Natalie Rupnow, the girl accused of school death in Wisconsin, is one of the few female suspects in the mass shooting

The fatal shooting of a student and a teacher at a private Christian school in Wisconsin on Monday was filled with shock, even for a nation numbed by the horror of repeated school massacres.

The suspect, Natalie Rupnow, who police say killed herself during the rampage, was only 15 — but even more surprisingly, she was a girl. Mass shootings by females are vanishingly rare.

Of the 441 mass shootings in the United States from 1966 to 2022, only 4.3% were committed by women, research from the Rockefeller Institute of Governmenta think tank, shows.

According to an open source database maintained by Mother Jonesthere have been only four since 1982, as well as two where women acted in partnership with a man.

In 2006, 44-year-old postal worker Jennifer Sanmarco killed seven people and then herself at a Santa Barbara postal facility, inspired by what she believed was a conspiracy against her. Despite a long history of mental illness — she had been placed on psychological retirement in 2003 — she was able to purchase a 9mm Smith & Wesson handgun without issue after a routine background check.

In 2014, former tribal chairwoman Cherie Lash Rhoades, then 44, opened fire, killing four people and critically wounding two others at the Cedarville Rancheria Tribal Office in the remote Northern California town of Alturas. The shooting took place during a hearing on her planned eviction from a property on tribal lands.

The dead included Rhoades’ 50-year-old brother, Rurik Davies, 30-year-old nephew Glenn Calonicco and 19-year-old niece Angel Penn, who was holding her newborn baby when she was shot. The infant was unharmed, a court heard.

Rhoades was sentenced to death in 2017 and remains one of the less than 50 women on death row.

Rite Aid distribution center worker Snochia Moseley, 26, killed three people and injured three others at her workplace in Aberdeen, Maryland, before killing herself in 2018. She had a history of mental illness, but her 9mm handgun was legally owned.

Another shooting was carried out by 28-year-old Audrey Hale, who killed six people, including three children, at a Christian school in Nashville last year and was shot and killed by responding police officers. Police later stated that Hale identified as transgender and used he/him pronouns.

In 2018, Nasim Aghdam, 38, of San Diego, opened fire at YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, California.

The American-Iranian injured three people, one of them critically, before taking her own life.

Her distraught family said she had been angered by the video platform for policies she believed were an attempt to “discriminate” against her, reduce views of her animal rights videos and prevent her from monetizing them.

She bought the Smith & Wesson 9mm semi-automatic handgun legally, police said.

A ‘deeply masculine act’

Women’s rights advocates say the overwhelming representation of men as perpetrators in violent shootings is inextricably linked to statistics showing that the victims are typically women.

A study from 2019 in California law review called mass shootings a “deeply masculine act” and pointed out that many of the victims of violent and deadly crime in the United States are women and are linked to a broader pattern of domestic violence and ideological misogyny.

“Even when mass shootings involve neighbors, strangers and police, women and children overwhelmingly pay the price,” the study said.

The study cited research by campaign group Everytown for Gun Safety that found that of the 57% of mass shootings involving an intimate partner or other family member, 64% of the victims were women and children.