Warning: School shooter's manifesto shows failures across American society
This document is disturbing so take a second before deciding to read this. I've carefully studied a school shooter's writings because it connects with so many other issues that I research.
Note: I obtained exclusive access to the CVPA High School shooter’s manifesto from KMOV’s investigative reporting team. Last year, I narrated the documentary KMOV produced about this attack. Parts of the images are redacted because they name specific school staff members who are not aware they were targets during this school shooting. Here is my interview with Susan El Khoury from KMOV about the manifesto.
I’m publishing this to dispel myths and highlight the missed opportunities for prevention.
Guns. Power. God.
During the 60 days leading up to the school shooting at CVPA High in St. Louis in 2022, the 19-year-old perpetrator journaled about his experiences. This planning and the institutional failures that enabled him to carry out this attack happened in the immediate aftermath of Uvalde.
When he finally got his hands on an AR-15 rifle, he “felt like a fucking GOD”.
This manifesto is tough to read. I’m going to breakdown:
Planning the attack
Mental health, depression, and suicidal ideation
AR-15s, far-right politics, and grandstanding in Missouri
Dire need for federal ‘Red Flag’ laws
Please be prepared, there is some very disturbing content in his writings.
Planning the attack
Unlike terrorism, school shootings are not random violence directed at “soft targets”. Most school shootings are committed by current or former students who plan the attack for weeks, months, or years.
The CVPA shooter had been thinking about his attack for at least five years with detailed daily planning and journaling starting 60 days prior.
He was able to easily access floor plans of the school to plot the attack. Ironically some commercial vendors are lobbying to use state education funding to update these same maps.
Just like other school shooters and mass shooters, an AR-15 was the first item on the list. This is because semi-automatic rifles designed for combat have detachable magazines to reload quickly. These rifles are purpose-built to kill as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.
Using an AR-15 rifle also fits with the imagery and symbology associated with being a mass shooter.
An AR-15 is often advertised with photos of a man wearing a “chest rig” to hold extra magazines and shooting gloves to create a tactical, urban commando image. The items on the CVPA shooter’s checklist follow products branded with these combat rifles. The crossed out item is a Hellfire Trigger which is an accessory the Uvalde school shooter used to make the AR-15 fire even faster.
During the weeks leading up to the attack, he drove past the school and imagined the school shooting taking place. This is critical because school shooters only have one target, which is the school that they attended when their unresolved trauma took place. No reasonable amount of school security or building fortification will stop a surprise attack that has been plotted for months.
Just five days before the attack, he wrote:
Mental health, depression, and suicide
One of the strangest and most disturbing things I have ever seen is the CVPA school shooter included his mental health records with his annotations about them in his manifesto. This is much like the Louisville National Bank mass shooter who wrote daily journals about his declining mental health and desire to commit violence. The Louisville shooter wrote in his manifesto that lax gun laws should be changed to “stop the sale of WMD's to psychopaths like me.”
Most school shooters do not suffer from psychosis or severe mental illness. They have experienced an unresolved crisis that has resulted in depression and suicidal ideation. The school shooting is a violent public suicide, and they plan to die during the attack.
Following that same pattern, the CVPA shooter told doctors that he hated his family and wanted to die. This is the type of severe depression that actively suicidal school shooters exhibit.
Due to this severe depression, school shooters often attempt suicide before deciding to commit an attack which is violent public suicide.
Unlike someone having a psychotic episode, the CVPA school shooter was lucid, alert, and self-aware. The writing on the side of the document are his notes about his medical records.
Suicide sits at the center of a planned school shooting. The number of victims or following the written plan in his diagrams is secondary to dying. This is why armed staff at the school are not a deterrent because the school shooter wants to be killed.
AR-15s, right-wing politics, and grandstanding
This is not just a Missouri problem. The Louisville National Bank shooter wrote:
"OH MY GOD THIS IS SO EASY," the gunman wrote. "Seriously, I knew it would be doable but this is ridiculous. Walked in and bought a gun, 4 mags, and 120 rounds for $700."
He mocked Kentucky’s gun laws and thanked the NRA for their "lobbying dollars" and said they were "the one who made all this possible."
"All I had to do was lie that a friend got his house broken into, check some boxes that I hadn't been institutionalized (false) or would use it for violence (also false)."
The CVPA shooter also knew that he shouldn’t have access to a gun and that federal gun laws would have prevented this attack. Missouri passed the ‘Second Amendment Preservation Act’ in 2021 which enables a depressed, suicidal, and/or homicidal person to purchase a gun from a private owner. The Missouri legislation also prevents state or local police officers from taking any firearm that was legally purchased.
He went to a gun show and was denied—which didn’t surprise him.
Instead of getting the AR-15 from the gun show, he creates an online account on a website that connects him with a private seller. This is an unregulated online marketplace that has been designed specifically to bypass federal laws, background checks, and makes it easy for prohibited buyers or criminals to purchase guns.
In bypassing the federal background check and making a private purchase, the CVPA school shooter legally obtained an AR-15 rifle that could not be taken from him by police.
Dire need for federal ‘Red Flag’ laws
School shooters and mass shooters are crying for help and hoping someone will listen to them right up until the second they pull the trigger.
Red flag laws turn these overt warnings into actions that can prevent violence.
Unlike a court order or mental health evaluation that takes time, a red flag law permits the immediate temporary seizure of firearms from a person who police or healthcare providers believe is a danger to themselves or others.
Where to go from here?
Missouri’s ‘Second Amendment Preservation Act” should be retitled as the “Active Shooter Empowerment Act” to call it what it really is. This law and any other state laws that attempt to bypass federal firearms regulation should be repealed to protect the safety of children and the general public.
Rather than making it easier for people to buy guns, we need to make it easier for people in crisis to access services—while preventing them from possessing weapons.
There were sixty days of overt warnings written in a notebook before the CVPA school shooting. We never had to let this crisis continue to escalate to the point when this last page was written.
The CVPA school shooting is a failure of American society. We can’t continue to allow right-wing politics and state laws passed at the behest of the NRA to empower the next suicidal and homicidal teen in crisis to become a school shooter.
David Riedman is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database. Listen to my new podcast Back to School Shootings, or catch-up on my prior interviews including Freakonomics Radio and New England Journal of Medicine.
This is powerful analysis, and is a must read for anyone trying to understand the “why.” Thank you for your great work, David.
Terrifying