Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes identified Natalie Rupnow, 15, as the shooter at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, WI, on Monday morning..
Rupnow went by the name Samantha:
Natalie Rupnow was identified as the shooter who opened fire inside a study hall inside Abundant Life Christian School, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said. Responding officers found Rupnow with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She died on the way to a hospital.
Police were speaking with Rupnow’s father and other family members, who were cooperating, and searching Rupnow’s home, Barnes said. He declined to offer additional details about the shooter, partly out of respect for the family.
“He lost someone as well,” Barnes said of Rupnow’s father. “And so we’re not going to rush the information. We’ll take our time and make sure we do our due diligence.”
They do not have a motive or a manifesto or anything. The police believe Rupnow was already at the school as they did not detect a breach.
Rupnow used a handgun.
A brave second-grade student made the 911 call just before 11 AM CT.
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obviously a disturbed teen. That being said, it would be extremely premature to trans or any other malady based on what is publicly known at this time.
Except for people who said they knew her
Except don’t believe any unverified claims you read on the internet.
There is a good chance that she is already on Biden’s new pardon list.
Stunning and brave. Biden not only pardons people who have never been charged with anything, he now pardons dead people too. Well, I guess it lets them vote again.
Posthumous pardons have long been a thing. Trump granted some.
My question is where did she get the gun?
Assuming the shooter was trained and there was no reason not to trust the shooter, the gun should have been accessible for self-defense in the home.
A firearm is merely a tool for self-defense.
If my 15-year-old daughter was being attacked, I would want her to have a gun.
Hopefully, you wouldn’t have a blind eye to see whether your daughter is mental or not.
Show me a tween or teen who is not moody, and they are often super secretive about their problems.
I’ve known a lot of teenage girls, and while plenty can be normal and rational at any given moment, I don’t know if there’s any of that age for whom I’d consider that a permanent and reliable state of being.
my daughter (12) passed the CC test, but lacks range time to justify letting her have access to it. I gave her a can of POM spray to keep by her bed and we always have a few cans around the house in the event of bad person indoors.
I’d have no issue giving her access to the 22 she trains on with more range time. By 15 I’m expecting her to be doing IDPA
In one of her social media posts, she implies it’s a ‘present’ in a caption of a photo of her holding her gun. In that photo, it’s a POV of her hand holding the firearm, so it’s impossible to say with any certainty it’s actually her holding the weapon. BUT, the hand in the photo strongly resembles her hands which are visible in several other photos. Presumably it was a birthday present because the post was made earlier this year. I suspect a 15-year old girl with no ties to the criminal underworld received the weapon from one or both of her parents rather than the ‘black market.’ She also has several photos of her at a range shooting a long-gun. Ranges won’t allow minor children to shoot w/o adult supervision, so another presumption is at least one of her parents took her shooting.
Some good information from Newsweek here…
https://www.newsweek.com/natalie-rupnow-wisconsin-school-shooting-2001913
…the last photo posted to her father’s facebook page (from earlier this year) is of her daughter at a skeet range with the caption: ‘ “We joined NBSC this spring and we have been loving all every second of it!”
The bigger question is how she got it in to the school. Where was security or what security was in place to check students as they came in?
It was a Christian School, and is expected to poormouth.
There were no magnetometers at this school. I found this is generally the case with the vast majority of private schools, particularly parochial and Christian schools.
Schools in most of the country have a 4 foot hurricane fence around the playground. They have multiple buildings and have Recess and lunch periods where there is free movement between buildings.
Over 70% of counties in the country have an average of Zero homicides.
My belief is this young girl was SA when she was at this school and it was never punished.
The “how did she obtain the gun” will be a big part of this event.
Particularly as her social media seems to be overly focused on the Colorado school shooting that “started” the recent trend. People knew she was disturbed.
Of course, there is always this pattern that the kids’ parents themselves are entirely clueless that their kid is crazy. The parents of the other Christian school shooter didn’t even know she was going trans, which she had been for months,
Ironically, the one set of parents that seems to have actually had a clue that their kid was maybe not all right was the kid who shot Trump’s ear — they actually called the cops for “missing person” BEFORE he took the shot.
“Georgia shooting suspect Colt Gray’s father reportedly told investigators he ‘bought the gun used in the high school killings as a Christmas present for his son’.”
“Among the most central facts was that the Crumbleys bought their son the handgun as a Christmas present and later took him to target practice.”
I also recall a case of a rich society family with a weirdly-tattooed young adult son (face and neck, career suicide) that I remember was a rooftop shooter of some sort, but the search engines are totally poisoned at the moment with results about Mangione, Butler County, and some tattooed killer thug from Texas.
Same with the Springfield, Oregon shooter. If a kid has emotional problems, you buy them play-doguh which can’t even cause damage if eaten. You don’t buy them a gun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Thurston_High_School_shooting
The black t-shirt she’s wearing in that photo is from ‘KMFDM,’ a German ‘industrial’ band that gained some notoriety in this country in 1998 as it was a favorite band of one (or maybe both?) of the Columbine shooters. In several other social media posts, she venerates a number of known spree shooters including the Columbine murderers and Adam Lanza.
The child had a robust social media presence where she embraces and even celebrates school shooters. And yet, her parents kept at least one weapon in the home that was accessible to this nut-job. These school shootings won’t stop until parents are forced to take responsibility for the actions of the minor children. Like so many teenage spree-shootings, this was a parenting failure, not something that can be fixed by gun control.
Agreed, parents can’t be giving guns to their minor disturbed children
And social networking is so detrimental to children.
I’m surprised a 2 nd grader had a phone, in this case , if it was hers, it may have saved lives
My son in law 10 years ago had a gun stolen out of his car. He hadn’t locked his car or the gun.
I just couldn’t believe he had no repercussions for this idiotic behavior
It’s time parents and idiots pay for their decisions .
Of you give a kid a gun, it should be locked up unless you are present target shooting
Teens are nuts, just as a rule.
If there wasn’t a firearm and they instead stole the car, took a joyride and ran over some neighborhood kid at play would that be the same? Should the car owner be held liable? What if his wife drove it last and left it unlocked?
No. But, if the parents gave the keys to a 12-year (or an unlicensed, minor driver of any age) and that minor driver killed someone, then yes, the parents could conceivably face a criminal charge in addition to being held civilly liable. In fact, in some states (like my home state of GA), if you allow an unlicensed driver of any age to operate your motor-vehicle, you can be charged with a crime, Georgia Code § 40-5-122. So, a parent could see that charge brought as well as some variation of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, which can be a felony in some circumstances.
As we’re seeing this jurisprudence develop in real-time, I think it’s clear many states are headed in a direction where parents will be held criminally responsible if an unlawful possessor is given access to a firearm and that firearm is used in a crime, just as they might be in the car example.
Why not hold them accountable? What difference does it make if one is murdered by a firearm v an auto? ‘Gave’ and ‘given access’ are doing a lot of lifting there.
If y’all are comfortable with charging Parents or grandparents or whatever other adult who didn’t sufficiently secure something used to injure or kill then have at it. BUT be sure you follow your own logic and include EVERY single ‘something’ not just firearms. Get ready to lock up;
1. kitchen knives
2. rat/insect poison
3. Bleach, ammonia other chemicals
4. Over the counter medication
5. RX medications
6. Car keys/vehicles
7. Tools
8. Fuel
That’s just a partial list. All of which can and have been used to injure or kill others.
IMO once y’all transfer responsibility from the perpetrator to anyone else or an object you begin an endless cycle of chasing your tail. This young woman did it, no one else. If anyone did assist her then charge them as an accessory to these crimes.
CommoChief, everything on your list has at least dual uses and/or isn’t as inherently dangerous as a gun. The only one where I’d prosecute the parents is if they gave their 12-year-old the car keys.
Moreover, there are some specific laws that are perfectly compatible with the second amendment that apply here, one being that possession of a gun is against federal law for minors, with certain exceptions that are irrelevant here.
I own 15 guns, 33,000 rounds of ammo, and am a life member of the NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation, and would have absolutely no problem sitting on a jury for a manslaughter and conviction of a parent who allowed either directly or through reckless negligenge, their minor child to obtain a gun that the kid then used to murder someone(s).
Yes, you can commit murder with lots of other things, but the fact is that 90% of murder suicides are committed with guns and not kitchen knives, rat poison, socket wrenches, or chainsaws. Come on, make sense.
RC,
You are using the same sort of argument the anti 2A folks use which boils down to ‘firearms are uniquely bad’. You want to add regulation to firearm ownership simply b/c they exist. FWIW they also have multiple uses besides being misused to murder someone.
Today if the actions of a 3rd party rise to the level of accessory they can already be held accountable by existing law. What you and others are arguing for is a new statute applicable only to firearms.
When I point this out by listing off just a few other inherently dangerous common household items for inclusion to your statute y’all lose your mind. If you won’t follow the logic of your own argument and apply your ‘safety standards’ across the board to other dangerous items then you are falling into the anti gun trap.
Obviously there’s got to be some threshold of security that would immunize firearms owners under your proposal. What is that threshold of compliance? What if it is defeated/overcome by a determined person?
Is this requirement gonna only apply to minor children? What about adult children? How about a 3rd party thief? Who will enforce it? With what frequency will ATF or local LEO show up to demand entry? Wouldn’t that require a list of firearms and their owners be maintained by gov’t?
Y’all are on a very bad path here and allowing the heat and emotion of the moment to override other considerations.
Blame the person who murdered not the means they used. That’s the one constant in every murder; someone decided to do that then acted upon that decision.
I would also add the fact that a lot of schools and school districts are actively advocating for, even mandating, hiding students’ mental issues from their parents.
Yeah. There’s so much of modern Parenting that is an entirely different reality than the Boomers dealt with. Internet, social media, radical ideologues posing as educators, overt hostility to Parents asking questions, lack of transparency……just to name a few hurdles.
My dad took me hunting and target shooting at age 8. The rifle and ammunition I used was readily available — never locked up. I never considered harming any innocent person with that or any other weapon at any time, through grade school, high school, college, or adulthood.
But that was long before social media. Long before chat rooms, TikTok, and what passes for society today.
It was a different world. I miss it.
And obviously a different person with a different personality. If I may speculate, I’m guessing your dad would never give firearm access to a kid like this. Culture is important but doesn’t determine everything.
Kids were less likely to go psycho without social media toying with their psyche.
Where I went to high school half of the pickup trucks had rifle racks in them. Many of them with rifles, at school. We never had to worry about shootings
Same here. A different world indeed.
Heck, I had my childhood shotgun in my dormitory locker when at school as I was on the shooting team!!
Well before social media though!
Also long before they started passing out psych drugs like candy to kids.
Sorry for the down vote. Must need my third pot of coffee.
It is federally illegal for anyone under 18 to possess a handgun, except in defined circumstances, none of which apply to this case.
No manifesto, per se. But plenty of evidence on social media indicating that the shooter despised ALL men — with a vengeance. She was a radical feminist to the point of being unhinged.
And yet, the same 15 year old can go for irreversible surgery without the parents’ consent.
All men including those that claimed to be trans. A TERF. So basically a Nazi, according to alphabet crowd.
Do we get to call this terrorism, too? Sounds like “furthering ideological goals” to me.
I’ve owned a shotgun since Jan 9, 1965 followed by a Remington .22LR on my ninth birthday with quite a few Ruger MkII pistols, a S&W model 66 .357 and various long arms since.
My father taught us to respect a firearm and that it’s only purpose was to end a life.
I blame her parents.
The shooter is to blame for using a firearm to commit violence and murder.
Of course Biden called on Congress to ban “assault weapons” and hi capacity magazines in a completely random knee jerk statement
Senile Joe Biden, the corrupt fucking hypocrite.
Making parents liable for their children’s actions is perverse and stupid. If that ever becomes the law, every child who has a fight with his parents (and what child hasn’t?) will go out and smash something up or set something on fire, or even beat someone up, just to get his parents in trouble.
Maybe not legally liable, but clearly The Farce Is Strong in this family.
From the Daily Wire::
After a couple months of that, no wonder she wanted to kill something.
I heard there was manifesto found? First emergency call came from 2nd grade teacher?
https://x.com/franko_ufo/status/1868858358977249578