Among the many things most Americans don’t know is how rare armed attacks on schools really are. Considering the sheer number of public and private K-12 schools—115,171 circa January, 2025--how could it be otherwise?

But we keep hearing about attacks, like every week! And the “assault weapons,”and the white supremacists doing the killing, and… Actually, we hear about incidents because they’re not common, and if any element of a given attack doesn’t fit the media’s preferred narrative or tends to damage another, after an initial, sensational report we hear nothing else about them.

For example, in 2018, National Public Radio (NPR) did a story about a U.S. Department of Education (DOE) study claiming during the 2015-2016 school year 240 schools reported at least one school-related shooting. NPR reporters spent months calling those schools and/or school districts and found, no doubt to their surprise, they could confirm only 11. That's less than one a month. Most schools said no such thing happened or whatever did, like someone shooting a gun somewhere near a school, or on a playground over a weekend, didn’t meet the government’s definition of a school shooting. 

There is no reason to believe this trend has changed in any significant way in the last decade. Enter the Antioch, TN (essentially a Nashville suburb) school shooting.

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On January 22, 2025, Solomon Henderson, a student, shot and killed a female student, wounded another, and committed suicide. As is usual in such cases, the police had no role in intercepting or stopping the killer. That’s not because they don’t want to stop school shooters. They’d love to do that, but there are very few of them, and time and distance mitigate against it.

As one might expect, there are many factors in common with other cases, such as the shooter’s long writings, on-line posts, self-hatred and apparent mental illness. Also as usual, there were apparently no “red flags” anyone noticed. There were, however, some unusual factors: 

Anti-hate analysts quickly identified dozens of pages believed to have come from Henderson, filled with calls for violence and racist comments, including neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideologies, expressions of shame that he was Black and praise for specific people who carried out well-known shootings.

Unfortunately for the media and “anti-hate analysts”—whatever those might be—this case is not only failing to fit the usual anti-gun narrative, but is tromping on the “angry white guy/gun nut” narrative, so something had to be done:

Jared Holt, a Senior Research Analyst at Institute for Strategic Dialogue who focuses on hate and extremism in the U.S., said it’s not unheard of for white supremacist movements to attract people of color.

Of course. Black, white supremacists. They’re everywhere.

Of the top twenty articles provided by search engines, I found only a single article a day old as this is written, the rest were no more recent than three days old, and none offered anything new. In other words, a day or two of scant coverage and after that, crickets. Several were focused on portraying Henderson as antisemitic. 

Another focus of reporting has been on the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of metal detectors. 

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Apparently, none were present at Antioch High School. 

As expected, Henderson’s writings have not been released.

Apparently, Henderson used a common 9mm handgun in the attack, which also doesn’t fit well with the preferred “assault weapon” narrative. There was also apparently nothing in Henderson’s writings suggesting he planned to kill the female student or the other student he wounded, no unrequited or rejected love or other factor to spice up a news account.

While this incident would fit into any reasonable definition of a school attack, it’s a real narrative problem. Henderson was black, there was no “assault weapon,” there was no real way to portray him as a sympathetic victim of evil, normal American culture and he appeared to be seriously mentally ill, but not in a D/s/c approved way. Just as an entirely new race had to be invented for George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin case—the media branded him a “white-Hispanic”—the Antioch case has to go away. Black, white supremacists aren’t selling these days.

Unlike the DOE’s 240 shootings in 2015-2016, this one was the real thing, but because there is no way for the D/s/c media and associated politicians to use it to bludgeon their political enemies or the Second Amendment, we’ll likely be hearing little or nothing about it in days to come.

Is it any wonder Americans are so poorly informed about school shootings?

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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.