School Shooters and the Broken Bond: When Guns Become the Only Friend
Monday, April 28, 2025.
A new study has quietly shifted the center of gravity in our understanding of school shootings.
Published in PLOS One (Nassauer, 2025), the research finds that for most school shooters in U.S. history, guns weren't just tools of destruction — they were early symbols of attachment, belonging, and identity.
If that sounds unsettling, it's because it is.
More Than Metal: The Emotional World of Guns in Violent Lives
Anne Nassauer, a sociologist at the University of Erfurt, set out to answer a maddeningly persistent question:
If millions of American kids grow up around guns, why do a tiny fraction turn them against their peers?
Prior research has told us that America has more civilian-owned guns than people (Small Arms Survey, 2018). It has told us that access to guns predicts higher death rates (Anglemyer, Horvath, & Rutherford, 2014).
But it hasn’t told us what guns meant to those who pulled the trigger.
Nassauer’s analysis of 83 rampage school shootings from 1966 through early 2024 reveals a striking commonality: nearly all the shooters were raised in environments where firearms were normalized — not merely tolerated, but cherished.
Guns, for these children, were not just objects. They were part of the emotional scaffolding of their early lives.
Families bonded over hunting trips. Dads passed down rifles like heirlooms. Firearms sat displayed on walls, or tucked under pillows, symbols of trust and adulthood.
In many cases, shooting together was one of the few ways these future shooters felt connected to their families.
As Nassauer put it bluntly:
"Many school shooters came from a gun culture where firearms are symbols of affection, bonding, and identity" (Nassauer, 2025).
Access Wasn't a Fluke. It Was a Feature.
Nassauer classified shooters’ access to weapons into a four-tier system — and found that a staggering 97.6% had either “easy” or “very easy” access to the firearms they used.
Even very young or severely mentally ill shooters could retrieve lethal weapons as easily as grabbing a jacket.
Unlocked safes. Bedroom closets. Guns handed over as birthday gifts.In families where everything else — emotional support, mental health care, reliable protection — was scarce, the gun was abundant.
In diaries and interrogations, some shooters spoke of their weapons as their "only friend," the "love of [their] life."Guns didn’t just empower them.
Guns loved them back.A Changing Landscape, A Constant Risk
You might hope that legal changes — like the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban — would have stemmed the tide.
Instead, Nassauer found that while how shooters got their weapons shifted slightly (more from family homes, fewer from gun shops), the overall ease of access didn’t budge.
Legislation tweaked the pathways. It didn’t disrupt the destination.
That finding echoes prior research showing that household gun ownership rates predict school shooting incidence better than gun laws alone (Kalesan, Villarreal, Keyes, & Galea, 2016).
Not Every Gun Kid Becomes a Shooter
Here’s the critical nuance Nassauer underscores:
Growing up with guns is not sufficient to explain school shootings.
Millions of American children are raised with hunting rifles, shotguns, and family range trips — and never dream of turning them on classmates.
Clearly, something else is required: untreated mental illness, profound social marginalization, family trauma, a catastrophic sense of grievance — or, more likely, some tragic cocktail of these.
The shooters Nassauer studied often showed disturbing early signs:
Unmanaged rage or despair
Obsessive attachment to firearms
Alienation from peers and adults alike
But the gun was always there, patiently waiting, a familiar friend willing to listen.
The Unspoken Philosophical Crisis: When Tools Become Attachments
If Nassauer’s findings tell us anything, it’s that the emotional attachment to firearms is doing more cultural work than we have admitted.
This isn’t just about gun access.
It’s about gun intimacy.
When a child grows up in emotional poverty — when parents bond over shooting but not over feeling — the gun becomes a poor substitute for human connection.
It becomes the "friend" that never disappoints.
The "protector" that never judges.
The "companion" that promises agency in a world that feels humiliatingly out of reach.
And if that child's inner world fractures far enough, that "friend" becomes the perfect accomplice in tragedy.
The Emotional Archetype of the School Shooter: Guns, Grievance, and the Search for Connection
The cartoon version of a school shooter goes something like this:
An isolated, angry boy. A stockpile of guns. A manifesto full of incoherent rage.
A monster, easy to hate and dismiss.
But the deeper portrait — the one that emerges from Anne Nassauer’s sweeping new study (PLOS One, 2025) — is less cinematic and far more heartbreaking.
The typical school shooter wasn't simply “evil.”
He was often achingly lonely, desperately seeking recognition, and emotionally fused with his firearms long before he ever pulled a trigger.
The Gun as the First and Last Friend
In Nassauer’s study of 83 rampage school shooters from 1966–2024, a grim consistency emerges:
Before these young men (and very occasionally young women) fired at their classmates, they bonded with their guns.
Not just as hobbies.
Not just as tools.
As emotional companions.
Family hunting trips. Father-son shooting sessions. Firearms as birthday presents.
In many cases, these were the only moments when shooters felt seen, praised, or powerful.
When family bonds were otherwise strained, the gun was the bridge — a literal trigger for moments of belonging.
Later, when emotional fractures widened — when bullying, mental illness, alienation, or despair took root — the gun remained loyal.
No contradictions.
No demands for change.
No disappointment.
"The love of my life," one shooter called his rifle.
"My only friend," wrote another.
It’s chilling, but it’s also tragically human.
The gun absorbed what the community could not: the loneliness, the resentment, the thirst for meaning.
The Identity Merge: From Tool to Self-Concept
Psychologists have long warned about object merging in adolescence — the tendency for isolated souls to see external possessions as extensions of their identity (Kernberg, 1975).
But Nassauer’s work shows how deeply this dynamic played out with firearms.
For many shooters, their guns weren’t separate possessions anymore.
They were part of them.
Symbols of agency.
Trophies of competence.
Containers for rage.
In a world where everything felt unstable, the gun offered a grotesque kind of constancy:
You may be ignored, belittled, bullied — but you can still be powerful.
The problem wasn’t just access.
It was emotional intimacy with the weapon.
From Resentment to Revenge
All this would still be tragic, but inert — if not for the final ingredient: grievance.
Many school shooters experienced profound humiliations before their attacks:
Social ostracization
Public embarrassment
Romantic rejection
Parental disappointment
The gun — already a friend — became something more:
an avenger.
The thought process wasn’t always coherent.
It didn't need to be.
The gun offered the fantasy of respect reclaimed, of cosmic scales balanced, of wounds finally acknowledged.
Violence, in the shooter’s fantasy, would transform the ignored into the unforgettable.
How Gun Intimacy Hijacks Emotional Development: A Therapist's Guide to Understanding School Shooters
As therapists, we are trained to listen for attachments — to parents, to peers, to mentors.
Rarely are we trained to recognize attachments to objects.
Even less so when the object is a gun.
Yet, Anne Nassauer’s 2025 study on school shooters should shake us awake:
for many shooters, firearms became their primary emotional anchors long before they became tools of violence. Understanding this attachment dynamic is crucial for prevention, intervention, and systemic change.
Guns as Emotional Regulators
Across 83 rampage school shootings in U.S. history, Nassauer found an eerie throughline:
Firearms entered children’s lives early, framed as bonding rituals with caregivers.
Guns were treated as reliable, affirming, controllable — unlike chaotic or emotionally unavailable adults.
Emotional regulation strategies (pride, connection, anger discharge) were increasingly tied to handling, practicing with, or fantasizing about firearms.
The gun, in many cases, was the first consistent emotional regulator.
It calmed.
It validated.
It bonded.
Clinically, this mirrors attachment to transitional objects — but with a fatal twist (Winnicott, 1953).
The Merger: Loss of Differentiation Between Self and Weapon
Developmentally, adolescents must differentiate their identity from external objects.
But in these cases, the gun merged with the self-concept.
The weapon became an extension of the boy’s wounded ego.
Key indicators of this fusion:
Overidentification with "shooter" or "protector" fantasies
Language anthropomorphizing guns ("my best friend," "the only one who gets me")
Dissociation or emotional flattening when separated from firearms
If unaddressed, this fusion sets the stage for grievance to metastasize into violent action.
Clinical Implications: What To Watch For
In therapy, risk assessment must extend beyond direct threats.
Attachment to firearms should be evaluated as a potential proxy marker for deeper emotional deprivation and disorganized attachment patterns.
Watch for:
Intense emotional language around guns (especially "friend" or "love" metaphors)
Lack of differentiated self-identity apart from weapons culture
Rumination on past grievances coupled with empowerment fantasies
Family systems that conflate love, pride, and bonding exclusively through shooting activities
Guns are not just a hobby for these youth. They are often the only consistent emotional strategy available.
Intervention Strategies
Expand attachment repertoire: Introduce and model other forms of belonging, skill mastery, and pride that are not gun-dependent.
Address emotional regulation deficits: Teach distress tolerance and emotional identification in situations of humiliation or rage.
Explore grief and loss: Many shooters experience the gun as a stand-in for human relationships that failed. Grief work can reframe these attachments.
Family systems work: Help families develop bonding rituals not centered around violence-capable objects.
Final Reflection: Guns as Wounded Love
If we fail to recognize the emotional work guns are doing for these kids, we will keep missing the early warning signs.
The shooter does not emerge overnight.
He is constructed — painfully, slowly — in the space where human connection should have been.
As therapists, our job is not only to disarm the hand.
It is to disarm the wound.
The Soul-Wound We Refuse to See
It’s easier to look away.
To say they were "monsters," "psychopaths," "evil incarnate."
And yes — their actions are monstrous.
But if we only focus on the outcome, we miss the path that led there.
The real horror isn't just the massacre.
It's the slow social murder that happened first — when loneliness became unbearable, and no one noticed.
When rage metastasized, and no one interrupted.
When the gun became the best friend left standing.
And we wonder why it keeps happening.
Prevention: More Than Locks and Laws
What can we learn from this?
Certainly, safe storage laws could make a difference (Grossman et al., 2005).
Stronger background checks and red flag laws might help catch the most acute risks (Swanson et al., 2017).
But Nassauer’s work points to a deeper need — rebuilding attachment.
If guns are filling the void left by absent fathers, disconnected mothers, and lonely adolescence, then no metal detector will be enough.
We need communities where boys (and some girls) don’t have to choose between connection and the cold companionship of a weapon.
We must ask:
Where is the culture of belonging that doesn't require a gun?
Where are the family rituals that don’t rely on shared firepower to feel meaningful?
Where are the mentors teaching that anger and despair don't have to end in gunfire?
Because if we don't offer something better, the guns will always be waiting.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Anglemyer, A., Horvath, T., & Rutherford, G. (2014). The accessibility of firearms and risk for suicide and homicide victimization among household members: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Annals of Internal Medicine, 160(2), 101–110. https://doi.org/10.7326/M13-1301
Grossman, D. C., Mueller, B. A., Riedy, C., Dowd, M. D., Villaveces, A., Prodzinski, J., ... & Harruff, R. (2005). Gun storage practices and risk of youth suicide and unintentional firearm injuries. JAMA, 293(6), 707–714. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.293.6.707
Kalesan, B., Villarreal, M. D., Keyes, K. M., & Galea, S. (2016). Gun ownership and social gun culture. Injury Prevention, 22(3), 216–220. https://doi.org/10.1136/injuryprev-2015-041586
Nassauer, A. (2025). "The only friend I had was my gun": A mixed-methods study of gun culture in school shootings. PLOS One. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.xxxxxx
Small Arms Survey. (2018). Estimating Global Civilian-Held Firearms Numbers. Geneva, Switzerland.
Swanson, J. W., Norko, M. A., Lin, H. J., Alanis-Hirsch, K., Frisman, L. K., Baranoski, M. V., ... & Bonnie, R. J. (2017). Implementation and effectiveness of Connecticut's risk-based gun removal law: Does it prevent suicides? Law and Contemporary Problems, 80(2), 179–208.