Criminologists say Nashville school shooter, a woman, is unusual

A lot of people are trying to get out of the school and it's a lot of people are trying to get out of the school. An outpouring of grief, as you'd imagine, outside of private Christian school in Nashville tonight, the scene of the latest mass shooting in America. It's a small private school in Nashville. This is a live look right now, the Covenant School in the area is about 10 miles from the downtown area. Police have confirmed three nine year old students and three faculty members all killed today shot by now and identified transgender woman using two AR style weapons and a gunfire. The shooting was done in the city of Nashville. The school, as I mentioned about 10 miles or so from downtown Nashville, and according to the non profit every town support fund, there have now been at least 33 incidents of gun fire on school campuses this year alone.

And police shared that the shooter in Nashville was transgender and identified as a woman, and that is unusual for mass shootings and school shootings are Jason Allen's been looking into this, and I know you've talked to researchers about this. I'm sure you've talked to a lot of people about this. It is, Doug, and it is very telling one of the lead researchers told me he thinks we could start seeing more of this. Not really the typical picture that you may have developed in your head of shooters who are involved in these awful crimes. More of a binary, you know, gender neutral type of situation, where in fact that that is almost inconsequential, right? To us researchers and to us criminologists. It doesn't really matter per se the future. We're not going to be able to do that.

We're going to be able to do that. We're going to be able to prevent it in the future. Alex Del Carmen worked on an analysis of school shootings that happened after Columbine, and this is something that came out last year. This was done through the Institute for predictive analytics in criminal justice through Texas A and M and Tarleton State to help identify patterns and responses targeting elementary schools is itself an outlier researchers found and that is worrisome to see another one of these Del Carmen told me because it's another instance of a shooter not really a shooter. We're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that. So we're not going to be able to do that.

We're not going to be able to do that. So both files may become more common. Here's just how unlikely it has been to have a woman involved in one of these shootings. The team from I pack found just 4% of shooters since the 99 shooting at Columbine were female. Another paper published last year went all the way back to 79 and found just two occasions where elementary schools were targeted by women, and it's been 35 years since that happened. Former students being the shooter, which police said is the case this year. The case is still in the hands of the school.

The school is preparing to have a shooting of the shooter. So we're not going to be able to do that. We're looking at just 4% of these incidents. Doug Del Carmen told me that he expects there's going to be a lot of focus on the suspects. Writing's online activity and how the school was prepared or not prepared to again help inform decisions on how to stop the next one of these incidents. Yeah, looking into the background, the chief kind of tipped his hand earlier. We were watching that there may be a kind of a treasure trove when it comes to background information on this.

Jason, thanks.

CBS 11 News Evening, Nashville, shooting, school shooting