The mother of one of Atchison’s victims sued the FBI for not preventing the attack. The FBI had investigated Atchison in 2016 following a post of his inquiring about “where to find cheap rifles for a mass shooting.”

This document contains a selection of forum posts, comments, and journal entries believed to have been written by William Atchison, ordered chronologically and annotated. (Special thanks to Aysha Lonich, M.Ed.)

Early in 2016, William Atchison posted a comment in an online forum about “where to find cheap assault rifles for a mass shooting” (reported somewhat differently in different sources). This comment was flagged, and on 24 March 2016, two FBI agents visited Atchison’s home in Aztec, New Mexico. They spoke primarily with Atchison, but also with others, presumably his parents (as can be seen at the start and end of the transcript). Atchison admitted to his interest in school shooters but denied any intent to commit a violent act. Approximately twenty-one months later, on 7 December 2017, Atchison went to his former high school and shot and killed two people. This transcript has been newly edited and annotated for School Shooters .info. The attribution of speech may be unreliable (for instance, the first few speeches assigned to Atchison were probably spoken by one of his parents). For the text of Atchison’s online posts, see the document “William Atchison Online.”