapse?

We cannot ignore the hypocrisy. Companies that know the exact brand of shoes you’ll buy next week somehow miss when a young man writes online, “I want to die and take them with me.” Platforms that can silence political dissent in seconds claim they are powerless when violent manifestos circulate for days.

If we can build systems to monetize human behavior, we can build systems to notice despair before it kills the one who wrote it—and the innocent lives caught in its wake.

Until we face that contradiction, we will keep watching tragedy play out on platforms that saw it coming but did nothing to stop it.

Not If, But When—Unless

The hardest truth is this: it is not a matter of if, but when, another tragedy will unfold.

• Unless we begin to treat suicide prevention as violence prevention, the cycle will continue.

• Unless we surround isolated people with belonging before despair hardens into destruction, more names will be added to memorials.

• Unless we train ourselves to recognize the warning signs and create clear, simple paths for acting on what we see, we will keep burying children and neighbors.

• Unless we step toward those teetering between life and death, someone else will pay the price for our silence.

This is not a call for politicians alone or pastors alone. It is a call for all of us—parents and coworkers, neighbors and teachers, friends and strangers alike.

• In a culture marked by absence, we must be people of presence.

• In a world overcome by despair, we must be voices of hope.

• In an age where it is easier to fight over surface issues, we must find the courage to name the deeper wound.

Despair that becomes self-destruction, turned outward into violence.

Every one of us has someone in our orbit who is quietly drowning in loneliness, shame, or self-loathing. If we do not see them, if we do not speak to them, if we do not act on their behalf, the cost may not be theirs alone.

So when the next tragedy comes, as it inevitably will, pause before you add to the noise. Remember what the experts are not saying, but what we all desperately need to hear:

These are not only acts of violence. They are cries of despair.

And until we face that, we will keep repeating the same cycle of grief.

Not if, but when—unless we decide, together, to become people who notice, who act, and who love. The story doesn’t have to end this way. Despair can be noticed. Suicidality can be interrupted. Lives can be saved if we choose to see what has too often been ignored