Who Averts School Violence? A Jaccard Similarity Analysis of Discovery Actors and Pathways

Targeted school gun violence is preventable, yet little is known about how intervention actors co-occur in averting attacks. Previous research identifies peers, school administrators, and school resource officers (SROs) as common actors in averting school gun attacks, but their co-occurrence and sequence remain unclear. This study examined co-occurrence patterns among actors and identified the most prevalent multi-actor pathways to prevention. Data on 143 averted school shooting plots (1999–2024) were drawn from the Averted School Violence Database. Jaccard similarity coefficients and conditional probabilities quantified co-occurrence between actor pairs, and sequence analysis identified the most common intervention pathways. In this sample, law enforcement was present in nearly all averted cases (97.2%), followed by peers (52.4%) and school administration (42.7%). The strongest co-occurrence involved peers, administrators, and law enforcement: law enforcement and peers (J = 0.51), school administration and peers (J = 0.45), and school administration and law enforcement (J = 0.43). The most common pathway was a report from an unidentified individual or member of the community directly to law enforcement (15.4%); the most prevalent multi-actor pathway was peer → school administration → law enforcement (13.3%). In these averted U.S. cases, prevention most often depended on peers recognizing warning behaviors and school personnel relaying concerns to law enforcement.