What Motivates School Shootings?

Brenda Spencer

That was the only explanation 16-year-old Brenda Spencer gave. In 1979, she set up a rifle in her San Diego home and opened fire on the elementary school across the street, wounding eight children and an officer and killing two adults. When a reporter asked why, though, all she said was that she didn’t like Mondays and that she was bored. “This livens up the day.” The callous and total lack of remorse in her answer made the phrase a cultural phenomenon, and what little else she said during the attack didn’t help anyone understand. When she surrendered to police, she told them that shooting children was “like shooting ducks on a pond” and that she “liked to watch them squirm after they were hit.”