Austria school shooting mirrors U.S. attacks
Same weapons. Same tactics. Same profile. Same outcome. But this time, the school shooting wasn't in the United States.
This week a 21-year-old former student at BORG Dreierschützengasse High School in Graz, Austria killed 9 and wounded 11 students inside the school before committing suicide. The attack started during morning classes and ended in less than 7 minutes. Just like most school shootings in the United States, the incident ended before police even had time to locate the assailant.
While the perpetrator was described as an “extremely reclusive” loner who played video games, he wanted to join the Austrian military but failed the evaluation. He also failed 10th grade twice before eventually dropping out of school.
Now that more details are being released, this school shooting has most of the same characteristics of these attacks in the United States:
Guns were purchased legally (shotgun and Glock handgun).
Went to a gun club at least 5 times for training (just like the Apalachee High and Abundant Christian Life school shooters last year).
Arrived at the school with his guns hidden inside a backpack (most common way firearms are snuck into schools).
Attack happened during morning classes (most common time for a planned attack).
Was a former student who knew the layout of the school and he went into a bathroom to prepare for the attack (students at Apalachee High, Perry High, and Oxford High went into the bathroom to get ready).
Fired indiscriminately on the third and fourth floors, including shooting open a locked classroom door (in both real life and video games, shotguns are often used to breach doors).
One victim killed was his former teacher. The other eight fatalities and 11 wounded were random victims.
Went back to the same bathroom where he got ready and killed himself before police arrived even though he had more ammo and there were still students inside the school (CVPA, Abundant Life, Antioch High, and Covenant School shooters all had more ammo before suicide/suicide by cop).
Planned to detonate a homemade explosive (most pre-planned school shooting plots include plans for bombs, chemicals, or flammable liquids).
Time from first shot to last shot was less than 7 minutes (for reference, the 'very fast' police response to the Covenant School was 9 minutes from first shot to first officer inside the school).
The presence of a homemade explosive device and his choice to commit suicide in a bathroom before police intervened has strong parallels to Columbine. Even 25 years later and thousands of miles away, the blueprint for a school shooting remains mostly unchanged.
Unlike more than two hundred other planned attacks at k-12 schools since 1966, Columbine is the most influential school shooting. The “lessons learned” (or not learned) from Columbine have changed how police respond and how school officials try to prevent the next attack. For teens plotting a shooting on the dark corners of the internet, Columbine is the most notorious plot to mimic.
Missed Red Flags?
There is one big departure from the profile of most school shooters. From what is available so far, there were no obvious red flags to spot. While he failed out of school, he had no criminal history, no disciplinary history related to violence at school, passed a required psych exam to purchase his firearms, and never openly expressed anger or resentment toward the school, students, or teachers.
If this individual had been in a U.S. school with a multidisciplinary threat assessment team, would they have caught any warning signs? Probably not. He had no documented behavior of concern and didn’t make any threats. Once he dropped out of school, he would be off the radar and outside of the authority of a school district.
He left a detailed written plan and an apology to his family without a motive being stated. He also asked his parents to take care of his cat.
While many media outlets are focused on the shooter being a ‘loner’ who played video games, this same Columbine-era message echoes outdated and misleading narratives. This kind of framing obscures the more important patterns of fixating on violence, planning, withdrawal from support systems, or obtaining real firearms (not virtual ones).
One of the most significant blind spots in school violence prevention and formal threat assessment is what happens after a student drops out. In many jurisdictions, dropout or expelled students are no longer tracked, supported, or evaluated despite being at higher risk for violence, suicide, and criminal behavior. In this case, the shooter’s complete disconnection from school systems may have made him invisible to authorities, mental health professionals, and his own community.
The American Problem
This shooting is a reminder that the ‘American problem’ of school shootings is not uniquely American. While firearm availability differs across nations, this shooting in Austria shows that the same pathway to violence—failed aspirations, identity collapse, a fascination with weapons, and the social significance of a school to a young person—is disturbingly universal.
Austria, like much of Europe, has tighter firearm regulations than the U.S., yet this young man legally acquired both a shotgun and a Glock handgun after passing a psychological evaluation. Even with strict gun control laws, gun policy alone cannot solve this issue. Access to weapons, social withdrawal, and suicidal ideation form a toxic combination that can lead to this type of violence anywhere in the world.
In the aftermath, Austria and other European countries are already debating whether more aggressive gun control, mental health screenings, or school security measures are needed. This just mirrors the same post-tragedy cycle in the U.S. with public outrage, political debate, knee-jerk legislation that creates unfunded or counterproductive mandates, and within a few weeks the conversations go quiet until the next attack.
Without a sustained investment in meaningful prevention—free mental health services, support services for youths who drop out of the education system, and community-based crisis intervention programs—this cycle of school shootings will repeat again in both the U.S. and Europe.
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.