This morning, two students died and two others were wounded during a shooting inside Antioch High School in Nashville, TN. A 17-year-old male student fatally shot a female student and then fatally shot himself with a handgun at 11:09 AM inside the cafeteria. Cellphone video recorded the sounds of at least 3 gunshots. The teen fired 9 shots at the female student who died and then fired one shot killing himself.

The shooting was over in 17 seconds from the first to the last shot. A pistol with 7 rounds in the magazine was found next to his body. The 9mm handgun he used was legally purchased in Arizona and never reported stolen. It’s unclear how he got it.

A male student was grazed, and a second male student suffered a non-gunshot injury that required hospitalization. While it appears that he deliberately targeted one female student who was killed, what is believed to be his social media account posted violent, racist, and antisemitic content. The writings include detailed plans for the shooting and reasons behind committing the attack, along with mentions of other school shootings. The shooting was livestreamed on KICK, a platform known for the lack of content moderation and hate speech.

A 50-page document posted on the X (owned by Elon Musk) contains selfies of what appears to be the shooter with far-right paraphernalia scattered between statements against “race mixing”. He wrote about wanting to “take revenge” on society, praised Adolf Hitler, and posted explicit photos from previous school shootings. His accounts are linked to “groyper” content—a term used with white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups—referring to young men who claim to be “involuntarily celibate” with violent misogynistic views.

The document explained a need to "speed up" an original plan to commit the school shooting on Thursday and wrote that his goal was to kill "at least 10 people."

On a Bluesky account linked in the document, a post on Wednesday morning read, “Today seems like a good day to die.”

Police believe the 17-year-old in Nashville may have been in contact with the 15-year-old girl who opened fire inside Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, WI in December 2024. Both teen’s social media accounts were connected on Pinterest, BlueSky, and Twitter/X. It will be difficult for authorities to figure out if they had direct contact on encrypted messaging or were part of private group chats on decentralized platforms like Discord.

According to classmates the 17-year-old shooter was in ROTC and “smart person at the top of the class” and was “quiet.”

“I knew him personally. He was in my class and I didn’t think he was anything like that. I just thought he was a sweet quiet person, but he wasn’t.” - Antioch High School student

Antioch High School shooting: Nashville police investigating at least 2 students shot | CNN

Two school police officers (SROs) were inside the building and arrived in the cafeteria after the shooting was over. Local news reports the school had a AI system that detects guns that are visible on CCTV. It’s unclear if the system detected the weapon or sent an alert to police. Based on news reports, the shooting was over within a few seconds.

The school went on lockdown after the shooting (and after the shooter was already dead). Students described barricading the doors and feeling like they were about to die as they hid inside their classrooms (while the shooter was already dead). Following the standard “active shooter” response plan, police SWAT units searched the entire building room by room (even though the shooter was dead). Student described feeling terrified as they heard police officer pounding on the doors and forcing entry into locked classrooms as they entered the rooms with their guns drawn (even though the shooter was already dead).

Six Shooting Scenarios: Schools Need More Than One 'Active Shooter' Plan

The student perpetrator rode the bus to school in the morning and police believe he had the gun with him on campus all morning before the shooting.

Students arrested with concealed handguns inside schools every day

Because I collect data on school shootings (the government doesn't fund or collect this level of information), this incident follows the same pattern as hundreds of other shootings on campus in the past year:

Shooting happened during morning classes (morning classes, dismissal, and sport events are the most common time periods)
Two school resource officers (SROs) were on campus when the shooting happened. They arrived in the cafeteria after the shooter was dead. (police have been on campus during most planned attacks over the last decade)
Shooter and victims were students (shootings are rarely committed by an outside)
Shooting ended in suicide before police arrived
School went on lockdown after the incident was already over
Highest per capita rate of shootings at schools in the past year are in Tennessee, Georgia, Ohio, and North Carolina

The shooting happened just after 11:00 AM as students were inside the cafeteria for lunch. Cellphone video (below) recorded the gunshots inside the school cafeteria. Students interviewed by local news witnessed the shooting and then ran from the cafeteria and away from the school when the shots were fired.

Paradigm Shift: Planning for evacuation instead of lockdown during a school shooting

Antioch High School has about 2,000 students and sits inside a residential area in Nashville. The school has an array of common school security features including:

Two school police officers assigned to the campus
Secure entry
CCTV cameras with AI software that identifies weapons
Emergency alert system
Window film

From looking at this map, the school building is larger than two football fields with multiple wings and can’t be realistically secured by two school police officers. A fence around the campus would be more than a mile long.

This is the 10th shooting on campus so far in 2025 and the third in Tennessee. Just last week:

Grandmother fired a shot to breakup a fight between students at dismissal. (TN)
Female middle school student shot herself inside a school bathroom. (GA)
Family member was shot inside a vehicle during dismissal. (TN)
Parent accidentally shot himself while waiting for dismissal outside an elementary school. (VA)
Former student fired shots during a fight at dismissal. (NY)
Teen pointed a replica AR-15 at students and staff on an elementary school playground. Intended a 'suicide by cop' situation. (CT)

Outlook in 2025

I would prefer not to spend my free time recording school shootings in a public database, but the United States government doesn't collect (or fund the collection) of this type of gun death/injury data.

Meanwhile, guns are the leading cause of death for children in the United States.

President Biden created the Office of Gun Violence Prevention for three reasons:

Coordinate the federal response to mass shootings.
Expand state and local partnerships to help reduce gun violence.
Develop and implement executive actions on gun safety.

Not only was this office closed by the new President on day 1, the entire library of resources and reports was erased from the White House website.

“Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been actually abolished?”
- 1984 by George Orwell

David Riedman is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database, Chief Data Officer at a global risk management firm, and a tenure-track professor. Listen to my weekly podcast—Back to School Shootings—or my recent interviews on Freakonomics Radio, New England Journal of Medicine, and my article on CNN about AI and school security.

Riedman Report: Risk, AI, Education, & Security

Shooting inside Antioch High in Nashville