Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler told a news conference Thursday that the woman that killed 3 people had been identified as a temporary employee, Snochia Moseley of Baltimore County. It appears only one weapon was used.  It was a 9 mm Glock handgun that was registered in Moseley’s name. And no shots were fired by responding law enforcement officers, he added.   In Aberdeen, the 26-year-old assailant killed three people before turning the gun on herself, say sheriff’s officers, who have not revealed a motive. Witnesses say the shooter, a temporary employee at the warehouse, had been arguing with someone before the incident.

One thing, though, was unusual: The shooter – who killed three people – was female.

There are two primary reasons for the gaping disparity between gun violence committed by men and women, said Laura Dugan, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Maryland.   “Men, in general, are much more violent than women, and that’s been well-documented and well-recorded,” Dugan said. “With every single statistic that you can imagine, gender is the biggest predictor of violence.”  Greater male violence could be traced to a number of factors, Dugan said, such as testosterone, or the fact that women tend to be more relationship-oriented, while men are “object-oriented and focused on finishing things up.”

The second reason is that men are significantly more likely to own guns. According to a 2017 Pew study, 39 percent of men said they owned a gun, compared with 22 percent of women. Men were also more likely to have participated in gun-related activities growing up and tended to buy guns at earlier ages, the study showed.   Dugan noted that women are more likely to own guns for self-defense purposes, while men buy guns for a variety of reasons.