A disturbing trend is emerging in the UK, where young individuals, mostly men and boys, are plotting school shootings, inspired by online material glorifying US massacres.
The latest case involves 18-year-old Nicholas Prosper, who murdered his mother, brother, and sister before planning to carry out a shooting at St Joseph’s Catholic primary school.
Police revealed the plot after Prosper pleaded guilty to the murders. Detective Chief Inspector Sam Khanna stated, “What was uncovered during our investigation left no doubt as to his intentions to carry out an attack at a school, but fortunately, Prosper was apprehended before he could cause any further harm.”
This case is part of a growing number of school-shooting plots detected in the UK. According to statistics, 162 referrals were made to Prevent, the government-led counter-terrorism scheme, related to interest in school massacres, up 2% from the previous year.
Jonathan Hall KC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, expressed concern about these cases, stating, “School shooting obsessions crop up in a lot of counter-terrorism casework… The question is … is the size of the problem fully recognised, and is there something so unique about this cohort that additional ways of managing the risk need to be found?”
Hall noted that these plots do not involve an ideological cause and therefore do not come under the legal definition of terrorism. However, they appear to be “very appealing to individuals with a strong sense of grievance.” He added, “Given the young age at which people are now coming across the counter-terrorism radar, perhaps it’s not surprising that a major source of grievance is their school.”
Other cases of school-shooting plots have been reported, including a 17-year-old boy in Edinburgh who admitted wanting to carry out a mass shooting at his school, and a gun-obsessed Lidl warehouse worker who was building an armoury of homemade firearms and explosives for a “hitman-style attack” on police and his work colleagues.
Experts believe that these plots are part of a wider trend towards “nihilistic violence” that is markedly different from ideological terrorism. Zoschak, an expert in the field, stated, “The violence is emotional and self-serving rather than political or ideological, and there’s really no desired consequence – the violence is the point.”
The UK government has acknowledged the growing concern and is working to identify the nature and scale of the problem. A government spokesperson stated, “We continue to work at pace to identify the nature and scale of a growing cohort fixated with violence and to improve multi-agency interventions to manage the risk they pose.”