On February 14th, 2018, yet another shooting took place at a public school here in the U.S., this time at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. While school shootings have become far too common place in the United States, the narrative of a shooter with an Autism Spectrum Disorder is becoming increasingly disheartening. According to Everytown For Gun Safety, there have been an average of 1 school shootings a week since 2013. For those doing the math, that is nearly 300 shootings on school campuses in just over 5 years. With the increasing awareness and acceptance of Autism Spectrum Disorders within society comes increasing acknowledgement. Yet, at the same time, there has also been a call by some to quickly diagnose and label these school shooters as individuals with Autism, attempting to discount their actions by giving them a broad unofficial diagnosis, often times with no medical background at all. This narrative may help the media and public dismiss the severity of school shootings. It serves as a throw away explanation to the ever expanding violence in schools, yet, at the same time, it severely damages the growth that the Autism Community has experienced in the public eye in recent years.

In December of 2016,The Atlantic published the article “Why Some Companies Are Trying to Hire More People on the Autism Spectrum”, by Bourree Lam. In it Lam shares initiatives of huge corporations such as Ernst and Young, HP, and Microsoft, to hire individuals with Autism. In 2017, JP Morgan Chase continued to expand it’s Autism at Work program and has found many benefits to hiring individuals diagnosed with ASD. The Spread the Word campaign, founded in 2009, has worked for nearly 10 years to end the throwaway use of the derogatory R-Word in everyday conversation. In short, the Autism community has made great strides in public awareness over the last decade. Yet, bi-proxy, school shootings have slowly begun to erode and undermine this progress.

Following the December 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, media began to circulate that the shooter suffered from Aspergers Syndrome, or “high-functioning” Autism. Many outlets attempted to explain away the shooter’s actions as a lack of empathy due to Autistic tendencies. Any parent of an autistic child, or individual working in the autism community will tell you, a diagnosis of Autism does not inhibit an individual from exhibiting a sense of empathy. Many individuals living on the spectrum exhibit far more empathy and an understanding of feelings that those without Autism. At times, individuals are hyper-empathetic, recognizing feelings and emotions by very limited social cues. Just as in the Newtown case, a pattern has developed attempting to explain away school shootings by attributing them to the individual having undiagnosed, or possible Autism Spectrum Disorder. In the 2015 incident at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, the shooter “may” have been Autistic. Even 20 years after the fact, there are some that claim the 1999 Columbine shooters suffered from some form of Autism. And the Stoneman Douglas shooter? Again, an attempt to connect violence with Autism. Time and time again, mass shootings across the United States, in schools and out, have been flippantly linked to Autism Spectrum Disorder.

But, let us be clear. There is no proven connection between Autism and this type of school violence. In fact, students with Autism tend to be the targets of violence and bullying behavior rather than the aggressors. This point is exactly why the narrative that shooters “may be” autistic is so damaging to the Autism community at large. With over 3.5 million individuals in the United States living with some form of Autism, these claims take progress and push it back step by step.

Like many educational facilities around the United States, The Learning Spectrum was developed as a safe place for students living with Autism and their families. Our goal as an Educational Facility is not only to help develop students and prepare them for the world around them and their future, but also to help the surrounding world understand individuals living with Autism and be able to adapt cohesively. We will continue towards our goal like so many of our counterparts across the country. At the same time, we will continue to fight for individuals’ rights, and the end to demonizing the diagnosis of Autism and the increasing misguided association with school violence.

Additional Resources:


Autism Society Statement on Parkland, Florida Shooting. Autism Society, 2018. http://www.autism-society.org/news/autism-society-statement-parkland-florida-school-shooting/

Carly, Michael John, Autism Without Fear: Asperger’s, Shootings, Healing, Guns. HuffPost: The Blog, 2015. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-john-carley/autism-without-fear-aspergers-shootings-healing-guns_b_8238862.html

Solomon, Andrew, The Myth of the Autistic Shooter. The New York Times, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/opinion/the-myth-of-the-autistic-shooter.html

Willingham, Emily, Autism, Empathy, and Violence: Asperger’s Does Not Explain Connecticut Shooting. Slate: XXFactor, 2012. https://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/12/17/asperger_s_and_newtown_school_shooting_autistic_does_not_mean_violent.html

By – Luke Bauman – March, 2018