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Mass Shootings in America: Moving Beyond Newtown
Abstract
Mass shootings at a Connecticut elementary school, a Colorado movie theater, and other venues have prompted a fair number of proposals for change. Advocates for tighter gun restrictions, for expanding mental health services, for upgrading security in public places, and, even, for controlling violent entertainment have made certain assumptions about the nature of mass murder that are not necessarily valid. This article examines a variety of myths and misconceptions about multiple homicide and mass shooters, pointing out some of the difficult realities in trying to avert these murderous rampages. While many of the policy proposals are worthwhile in general, their prospects for reducing the risk of mass murder are limited.
... The cultural trauma (Alexander, Eyerman, Giesen, Smelser, & Sztompka, 2004) produced by the recent Aurora, Sandy Hook, and Orlando shootings has driven public perception of a mass gun violence epidemic. Media accounts highlight these especially violent and sensational shootings (Schildkraut, Elsass, & Meredith, 2017), and contextualize them with data illustrating the worst-case scenario (Fox & DeLateur, 2014). Recently, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) published a report finding that since the turn of the century, active shooter incidents have increased at an annual rate of 16 percent (Blair & Schweit, 2014). ...
... For example, research finds that mass gun violence receives disproportionate amounts of coverage in relation to other forms of crime and homicide, despite being far less common (Duwe, 2000;Lawrence & Mueller, 2003;Maguire, Weatherby, & Mathers, 2002). The media driven assertion that mass gun violence is rising to epidemic proportions influences public opinion about safety and security (Burns & Crawford, 1999, Fox & DeLateur, 2014Muschert 2007), as well as political discourse and subsequent policies surrounding the phenomenon (Borum, Cornell, Modzeleski, & Jimerson, 2010;Kleck, 2009;McGinty, Webster, & Barry, 2013). The considerable consequences related to these mediated public perceptions of mass gun violence stress the importance of research assessing the prevalence of the problem. ...
... The FBI active shooter report and Mother Jones mass shooting database represent and solidify the public and media perceptions of a mass gun violence epidemic. Despite these findings, several scholars (Fox & DeLateur, 2014;Lott, 2015;Shultz, Cohen, Muschert, & Flores de Apodaca, 2013) have disagreed with the assertion that mass gun violence is rising, citing inherent methodological issues and misconceptions that have muddled evaluation and reporting of active shooter incidents and mass shootings in America. ...
The excessive media coverage of mass gun violence has contributed to the public perception of an epidemic. These senstionalized media accounts highlight statistics suggesting a dramatic rise of the phenomenon. This chapter provides an in-depth analysis and comparison of open-source datasets to identify methodological weaknesses and clarify the prevalence of the problem. Findings illustrate the definitional, temporal, and data collection issues impacting the accuracy of assessment. This deconstruction of research counters the perception of a substantial rise in mass gun violence and suggests rates will vary depending on the typological phenomenon being investigated. A discussion of findings illustrates the importance of continuing the examination of mass gun violence and provides comprehensive guidelines for future research assessing the frequency of the phenomenon.
... These dynamic variations make it difficult to determine which incidents should be included in mass shooting research. Some research does not even consider the motive in definitional criteria (Fox & DeLateur, 2014;Mass Shooting Tracker, 2017). However, perpetrator motivations play an important role in developing effective assessments, policies, and security measures (Krouse & Richardson, 2015). ...
... The most contentious aspect of the debate over how to define mass shootings is the number of victims (both fatalities and injuries) necessary for inclusion (Bowers et al., 2010). The number of victims plays a vital role in gauging the seriousness of the problem, and data highlighting the worst case scenario is often presented in the media (Fox & DeLateur, 2014). Scholars argue the number of fatalities and injuries may be arbitrary and theoretically irrelevant. ...
... A cultural trauma refers to profound events that provoke deep concern and societal response (Alexander et al., 2004). Research examining the salience of coverage devoted to mass shootings finds that it has increased fear, risk of victimization, and the perception of an epidemic (Burns & Crawford, 1999, Fox & DeLateur, 2014Muschert 2007). The salience of coverage devoted to a particular type of mass shooting impacts specific subsections of the population that feel most at risk. ...
This study examines the reality and news media coverage of all mass shootings in the
United States from 1966 to 2016. It employs agenda-setting and framing theoretical frameworks to determine the social construction of mass shootings via the mass media. The project uses open-source data to create a comprehensive list of mass shooting incidents. It then identifies all published New York Times articles on each incident. The study summarizes both the reality of the social problem (i.e. incidents) and the news mediated reality (i.e. New York Times). Next, this dissertation conducts a media distortion analysis to determine the perpetrator, motivation, and incident characteristics influencing media selection, prominence, and framing. The purpose is to illustrate the media’s social construction of mass shootings that in turn shapes public perceptions, political discourse, and public policies. The study concludes by highlighting the findings and implications for scholars, practitioners, policy-makers, media outlets, and the general public.
... Most scholars and professional stakeholders are likely to agree that outright prevention of active shootings is favorable to harm mitigation (Knoll & Pies, 2019), since even an attempted active shooting may traumatize witnesses. Studies (Calhoun & Weston, 2003;National Threat Assessment Center, 2023;O'Toole, 2000;Peterson et al., 2022Peterson et al., , 2021 have identified warning signs and concerning behaviors among mass public shooters, but many of these risk factors are shared by many other individuals who do not commit violence (Fox & DeLateur, 2014), an overprediction error described by Matza (1964) as an "embarrassment of riches." However, while empirical research continues to improve our understanding of active and mass public shooters, harm mitigation stands as an effective and theoretically sound alternative. ...
... While these defensive and surveillance strategies may introduce an unintended risk of heightened fear and anxiety among the general public, similar risks exist within other prevention strategies. For example, prevention methods that use behavioral and psychological indicators to assess the potential for harmful behavior, like threat assessment, may inaccurately identify an individual as meeting the threshold for intervention and further alienate or traumatize them (Fox & DeLateur, 2014). The unintended consequences of SCP may be easier to balance in the context of harm mitigation, as SCP avoids labeling and individualized intervention in favor of environmental modification. ...
Research summary
Situational crime prevention (SCP) is an environmental crime control perspective with enormous practical and policy relevance due to its practitioner‐friendly theoretical approach. This study examines whether SCP interventions reduce incident casualty outcomes in active shooter incidents. We used an inductive, open‐source data set of 555 active shooter and mass public shooting sites to study the applicability of SCP to active shooter and mass public violence. Our findings suggest a harm mitigation role for SCP: active shooter sites with stronger holistic SCP had fewer casualties. We assessed perpetrator motivation to test displacement, a core critique of SCP, and found that the harm mitigation potential of SCP persists even in the presence of a highly motivated offender.
Policy summary
SCP could be a practical and effective method to decrease casualties in the event of an active shooting, which is a highly motivated crime type that is difficult to predict and prevent. Public locations may select a range of appropriate SCP techniques based on individual resources and needs. The totality and interactions of these techniques may contribute to public safety in general, with diffuse benefits. This policy solution is highly oriented toward practice and real‐life application, and may be used to supplement existing preventative measures like threat assessment and gun legislation.
... Here, the mean average precisions for the mAP0. 5, mAP0.75, and mAP[0.500.95] are 77.02%, 16.40%, and 29.73%, respectively, according to the Weighted Box Fusion-based Ensemble Detection Scheme. ...
... Very little is spoken about other prevalent causes of death in our society. Every year, homicide and road accidents claim the lives of many innocent individuals [3,4,5]. Many countries' conventional armies and police enforcement divisions eventually embraced weapons after their widespread usage in the American Civil War in the 19th century. ...
Any kind of violence is a shame to the world we live in. However, violence still plays a significant role in our society today and claims many innocent lives. Using a gun is one of the traditional methods of violence. Nowadays, firearm-related fatalities are a widespread occurrence. It poses a risk to public safety and presents difficulties for law enforcement. Most of these incidents take place in cities or semi-urban regions. Today, CCTV-based surveillance is widely used by both public and commercial institutions for monitoring and prevention. However, human-based monitoring is error-prone and needs a large number of person-hours as a resource. However, automated smart surveillance is better suited for large-scale and dependable monitoring of violent actions. The primary goal of the study is to demonstrate how deep learning-based methods may be used to identify weaponry, especially rifles. This research employs many detection methods for human face and gun identification, including the newest EfficientDet-based architectures and Faster Region-Based Convolutional Neural Networks (Faster RCNN). The post-processing detection performance of weapons and human faces has been enhanced using an ensemble (stacked) strategy that employs Non-Maximum Suppression, Non-Maximum Weighted, and Weighted Box Fusion techniques. In this study, the comparative outcomes of several detection methods and their ensembles have been addressed experimentally. It facilitates the police's rapid information gathering about the situation and enables them to take prompt preventative action. Additionally, social media videos may be found using the same method for gun-based content recognition. Here, the mean average precisions for the mAP0.5, mAP0.75, and mAP[0.500.95] are 77.02%, 16.40%, and 29.73%, respectively, according to the Weighted Box Fusion-based Ensemble Detection Scheme. Out of all the options tested, the outcomes provide the best performance. The model has undergone extensive testing using movie clips and unidentified test photos. The resulting ensemble schemes are consistently better than the basic models and are adequate.
... The American public's widespread belief that schools are dangerous places has reached the level of a moral panic (Elsass et al., 2021;Fox & Fridel, 2018). Fox and DeLateur (2014) have debunked a series of popular myths about the causes of mass shootings and how readily they might be prevented. ...
... Violence researchers have rejected the idea that there is a profile or checklist of psychological characteristics to predict which students would commit a school shooting (Fox & DeLateur, 2014;National Threat Assessment Center, 2019). Instead, they have proposed the use of threat assessment to identify and intervene with students who have engaged in threatening statements or behavior that raises concern they are planning or preparing to carry out an attack. ...
... Research on the preattack behaviors of mass shooters has dispelled the idea that these attacks are the result of the perpetrator "snapping" (Fox & DeLateur, 2013;Freitas & Annas, 2022). Mass shootings are planned in advance with mass shooters typically spending several weeks, months, or This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. ...
... The theme of revenge ran through the entire fixation warning behavior shown by the shooters. Revenge is a common motive of mass shooters (Bowers et al., 2010;Knoll, 2012) and fueled their belief that they are entitled to their attacks due to the unfair treatment they perceived to have endured in their lifetime (Fox & DeLateur, 2013;Hempel et al., 1999). Shooters often did not take responsibility for the injustices that they suffered; blame was always cast on other individuals (Duwe, 2004). ...
Mass murder is rare, but the impact these events have is devastating. Identifying warning behaviors of mass shooters could prevent these events. The present study analyzed 27 manifestos from 23 mass shooters in the United States. The manifestos were qualitatively coded for the eight preattack warning behaviors of shooters proposed by Meloy et al. (2012). Six of the eight warning behaviors were identified in the 27 manifestos. These warning behaviors have only been examined retrospectively. Future research should examine the ability of these waring behaviors to identify a potential mass shooter before they attack.
... Some of the research examining patterns in news media coverage of mass shootings has found that perpetrators of different racial categories are given different types of coverage (e.g., Klein, 2013;McGinty et al., 2013;Fox and DeLateur, 2014;Duxbury et al., 2018). This body of work documents not only patterned differences in news media coverage by race, but argues that such coverage works in ways that shore up existing racial inequalities by relying on cultural stereotypes that justify patterns of exclusion and inequality. ...
... Following the domestic terrorist attack on 9/11 in the United States and the racialization of terrorism as Middle Eastern, Arab, and Muslim, however, news media narratives shifted to more individualistic explanations of mass shootings like "bullying" (e.g., Kimmel and Mahler, 2003;Leary et al., 2003;Klein, 2013). And later, news media coverage became more likely to cite mental health as an individual-level explanation for mass shootings (e.g., McGinty et al., 2013;Fox and DeLateur, 2014;Metzl and MacLeish, 2015). While some reporting does focus on the fact that the overwhelming majority of mass shootings are committed by men, less coverage considers race, despite the fact that the incidents given the most news media coverage have tended to publicize mass shootings committed by perpetrators racialized as white. ...
Relying on more expansive criteria for defining “mass shootings” than much existing research, we examine a subset of a unique dataset incorporating 7,048 news documents covering 2,170 shootings in the United States between 2013 and 2019. We analyze the descriptive language used to describe incidents and perpetrators and discover significant racial disparities in representation. This research enables a critical examination of the explanatory frames utilized by news media to tell the public who mass shooters are and journalistic attempts to explain why they occur. Data were analyzed utilizing a mixed methods approach, relying on content analysis to inductively code emergent categories of descriptions of shooters and binary logistic regressions to analyze the preponderance of descriptive categories when comparing news articles reporting on shootings committed by differently racialized shooters. Our results confirm some recent research showing that mass shooters racialized as white are more likely to be described with kind and compassionate language. With our larger sample, however, we also find that mass shooters racialized as white are additionally more likely to be described with negative language as “bad” or “evil” in comparison to shooters of color. We discuss how these data demonstrate that media reports present a more complex picture of white mass shooters for the public than shooters of color.
... These events are disproportionately covered by the media and therefore loom disproportionately large in the American imagination (see Refs. (6,32,33); and see Ref. (34) for analyses of social media discourse). In our analyses, we further differentiate between public and nonpublic shootings, as shootings that take place in public settings receive far more media coverage than the more prevalent mass killings that take place in private homes and residences (35), and, perhaps consequently, are central to the American conception of what a mass shooting entails (36). Researchers have argued that public shootings create the sense that "that could have been me," whereas private killings do not create that same sense of vulnerability (37,38). ...
Mass shootings are devastating events. Communities can cope with the ensuing trauma in a number of ways, including changing their behavioral patterns. Using point-of-sale data from 35,000 individual retailers, including more than half of all American grocery and drugstore purchases, and all American mass shootings from 2006 to 2019, we find, in a set of two-way fixed-effects counterfactual analyses, that a mass shooting in a given community (the area covered by the ZIP-3 code) predicts a significant increase in the sales of alcohol that lasts at least 2 years past the shooting. The effect is especially strong for the subset of mass shootings that take place in public settings, whereas we find no evidence for an increase in alcohol sales in the aftermath of mass shootings that take place in private homes or residences. As alcohol is an accelerant for violence, especially firearm-related violence, we suggest the importance of whole-community approaches to addressing the trauma of mass shootings.
... Furthermore, men's economic instability may be closely linked to their difficulties accessing heterosexual relationships. Men's failure to achieve romantic success with women has been found to be a key predictor of their hostility toward women and feminism (Dancygier et al., 2022;Fox & DeLateur, 2014;Fox & Fridel, 2017). The incel movement is a prime example of this phenomenon, as its members blame their sexual and economic predicaments on women and feminism (Menzie, 2022). ...
Male victimhood ideology, the belief that men are the primary targets of gender discrimination, has gained traction among young men in recent years, but the underlying sources of these sentiments remain understudied. Utilizing four different datasets, collected in 2015, 2018, 2020, and 2023 from representative samples of Korean men, this study investigates whether identification with male victimhood ideology is explained by objective economic hardships faced by men or by their perceptions of a status loss. The economic hardship perspective finds little support, as men who were less educated, had lower incomes, were unemployed, or had non-regular employment were no more likely to identify with male victimhood than their more economically stable counterparts. Instead, a perceived decline in socioeconomic status relative to one’s parents emerged as a significant predictor of male victimhood ideology, particularly among men from middle to upper class backgrounds. Additional analyses show that this pattern is not observed among Korean women of the same age group. Overall, the analysis of the four datasets consistently shows that male victimhood discourse is embraced most by those who perceive a loss of privilege, rather than by those who are marginalized.
... As noted, most research on mass shootings has relied on publicly available information like media accounts, social media, and court records, which have varying levels of reliability or credibility (Freilich et al., 2020(Freilich et al., , 2022. Many studies set forth typologies or examine the perpetrators' motives and personal characteristics (e.g., Fox & DeLateur, 2014;Gill et al., 2017;Huff-Corzine et al., 2014), but this research is of limited utility for policymakers (Grondahl & Bjorkly, 2016). In contrast, studies have rarely examined factors such as the environment of these attacks, efforts to prevent them, or strategies to limit their lethality (but see Freilich et al., 2020;Greene-Colozzi, 2022;Reeping et al., 2020;Schildkraut et al., 2019;Silva & Greene-Colozzi, 2021). ...
We examine all publicly available after-action reports (AARs) on active shooter incidents in the U.S. from 1999 through 2022 ( n = 31). We conduct a thematic analysis of recommendations provided in the AARs to identify common areas for improvement in the law enforcement response to these incidents. We find considerable overlap in the recommendations across AARs, with themes related to pre-incident planning, training, inter-agency coordination, incident command, and communication being the most common. Findings indicate recurring challenges for law enforcement, suggesting agencies may not be effectively learning from prior active shooter incidents. We discuss the potential of AARs to strengthen agency preparedness and promote organizational learning. We further provide recommendations to improve AARs and to centralize and disseminate their findings.
... Crime gun studies have found multiple purchases on the same day or over a short period of time (in states where this is possible) are positively associated with law enforcement recovery (Wright et al. 2010). Studies of mass shooters, though not our primary focus, indicate most mass shooters acquire their firearms through legal markets (Fox and DeLateur 2014;Follman et al. 2018), and often stockpile many firearms in close proximity to the attack (Schuurman et al. 2017). The identification and documentation of such patterns can be used to inform practice and prevention. ...
Background
Firearm purchasing records offer a potentially important administrative data source to identify individuals at elevated risk of perpetrating firearm violence. In this study, we describe individual, firearm, and transaction characteristics of purchasers in California who were arrested for a firearm-related violent crime (FRV) as compared to the general population of registered purchasers in the state.
Methods
Relying on a dataset of all individuals with transaction records in California (1996–2021), linked to criminal records (1980–2021), we enrolled a cohort of individuals for whom we could capture the legal firearm purchase history. We identified those arrested for FRV post purchase, and using incidence density sampling, gender-matched cases to ten purchasers (controls) who remained “at risk” at the time the case was arrested. We focused on the purchase closest in time prior to the arrest (“index” purchase). We implemented conditional logistic regression and included models with controls for individual- and community-level demographics, as well as interactions between firearm and purchasing characteristics and criminal history.
Results
The cohort included 1,212,144 individuals, of whom 6153 were arrested for FRV (0.5%). Cases were matched to 61,530 controls to form the study sample. The largest risk factor was a prior criminal history: purchasers had 5.84 times the risk of FRV if they had a prior arrest within three years of the index purchase (CI 5.44–6.27). Several transaction and firearm characteristics were also associated with FRV. For example, risk increased if the firearm was redeemed at a pawn shop (aIRR: 1.37, CI 1.05–1.77) and decreased if the transaction was a registered private party transfer (vs. retail purchase) (aIRR: 0.83, CI 0.76–0.90) or the firearm was a bolt action firearm (vs. semi-automatic) (aIRR: 0.64, CI 0.51–0.79). In the interaction models, most of the purchase and firearm features only remained significant among those with no criminal history.
Conclusions
Given limited data on firearm transactions, there has been little research on whether the type of firearm an individual purchases or the nature of the purchase might serve as indicators of risk for FRV. We found several transaction and firearm features were associated with risk of FRV. Notably, these features provided little evidence of additional risk for those with a prior criminal record.
... While understanding the characteristics of active shooters is complex, certain objectives of active shooters have been identified through prior research and law enforcement reports. A shooter usually has an objective to punish the public by maximizing the number of casualties (Fox and DeLateur, 2014), which can be represented through RL. The goal of the agent is to select actions that maximize the cumulative future reward, formulated as: ...
With the alarming rise in active shooter incidents (ASIs) in the United States, enhancing public safety through building design has become a pressing need. This study proposes a reinforcement learning-based simulation approach addressing gaps in existing research that has neglected the dynamic behaviours of shooters. We developed an autonomous agent to simulate an active shooter within a realistic office environment, aiming to offer insights into the interactions between building design parameters and ASI outcomes. A case study is conducted to quantitatively investigate the impact of building exit numbers (total count of accessible exits) and configuration (arrangement of which exits are available or not) on evacuation and harm rates. Findings demonstrate that greater exit availability significantly improves evacuation outcomes and reduces harm. Exits nearer to the shooter's initial position hold greater importance for accessibility than those farther away. By encompassing dynamic shooter behaviours, this study offers preliminary insights into effective building safety design against evolving threats.
... As evidenced in Excerpt 2, this form of fantasizing can provide an escape from repressed frustrations and momentarily alleviate personal challenges. While extensive research has already delved into the topic of frustration in relation to crime (see Fox & DeLateur, 2014;Kalish & Kimmel, 2010), the forthcoming joint fantasizing unravels additional connections between fantasies and frustrations, particularly in the context of ordinary criminal types like motor vehicle thieves. In particular, this excerpt reflects on the possibility of interpreting one's own criminal activity in relation to what the fathers of two of the participants would have thought about their children's career choices. ...
This study introduces the concept of joint fantasizing into narrative criminology. Joint fantasizing is presented as a conceptual and methodological innovation because it allows for the exploration of fantasies, a type of narrative capable of conveying highly important content, often unattainable through other means. It does so in a collective and shared manner, minimizing the researcher's presence , thereby improving the ecological validity of individual interviews , widely used in narrative criminology. By analyzing joint fantasizing that emerge from interactions among four men who comprise a motor vehicle theft group, the analysis identifies the functions of joint fantasizing within a criminal context, categorizing them as 'Formation of Subcultural Narratives,' 'Escapism and Catharsis,' and 'Symbolic Resistance and Moral superiority.' By delving into the multifaceted dimensions of joint fantasizing, this study aims to suggest a novel conceptual and methodological framework and contribute valuable insights into the identities, values, motivations of individuals within the criminal landscape.
... A man's social status is often linked to his success with women, and failure in these areas can lead to a perceived loss of status, triggering various negative emotional responses and compensatory behaviors (Willer et al. 2013). Research has indicated that failures to achieve heterosexual sex or enter into a heterosexual romantic relationship are precursors to antisocial behaviors like mass murder (Fox and DeLateur 2014;Fox and Fridel 2017) and hate crimes (Dancygier et al. 2022). In addition, men's resentment over being 'deprived' of women or sex is frequently expressed in popular misogynistic online communities, for example, among "involuntary celibates" (incels), who often attribute their inability to have sex or a relationship to women and feminist movements (Menzie 2022). ...
... Public perceptions of crime and mental illness are also shaped by the news media. Oftentimes, depicting crime as caused by mental illness is a strategy reserved for white offenders (Fox and DeLateur 2014;Leary et al. 2003;McGinty et al. 2014). Media coverage emphasizes the mental health of white mass shooters, but it casts non-white perpetrators of extreme crimes as "racial folk devils" (Duxbury et al. 2018, p. 767). ...
On 27 March 2023, Aiden Hale broke into the Covenant School, a private Christian academy in Nashville, TN, and killed three students and three staff members. Hale, a former student at the school, was transgender. Although assigned female at birth, Hale identified as male, asked to be called by a male name, and used he/him pronouns. In the aftermath of the shooting, a newfound wave of anti-trans rhetoric soared, once again putting members of the transgender community in harm’s way. In this article, we review the details of the Covenant School shooting and consider them in the context of the anti-trans movement in the United States, a movement that has escalated as transgender people have become more visible and more vocal in society. We then present findings from an extensive content analysis of newspaper coverage in the two weeks following the shooting (27 March–10 April). In so doing, we add to the literature on K-12 school shootings and gender studies, specifically stigma towards the transgender community.
... The assailants, almost all of which are male, tend to share characteristics from past trauma and personal crises, including depression, resentment, social isolation, the tendency to externalize blame, fascination with graphically violent entertainment, and a keen interest in weaponry. As discussed in Fox & DeLateur (2014), however, these indicators may constitute warning signs but tend to over-predict potential perpetrators as they are prevalent in a large portion of the population. Indeed, Metzl & MacLeish (2015) and Metzl et al. (2021) have more recently suggested that mental illness alone does not provide sufficient evidence to explain and prevent mass shootings. ...
Over the last fifty years, the United States have experienced hundreds of mass public shootings that resulted in thousands of victims. Characterized by their frequent occurrence and devastating nature, mass shootings have become a major public health hazard that dramatically impact safety and well-being of individuals and communities. Given the epidemic traits of this phenomenon, there have been concerted efforts to understand the root causes that lead to public mass shootings in order to implement effective prevention strategies. For this reason, we propose a quantile mixed graphical model for investigating the intricacies of inter- and infra-domain relationships of this complex phenomenon, where conditional relations between discrete and continuous variables are modeled without stringent distributional assumptions using Parzen's definition of mid-quantile. To retrieve the graph structure and recover only the most relevant connections, we consider the neighborhood selection approach in which conditional mid-quantiles of each variable in the network are modeled as a sparse function of all others. We propose a two-step procedure to estimate the graph where, in the first step, conditional mid-probabilities are obtained semi-parametrically and, in the second step, the model parameters are estimated by solving an implicit equation with a LASSO penalty.
... 6 This four fatality threshold has been utilized by many scholars to define mass shootings (i.e., "mass murders" by firearm). [7][8][9][10][11] In 2013, President Barack Obama called for a separate federal definition of "mass killings" as incidents involving three or more fatalities (with the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012) (Of note, the fatality thresholds of both "mass murders" and "mass killings" exclude the possible death of the perpetrator of the violence). ...
Background:
The United States experiences more mass shootings than any other nation in the world. Various entities have sought to collect data on this phenomenon, but there is no scholarly consensus regarding how best to define mass shootings. As a result, existing datasets include different incidents, limiting our understanding of the impact of mass gun violence in the U.S.
Methods:
We compared five datasets of mass shootings for each year included in five databases (2013-2020) and identified overlaps between each database's incidents. These overlaps and divergences between datasets persisted after applying the strictest fatality threshold (four or more) in mass shootings scholarship and policy.
Findings:
The datasets collectively include 3155 incidents, but the number of incidents included in each individual dataset varies from 57 to 2955 incidents. Only 25 incidents (0.008% of all incidents) are included in all five datasets. This finding persists even when applying the strictest criteria for mass shootings (four or more fatalities).
Interpretation:
Data discrepancies prevent us from understanding the public health impact of mass gun violence. These discrepancies result from a lack of scholarly consensus on how to define mass shootings, likely the downstream consequence of the politicization of gun violence research. We argue for a broad definition of a mass shooting and a government-supported data collection program to remedy these discrepancies. Such steps can improve the quality of research and support policy-making and journalism on the subject.
Funding:
This research was supported by the Pahl Initiative on the Study of Critical Social Issues, University of California, Santa Barbara.
... 1 As one category of gun-related homicide, mass shooting generally features more victims, public venues, and indiscriminate shooting. Its salience in media tends to amplify people's safety concerns in public places, including hotels and movie theaters (Fox and DeLateur, 2014;Petee et al., 1997). ...
... One possible explanation is that mass shootings increase the fear for personal safety, and this fear response motivates people to arm themselves. Mass shootings are not the deadliest form of homicide, but they may incite the most fear among the public because of their random nature and the inability to predict and prevent them (Fox and DeLateur, 2014). The Gallup poll in 2019 showed that about half of Americans were "very" or "somewhat" worried about being a victim of a future terrorist attack (Gallup, 2019). ...
Surges in firearm sales after mass shootings have been well documented in the United States. This study presents three main findings regarding the impact of mass shootings on firearm demand and the moderating roles played by political and regulatory climates. First, mass shootings led to an immediate but temporary increase in gun sales. This effect continued for approximately 3–6 months after the incidents and was larger for shootings with a greater number of fatalities. Second, the association between mass shootings and gun sales was significant only under Democratic presidents. The party affiliation of the state legislature and state-level gun control did not moderate this association. Third, the increased firearm sales after mass shootings did not result in a higher level of firearm ownership. It appeared most purchases were made by current gun owners stockpiling additional firearms, thus indicating the fear of stricter gun control as a likely motivation. This study offers the following policy implications: (a) the public debates concerning gun violence could have the unintended consequence of raising gun demand among current owners, (b) the message of tightening gun control could increase the total stock of firearms in circulation, and (c) the regulations to prevent future mass shootings may be better addressed by the state government as a state-level regulation does not trigger demand response among potential consumers.
... Prior research on school shootings has focused principally on the effectiveness and/or implementation of preventative policies (e.g., Addington, 2009;Fox and Burstein, 2010;Fox and Delateur, 2014); on understanding the shooter's motives (e.g., Böckler, Seeger & Heitmeyer, 2011;Langman, 2009;Leary et al., 2003); and on the social/political factors that may have contributed to the shooting (e.g., Kimmel & Mahler, 2003;Larkin, 2007;Newman et al., 2005;Sullivan & Guerette, 2003;) ...
Prior research on the media framing of school shootings has largely examined
framing within events rather than across events. Further, less attention has been given
to how these frames are disseminated – while prior studies have examined the impact
of temporal distance on coverage, no study to date has examined how reporting of
school shootings is influenced by physical distance. This paper examines coverage of
eight school shootings across eight regional publications, focusing on the
dissemination of the victim narrative and the impact of this narrative on collective
mourning. Proposing my model of concentric mourning, I highlight how theories of
collective mourning are limited in their failure to address the impacts of physical
distance. Concentric mourning refers to the way emotional sentiments dissipate with
larger degrees of separation between the victim and the bereaved. Feelings of
mourning become less intense the farther one is from the victim - relationally,
physically, or emotionally. I argue that the dissipation of mourning sentiments is
influenced by the disproportionate propagation of the victim narrative. Findings
highlight that the media attention given to a shooting, and the amount of coverage
dedicated to the victim narrative, decrease with distance between publication and
event across multiple incidents, thus impacting the way we collectively grieve and
collectively remember school shooting episodes.
... Mass shootings are a prominent social and public health issue in the United States. 1 Criminology has historically given little empirical and theoretical attention to mass shootings compared to other types of offending (Fox & DeLateur, 2014). Despite this, research on mass shootings is growing and our understanding of this type of violence is deepening. ...
Recent work by Allison and Klein examining violence and homicide introduced the concept of strained masculinity, a theoretical integration of general strain theory and hegemonic masculinity. Using qualitative data collection ( n = 63), the current study considers strained masculinity themes in the context of mass shootings and the gender gap. Findings demonstrated support for the prevalence of Allison and Klein’s themes in mass shootings. The men who committed mass shootings in our sample responded to challenges to their masculinity (62%), pursued hegemonic masculinity through “sport” (33%), and pursued hegemonic masculinity through controlling space (27%). In addition, qualitative analysis revealed overlaps in strained masculinity themes for mass shooting cases, demonstrating the complexity of this type of violence. There were six outlier cases identified that did not display strained masculinity, rather the perpetrators in these cases suffered from psychological or emotional troubles before opening fire. Overall, findings indicate that the integration of traditional criminology theories and gender theories is warranted.
... Soni and Tekin (2020) examine the impact of mass shootings on community well-being and emotional health (relating various dimensions of satisfaction with the local community, safety concerns, and indicators of stress) and find a significant negative impact on these indicators. Fox and DeLateur (2013) show that, while mass shootings account for the fewest loss of lives compared to any other type of homicide, these events induce the most fear in people due to their seemingly random nature and the inability to predict and prevent incidents. Starting from Elster (1998), several studies, especially in finance, highlight the role of emotions in economic behaviour (see e.g. ...
We estimate the dynamic causal effects of consumer sentiment shocks in the US. We identify autonomous changes in survey evidence on consumer confidence using fatalities in mass shootings as an instrument. We find the instrument to be significant for an aggregate index of consumer expectations and also back up the identification scheme with micro evidence that exploits the geographical variation in mass shootings. Sentiment shocks have real macroeconomic effects. A negative sentiment shock is recessionary: It sets off a persistent decline in consumer confidence and induces a contraction in industrial production, private sector consumption, and in the labor market, while having less evident nominal effects. Finally, sentiment shocks explain a non-negligible part of the cyclical fluctuations in consumer confidence and real macroeconomic aggregates.
... However, our results suggest that the stereotype may be changing perhaps due to the rise and subsequent media coverage of other types of violent crimes such as mass shootings. For example, the most highly publicized mass shootings tend to have White perpetrators (Duxbury et al., 2018), and many assume that there is little racial variation in mass shooting perpetration (Fox & DeLateur, 2014;Fox & Levin, 2003). Thus, our participants could be using an availability heuristic when making judgements about whether a suspect appears dangerous, threatening, or violent. ...
Previous research has provided evidence that darker-skinned Black individuals are usually associated with more negative stereotypes, and they often receive harsher sentences for committing a crime compared to their lighter-skinned Black and White counterparts. While this prior work suggests the presence of a skin tone bias within the criminal justice system, few experimental studies have accounted for the type of crime committed. In a 2 (skin tone: light-skinned Black, dark-skinned Black, or White skin) x 2 (crime committed: white-collar or blue-collar) design, the present study examined whether the skin tone of the perpetrator and type of crime committed influenced judgements of guilt and beliefs about the perpetrator's character. The results showed that a skin tone bias was present only when the perpetrator committed a blue-collar crime. Furthermore, participants believed that the light-skinned Black perpetrator appeared less dangerous, threatening, and violent, compared to the dark-skinned Black and White perpetrators. This study demonstrates how the effects of an interracial bias may partly depend on the type of crime committed.
Mass public shootings in the U.S. have become a major public health hazard, impacting the safety and well-being of individuals and communities. Motivated by this pressing issue, we propose a mid-quantile mixed graphical model for investigating the intricacies of inter- and infra-domain relationships of this complex phenomenon, where conditional relations between discrete and continuous variables are modelled without stringent distributional assumptions using Parzen’s definition of mid-quantile. To retrieve the graph structure and recover only the most relevant connections, we consider the neighbourhood selection approach in which conditional mid-quantiles of each variable in the network are modelled as a sparse function of all others. We propose a two-step procedure to estimate the graph where, in the first step, conditional mid-probabilities are obtained semi-parametrically and, in the second step, the model parameters are estimated by solving an implicit equation with a LASSO penalty.
Understanding why people commit mass shootings in the United States is perplexing and discerning perpetrators' motivations is difficult because there have been a fairly limited number of shootings. In addition, there is incomplete research on mitigating historical evidence about the perpetrators. Thus, this chapter takes a broader approach to understanding why these shootings may have happened by reviewing the empirical literature to identify possible correlations from childhood and adolescent trauma experiences (and subsequent mental health problems) to later adult violence. This review supports a hypothesis that these experiences are potential links to explaining mass shooting outcomes. The trauma experiences that are identified to be most impactful include maltreatment, poverty, witnessing violence, domestic violence, deaths (violent and non-violent) of family and friends, and adolescent bullying.
Recent and ongoing events have created national concern, fear, and dialogue about potential future acts of mass casualty violence. While much attention has been directed towards the creation of stricter gun control legislation as a means to prevent such acts, little has been mentioned about understanding the offender characteristics and motives for these horrific crimes. Many of the mass shooting offenders share similar features. More attention must be given to these commonalities as a way to understand the event itself, and for the formulation of preventive measures. This study examines mass shooting situations from 1962 to 2013 and analyzes the similarities amongst offenders. In addition, through the application of Identity Theory, it is argued that these acts are perpetrated due to identify conflicts that the violators possess. Through the commission of these acts, they are able to reassert their role and place within society
Although student homicides have remained consistently low over the past decades, highly publicized lethal incidents in American schools have garnered concern among the public. Mass shootings in primary and secondary schools have impacted the fear of victimization and subsequently affected school policies to prevent and control school violence. While school violence is largely viewed as a problem in urban schools, mass shootings have occurred more often in town and rural schools. This chapter examines the nature, prevalence, and incidence of mass shootings and multiple victim violence in rural schools. The chapter includes a review of contributing factors to mass school shootings and examines perceptions and fear of the problem from students and parents. The chapter concludes with threat assessment, and research on prevention and control strategies.
Most prior research has examined whether not violent content in games could be linked to aggressive behavior. Despite several decades of research, clear links between violent content and player aggression have not been established, with much debate remaining. This chapter argues that research would be more fruitful focusing its attention away from content issues and instead on players themselves. Increasing evidence suggests that player motivations, frustration, and the social context of play are more crucial to understanding the media experience than are morally salient concerns with violence or other objectionable content. It is concluded that players have considerable agency in regard to selecting, interpreting, and shaping their media experience.
Mass shootings have emerged as a significant threat to public safety, with devastating consequences for communities and individuals affected by such events [7]. However, a lack of widespread use of new technological infrastructure poses significant risk to victims [8]. This paper proposes a system to classify and localize gunshots in reverberant indoor urban conditions, using MFCC features and a Convolutional Neural Network binary classifier [9]. The location information is further relayed to users through a mobile client in real time. We installed a prototype of the system in a high school in Orange County, California and conducted a qualitative evaluation of the approach. Preliminary results show that such a mass shooting response system can effectively improve survivability.
Purpose
Reducing fatalities and increasing the number of students able to remain safe during an active shooter event is paramount to the health and well-being of schools and communities. Yet, methodological limitations and ethical concerns have restricted prior research on security measures during school shooter lockdown drills. This study aims to fill that gap by using virtual reality (VR) to statistically examine the effectiveness of active shooter response protocols in a simulated high school.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a full factorial, within-subjects experimental design, this exploratory investigation used VR technology to investigate whether automatic classroom door locks, centralized lockdown notifications and the presence of a school resource officer (SRO) significantly impacted student safety and casualty mitigation. Data were collected from a convenience sample of 37 individuals who volunteered to participate in 24 school shooter scenarios within a simulated virtual environment.
Findings
Multiple one-way analysis of variances indicated significant main effects for automatic classroom door locks and SRO presence. Automatic locks yielded faster lockdown response times, and both factors were significantly associated with higher numbers of secured classrooms.
Originality/value
Findings from the current study address the gap in existing literature regarding evidence-based school safety protocols and provide recommendations for using VR simulations to increase preparedness and reduce fatalities during an active school shooter event.
This study examined public comments on Twitter in the wake of three mass shootings in the United States during the summer of 2022. A total of 1,500 tweets were assessed (N = 1,500) for sentiment, risks presented, attribution of blame, and outrage. A sample of 500 tweets was taken following the Buffalo, New York, supermarket shooting; a sample of 500 tweets was taken following the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting; and a sample of 500 tweets was taken following the Highland Park, Illinois, Fourth of July parade shooting. Results show that risk, blame, and outrage differed significantly between the three situations in a variety of ways. These differences and possible reasons for them are further discussed. This study provides valuable insight on social media conversations about mass shootings – a timely subject that continues to plague the country and lead to polarizing opinions and divisiveness. The study also serves a practical function, as the findings can be presented to government organizations and social media organizations alike as critical insight into public perceptions, it can assist in identifying problematic speech online, and it can inform the development of social media guidelines in maintaining civil discord.
Violence, in any form, is a disgrace to our civilized world. Nevertheless, even in modern days, violence is an integral part of our society and causes the deaths of many innocent lives. One of the conventional means of violence is using a firearm. Firearm-related death is currently a global phenomenon. It is a threat to society and a challenge to law enforcement agencies. A significant portion of such crimes happens in semi-urban areas or cities. Nowadays, CCTV-based surveillance is widely used by governments and private organizations for monitoring and prevention. However, human-based monitoring requires a significant amount of person-hours as a resource and is prone to mistakes. On the other hand, automated smart surveillance for violent activities is more suitable for scale and reliability. The paper’s main focus is to showcase that deep learning-based techniques can be used in combination to detect firearms (particularly guns). This paper uses different detection techniques, such as Faster Region-Based Convolutional Neural Networks (Faster RCNN) and the latest EfficientDet-based architectures for detecting guns and human faces. An ensemble (stacked) scheme has improved the detection performance to identify human faces and guns at the post-processing level using Non-Maximum Suppression, Non-Maximum Weighted, and Weighted Boxes Fusion techniques. This paper has empirically discussed the comparative results of various detection techniques and their ensembles. It helps the police to gather quick intelligence about the incident and take preventive measures at the earliest. Also, the same method can be used to identify social-media videos for gun-based content detection. Here, theWeighted Boxes Fusion-based ensemble detection scheme provides mean average precision 77.02%, 16.40%, 29.73% for the mAP
0.5
, mAP
0.75
and mAP
[0.500.95]
, respectively. The results achieve the best performance among all the experimented alternatives. The model has been rigorously tested with unknown test images and movie clips. The obtained ensemble schemes are satisfactory and consistently improve over primary models.
Geology is the backdrop against which environmental disasters, emergencies and conflict occur. A search and discovery tool is developed to aid in investigations, search and rescue operations, and emergency response operations. The primary goal is to provide a software tool for the interpretations of hyperspectral remote sensing images in the context of investigations and emergency response operations in a wide range of outdoor settings (e.g., streams, semiarid settings, urban). Data is also translatable to indoor forensic hyperspectral imaging and reflective spectroscopy work. Data was collected on geologic materials, human materials, and other relevant items by staff and the accompanying software tool was developed by L3Harris Geospatial. A description of the spectral search and discovery tool is provided and is a customized ENVI extension written using the IDL programming language designed to help users find custom targets within hyperspectral imagery. The tool is free of charge and can be accessed here.
This study provides a comprehensive examination of mass shootings in America (2006–2020). Specifically, this work identifies offender, victim, and incident characteristics, incidence rates, and differences between public, family, and felony mass shootings. Findings indicate consistent characteristics across all mass shootings include male offenders and the use of handguns. Family mass shootings had the highest incidence rate. Family and the felony mass shootings largely involved close offender-victim relationships, no victim injuries, and private locations. Oft-considered public mass shootings involving stranger victims, higher victim counts, and public locations do not reflect the overall phenomenon. Implications offer insight for understanding and addressing the mass shooting problem.
Covering both natural and man-made scenarios including war and terrorism, the Textbook of Disaster Psychiatry is a vital international reference for medical professionals, community leaders and disaster responders a decade after its initial publication. Spanning a decade of advances in disaster psychiatry, this new and updated second edition brings together the views of current international experts to offer a cutting-edge comprehensive review of the psychological, biological and social responses to disaster, in order to help prepare, react and aid effective recovery. Topics range from the epidemiology of disaster response, disaster ecology, the neurobiology of disaster exposure, to socio-cultural issues, early intervention and consultation-liaison care for injured victims. The role of non-governmental organizations, workplace policies and the implications for public health planning at both an individual and community level are also addressed.
Mass school shootings are infrequent and involve predominantly White perpetrators and victims; yet, they elicit intense social reactions without acknowledging race. In contrast, shootings in cities are frequent, affecting the lives of people of color. Connecting both, this chapter explores how youth of color experience mass school shootings and whether the gun-control movement incorporates their needs. Specifically, 114 youth of color participated in an interview (2013/2015), involving a socio-spatial exploration of their segregated metropolitan area near Newtown, Connecticut, where a young White man killed 26 students and staff members (2012). Furthermore, this exploration involved unobtrusive observation of Connecticut's March for Our Lives (2018). Youth of color were concerned with gun violence in relation to police brutality, crime, and mass school shootings. Those in predominantly White cities experienced the collective pain mass school shootings produce. In contrast, the predominantly White gun-control movement hardly acknowledged youth of color.
This chapter offers a review of the literature of the nature of studying mass violence. It is often problematic, difficult, or nearly impossible due to small sample sizes, incomplete or inaccurate information, or discrepancies even deciding what exactly “mass violence” is. This chapter reviews the literature for methodological approaches, summarizes qualitative and quantitative methods and findings, and discusses the challenges of mass violence methodologies while also proposing solutions, suggestions, and directions for future research.
Although student homicides have remained consistently low over the past decades, highly publicized lethal incidents in American schools have garnered concern among the public. Mass shootings in primary and secondary schools have impacted the fear of victimization and subsequently affected school policies to prevent and control school violence. While school violence is largely viewed as a problem in urban schools, mass shootings have occurred more often in town and rural schools. This chapter examines the nature, prevalence, and incidence of mass shootings and multiple victim violence in rural schools. The chapter includes a review of contributing factors to mass school shootings and examines perceptions and fear of the problem from students and parents. The chapter concludes with threat assessment, and research on prevention and control strategies.
This chapter examines weapon carrying by teachers and students in K-12 schools. Most of the chapter focuses on juveniles, exploring how often juveniles bring weapons to school, the demographic characteristics these juveniles have in common, and why juveniles opt to bring weapons on school grounds. Empirical studies of these topics based on official data, victimization data, and self-report data are reviewed. Additionally, this chapter details the federal and state laws that regulate weapons on school property. Attention is also given to the recent debate over arming K-12 teachers and staff as a prevention measure. Like the discussion of juvenile gun carrying, this chapter highlights the law regulating this issue, arguments for and against such a policy, and the empirical research assessing effects.
Recent and ongoing events have created national concern, fear, and dialogue about potential future acts of mass casualty violence. While much attention has been directed towards the creation of stricter gun control legislation as a means to prevent such acts, little has been mentioned about understanding the offender characteristics and motives for these horrific crimes. Many of the mass shooting offenders share similar features. More attention must be given to these commonalities as a way to understand the event itself, and for the formulation of preventive measures. This study examines mass shooting situations from 1962 to 2013 and analyzes the similarities amongst offenders. In addition, through the application of Identity Theory, it is argued that these acts are perpetrated due to identify conflicts that the violators possess. Through the commission of these acts, they are able to reassert their role and place within society
Scholarship on mass public shootings has increased in recent years as comprehensive datasets have become more available. As a result, much is known about the contextual and offender related characteristics of such attacks. However, less research has been conducted on attacks that were planned but ultimately did not occur. Understanding how mass public shootings may be thwarted or averted is important for both policy and theoretical reasons. In this paper, we describe a new dataset of averted mass public shooting threats (N = 194) from 2000–2019 and compare them to mass public shootings that were completed during this time (N = 97). Several noteworthy findings emerged, including that nearly half of the averted cases were reported by a friend or acquaintance, most targeted a specific location or group, and averted cases were more likely to involve school targets and co-offenders. Implications are discussed.
This chapter examines weapon carrying by teachers and students in K-12 schools. Most of the chapter focuses on juveniles, exploring how often juveniles bring weapons to school, the demographic characteristics these juveniles have in common, and why juveniles opt to bring weapons on school grounds. Empirical studies of these topics based on official data, victimization data, and self-report data are reviewed. Additionally, this chapter details the federal and state laws that regulate weapons on school property. Attention is also given to the recent debate over arming K-12 teachers and staff as a prevention measure. Like the discussion of juvenile gun carrying, this chapter highlights the law regulating this issue, arguments for and against such a policy, and the empirical research assessing effects.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has brought much of U.S. society to a grinding halt, its impact on the occurrence of mass shootings is largely unknown. Using data from the Gun Violence Archive and an interrupted time-series design, we analyzed weekly counts of mass shootings in the U.S. from 2019 through 2021. Results show that total, private, and public mass shootings increased following the declaration of COVID-19 as a national emergency in March of 2020. We consider these findings in the context of their broader implications for prevention efforts as well as how they pave the way for future research.
We conducted an in-depth, idiographic study aimed at exploring the emotional experience of individuals mandated to shelter-in-place (SIP) during the April 2, 2014 active shooter event on the Fort Hood military base in Fort Hood, Texas. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five individuals who sheltered-in-place during the shooting. Employing Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), three superordinate themes-impact of the shooting, coping during SIP, and internal and external factors-emerged. Subthemes for each superordinate theme were also identified. Our analysis points to the need for mental health counselors to attend to issues related to the shooting, including anxiety, organizational issues, and post-traumatic growth. This study also provides information related to factors which support coping and resilience following an active shooter event. Recommendations for future research and implications for counseling professionals as well as emergency management personnel are included.
The recent media hype over school shootings has led to demands for methods of identifying school shooters before they act. Despite the fact that schools remain one of the safest places for youths to be, schools are beginning to adopt identification systems to determine which students could be future killers. The methods used to accomplish this not only are unproven but are inherently limited in usefulness and often do more harm than good for both the children and the school setting. The authors' goals in the present article are to place school shootings in perspective relative to other risks of violence that children face and to provide a reasonable and scientifically defensible approach to improving the safety of schools.
Purpose – This study examines perpetrators and their fans media participation for the purpose of investigating whether new media produce school shootings anew.
Method – We first analyze the narrative structure of eight school shooters’ 75 self-produced videos (1999–2011), then conduct thematic and content analysis of this material. Then, based upon a three-year ethnographic investigation of a subculture on YouTube (2007–2010), from which a sample of 81 users, 142 videos, and screenshots of natural conversation was taken, we analyze the style and ritual practices, fan attachment, and online regulation of the subculture.
Findings – The mirroring of the school shooters’ videos and their fans’ media practices highlights a trait of contemporary society: a need for distinction and intrinsic individuality directly linked to a modern era in which autonomy and self-production have become well-praised norms, and media a support for individuation.
Social implications – We observe some of the pitfalls of contemporary social injunctions and how the media interplay into this dynamic. This research also emphasizes the role of regulation in an online subculture: opposition encountered tends to contribute to the individualization of positions rather than the reproduction of violence.
Value of paper – This study provides a starting-point for future research in visual communication and online fan-based subcultures related to contemporary forms of violence.
Right-to-carry (RTC) laws mandate that concealed weapon permits be granted to qualified applicants. Such laws could reduce the number of mass public shootings as prospective shooters consider the possibility of encountering armed civilians. However, these laws might increase the number of shootings by making it easier for prospective shooters to acquire guns. We evaluate 25 RTC laws using state panel data for 1977 through 1999. We estimate numerous Poisson and negative binomial models and find virtually no support for the hypothesis that the laws increase or reduce the number of mass public shootings.
Contemporary evidence on the correlates of violence and the accuracy of predictions of violent outcomes is derived from a large body of research dating from approximately 1990. Substance abuse and several demographic variables have clearly been demonstrated to be significant risk factors for violence. The data on the link of various specific symptoms of psychiatric disorders to violence are inconclusive, though suggestive, because of conflicting research findings. Mental disorder does, however, represent a modest risk factor for violence. Actuarial predictions of future violence based on static nonpsychiatric characteristics achieve greater statistical accuracy than purely clinical methods, but the former are insensitive to effects of treatment and do not inform clinical intervention in an established way. Future research directions are encouraging in attempting to identify dynamic actuarial risk factors that will be both accurate and mutable. Substantive critiques of violence prediction and limitations of this body of research present a useful framework for evaluating both assumptions and conclusions about the prediction of violence in a psychiatric population. © The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
The horrific loss of life at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012 has prompted a national conversation about guns and mental illness in the United States.This tragedy occurred less than 6 months after 70 people were shot in a movie theater in Colorado and after highly publicized mass shootings in Arizona and at Virginia Tech. These four events share two common characteristics: all four shooters were apparently mentally ill, and all four used guns with large-capacity magazines, allowing them to fire multiple rounds of ammunition without reloading. As policymakers consider options to reduce gun violence, they . . .
A wave of school shootings in the mid- to late 1990s led to great interest in attempts to “profile” school shooters with an eye both on identifying imminent perpetrators and preventing further incidents. Given that school shootings are generally rare, and many perpetrators are killed during their crimes, the availability of school shooters for research is obviously limited. Not surprisingly, initial profiles of school shooters were arguably of limited value. Although school shooting incidents, particularly by minors, have declined, some evidence has emerged to elucidate the psychological elements of school shooting incidents. School shooting incidents may follow extreme versions of etiological pathways seen for less extreme youth violence, and youthful school shooters appear more similar than different to adult perpetrators of mass shootings. The quest to understanding school shootings has led to several wrong turns, most notably the quixotic desire by politicians, advocates, and some scholars to link both school shootings and less extreme youth violence to playing violent video games, despite considerable and increasing evidence to the contrary.
The recent media hype over school shootings has led to demands for methods of identifying school shooters before they act. Despite the fact that schools remain one of the safest places for youths to be, schools are beginning to adopt identification systems to determine which students could be future killers. The methods used to accomplish this not only are unproven but are inherently limited in usefulness and often do more harm than good for both the children and the school setting. The authors' goals in the present article are to place school shootings in perspective relative to other risks of violence that children face and to provide a reasonable and scientifically defensible approach to improving the safety of schools.
This comprehensive, evidence-based examination looks at violence and security across the entire spectrum of education, from preschool through college.
In Violence and Security on Campus: From Preschool through College two expert authors take an evidence-based look at this important issue, dispelling myths and misconceptions about the problem and offering appropriate responses to it. Their book examines patterns, trends, correlations, and causes of violence, crime, and disorder in diverse educational settings, from elementary schools through colleges and universities. It reviews data and research evidence related to forms of violence, from bullying to murder, and it explores the varied security concerns that confront schools of different levels.
In addition to describing the nature and extent of the school violence problem, which is often divergent from media reports, the authors point to other security issues that need to be considered and addressed by administrators and security personnel. Finally, they assess a variety of policy responses and security solutions—some popular yet ineffective, some challenging yet promising—offering advice that will enhance the security of any institution of learning.
A thorough overview of violence and crime in America’s schools explores which solutions work and which don’t, providing a framework for prevention at every level.
Although it is major incidents like Columbine or Virginia Tech that grab the headlines, everyday occurrences of bullying, harassment, and physical intimidation in schools impact entire communities, driving kids out of public schools and destroying faith in public education. Preventing Violence and Crime in America’s Schools: From Put-Downs to Lock-Downs provides educators, parents, law enforcement officials, and other youth-serving professionals with a unique perspective on the topic of school violence. More important, it offers solutions to the problems facing all schools when it comes to violence and safety.
Two expert authors examine specifics relating to school violence, opportunities to prevent and intervene, and the importance of planning for a crisis. Most other books about school violence either highlight the research or highlight practitioner viewpoints. This revealing book presents both, balancing insights gained through real-world experiences with research on best practices. The result is a fuller understanding of the problem—understanding that will enable solutions.
Using clinical judgment alone, mental health professionals cannot predict individual patient violence much more accurately than chance. Clinicians could improve their prediction of violence if they routinely used structured risk assessment instruments, but they don't; the use of such tools for screening is not currently the standard of care in the United States and is not commonly reimbursed by insurance. The author argues, however, that clinicians actually can predict and prevent violence if they consider their patients as a group from the perspective of public-health epidemiology. Optimizing treatment for all patients will help prevent violence by the few who pose a risk of violence, even when such patients are not identified in advance.
This report focuses on mass shootings and selected implications they have for federal policy in the areas of public health and safety. While such crimes most directly impact particular citizens in very specific communities, addressing these violent episodes involves officials at all levels of government and professionals from numerous disciplines. This report does not discuss gun control and does not systematically address the broader issue of gun violence. Also, it is not intended as an exhaustive review of federal programs addressing the issue of mass shootings.
Security expert Kenneth S. Trump outlines school security issues and provides nuts-and-bolts strategies for preventing violence and preparing for crises. Includes author's companion website.
In recent years, there have been numerous quasi-experimental studies of aggregate mortality data. These studies conclude that mass media portrayals of violence cause imitative responses among the public. This paper examines the logic of this research, arguing that it does not meet the special burdens of proof associated with quasi-experimental studies that use aggregate data to make inferences about individual behavior. We present detailed evidence suggesting that imitation effects attributed to mass media events (prize fights and television news stories about suicides) are statistical artifacts of the mortality data, the timing of media events, and the methods employed in past research. The concluding section discusses some implications of our analysis for future studies of imitative violence and for other areas of research.
Even though previous research has not examined mass murder prior to 1965, scholars have asserted that the mid-1960s marked the onset of an unprecedented and ever-growing mass murder wave. Using news accounts and the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) as sources of data, this study analyzes 909 mass killings that took place between 1900 and 1999. Although the mid-1960s marked the beginning of a mass murder wave, it was not unprecedented, because mass killings were nearly as common during the 1920s and 1930s. The results also show that familicides, the modal mass murder over the last several decades, were even more prevalent before the 1970s. Moreover, mass killers were older, more suicidal, and less likely to use guns in the first two-thirds of the 20th century. Although some have claimed that workplace massacres represent a new “strain” in mass murder, the findings suggest that the only new type of mass killing that emerged during the 20th century was the drug-related massacre.
In discussing the problem of mass murder, an ever increasing expression of violence in society, the typology of the perpetrators of such crimes is presented. Illustrations of some of the most notorious killers are provided and the unique case of a mass murderer who left, as a suicide “note,” a videotaped soliloquy is presented. The dynamics of mass murder and of mass murder-suicide are discussed; the killings are viewed as the outcome of deep frustration and perceived rejection in a highly narcissistic person, wounded in his ego, hostile towards society, and in search of identity and notoriety through a cathartic self assertion. Similarities are shown between the mass murderer and the mythological Norse “berserk” and it is speculated that the superman complex may be at the core of the killer's behavior. It is contended that the personal psychopathology of the killer is determinant of the destructive behavior, although social factors are highly contributory.
OVERVIEW Mass murder, the killing of four or more victims at one location within one event, is a rare and catastrophic phenomenon. 1 The prevalence of firearms, media coverage, and increasing awareness of the subject has led to speculations about the influence of a western cultural script being played out. 2,3 In the case of mass murder, the play is an appalling tragedy in which the main themes are a wounded ego, revenge, and infamy. Western influences aside, mass killings are not new. News media tend to suggest that the era of mass public killings was ushered in by Charles Whitman atop the University of Texas at Austin tower, and thereafter became "a part of American life" in subsequent decades. 4 In contrast, research indicates that the news media Disclosures: Dr Knoll has nothing to disclose.
Cases of multiple murder stimulate intense feeling in both the public and scientific community. Because of this highly charged emotional climate and the statistical difficulties inherent in predicting low base rate behaviors, this topic has been difficult to evaluate scientifically. This article reviews the literature on multiple murder from dual perspectives of how knowledge is developed and major methodologic problems encountered in accruing such knowledge.
Charges that the mass media create unwarranted levels of fear of crime are almost as old as the media themselves. Researchers entered the fray in large numbers in the 1960s, documenting the effects of television, newspapers, and movies on perceptions of crime and fear of criminal victimization. Recent developments in mass media, such as the rise in popularity of crime reenactment television programs, the access to more violence via cable, VCR, and satellite dish, and the interactive nature of electronic games, raise even greater concern about the fear-generating potential of these media. In addition, the real-world increase in the occurrence of stranger crimes and mass attacks could make the media image even more potent, because of the prevalence of random or random-appearing crimes reported by the media. This article provides an overview of the research on the mass media and its effects on perceptions of crime danger, personal fear of crime, and reactions to crime risk. In addition, we examine the modifiers of the relationships between media and fear.
This paper examines US school rampage shootings, focusing on the period from the late 20th century to the present. School rampage shootings are thought to be distinct from other forms of violence because of the relatively safe rural setting in which most of these events occur, the lack of specified individual targets, and the number of deaths involved. While this type of violence seems to have spiked in the mid-1990s, school violence in general and school shootings in particular have occurred throughout the history of formal education. Research shows that certain elements of school rampage shootings are unique, while others do not distinguish them from more common forms of violence. For the most part, theory development is still nascent, with the most advanced explanations relying on psychological factors. Finally, interventions have generally been guided by situational crime prevention rather than theories about why violence occurs in school. This paper argues that more research is needed before firm policy conclusions can be made.
Much attention has been devoted in the past several years to public incidents of mass murder. Events such as the shooting on a Long Island commuter train in 1993, the massacre in Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, or the seemingly numerous workplace homicides have received intensive media coverage and public interest. As a consequence, a stereotype of mass murder has emerged that may or may not be very accurate. This study examines incidents of mass murder that occurred in public settings in the United States between 1965 and 1995 to more closely scrutinize both the events and the offenders involved.
This study analyzes coverage by newspapers, network television news, and newsweekly magazines of mass killings that occurred between 1976 and 1996. The findings indicate that although virtually all of the mass murders were locally newsworthy, only a small minority were nationally newsworthy. The widely publicized mass killings were more likely to involve large numbers of fatal and wounded victims, stranger victims, public locations, assault weapons, workplace violence, interracial victim-offender relationships, and, to a lesser extent, older offenders and gun use. Given that the high-profile incidents were the most extreme and atypical mass murders, it is argued that the overemphasis placed on these massacres is part and parcel of the news media's attempt to maximize the size of their audience and therefore their profits by catering to the public's fascination with rare and sensational acts of violence. This study concludes by discussing the implications that these results have for the social construction of mass murder.
Homicides committed against supervisors and coworkers by disgruntled employees have grown at a disturbing rate in the American workplace. Increasingly, embittered employees and ex-employees are seeking revenge through violence and murder for alleged mistreatment on the job. This article examines patterns and trends in available data and presents a theoretical profile of those who kill at the work site. It suggests that the typical homicide of employers and coworkers is committed by a disgruntled, white, middle-aged male who faces termination or who has recently been fired. Recommendations are advanced for how employers might better respond to problem employees and to homicidal threats at the workplace. These include prevention strategies, such as giving higher priority to the role of human resources, affording employees due process protection against unfair terminations, and changing the importance attached to the meaning of work in people's lives.
Over the past decade the topic of multiple homicide-serial and mass murder-has attracted increased attention in the field of criminology. Though far from the epidemic suggested in media reports, it is alarming nonetheless that a small number of offenders account for so much human destruction and widespread fear. The serial killer is typically a white male in his late twenties or thirties who targets strangers encountered near his work or home. These killers tend to be sociopaths who satisfy personal needs by killing with physical force. Demographically similar to the serial killer, the mass murderer generally kills people he knows well, acting deliberately and methodically. He executes his victims in the most expedient way-with a firearm. Importantly, the difference of timing that distinguishes serial from mass murder may also obscure strong similarities in their motivation. Both can be understood within the same motivational typology-power, revenge, loyalty, profit, and terror. The research literature, still in its infancy, is more speculative than definitive, based primarily on anecdotal evidence rather than hard data. Future studies should make greater use of comparison groups and seek life-cycle explanations-beyond early childhood-which recognize the unique patterns and characteristics of multiple murderers. A research focus on murder in the extreme may also help us understand more commonplace forms of interpersonal violence.
In the aftermath of the great tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, the mental health community is responding to our own and others' desperation to understand why this event occurred and is advocating for strategies that might prevent similar events in the future. Discussion has focused on whether Adam Lanza was mentally ill, the risk of violence among the mentally ill, access to high-quality mental health care, gun control, and the relationship between the media and violence. An important dimension that has been less discussed is the question of social withdrawal and isolation, within and beyond the confines of mental illness. For . . .
Because investigations of multiple homicide offenders (MHOs) are usually case studies, there is limited understanding of the linkages between them and other criminal offenders. Using data from an exploratory sample of 160 MHOs and a control group of 494 single homicide offenders, this study examines MHOs from a criminal career perspective and finds that nearly 30% of them were habitual offenders before their final homicide event. Those with prior rape convictions, misdemeanor convictions, more extensive prison histories, and current involve-ment in rape and burglary are more likely to kill multiple victims. Curiously, nearly 40% of MHOs had zero prior arrests. Overall, arrest onset occurs later in the life course and is not predictive of offending. In conclusion, the study of MHOs could enrich the criminal career perspective, while posing some empirical and theoretical challenges to that paradigm. M ultiple homicide offenders (MHOs), defined as criminal defendants who murder more than one person during a crimi-nal episode, 1 occupy a peculiar place in criminology.
Multiple-homicide school shootings are rare events, but when they happen they significantly impact individuals, the school and the community. We focus on multiple-homicide incidents and identified mental health issues of shooters. To date, studies of school shootings have concluded that no reliable profile of a shooter exists, so risk should be assessed using comprehensive threat assessment protocols. Existing studies primarily utilize retrospective case histories or media accounts. The field requires more empirical and systematic research on all types of school shootings including single victim incidents, those that result in injury but not death and those that are successfully averted. We discuss current policies and practices related to school shootings and the role of mental health professionals in assessing risk and supporting surviving victims.
The impact of mass media violence on aggression has almost always been studied in the laboratory; this paper examines the effect of mass media violence in the real world. The paper presents the first systematic evidence indicating that a type of mass media violence triggers a brief, sharp increase in U.S. homicides. Immediately after heavyweight championship prize fights, 1973-1978, U.S. homicides increased by 12.46 percent. The increase is greatest after heavily publicized prize fights. The findings persist after one corrects for secular trends, seasonal, and other extraneous variables. Four alternative explanations for the findings are tested. The evidence suggests that heavyweight prize fights stimulate fatal, aggressive behavior in some Americans.
This article discusses common psychological and social factors in mass murders and outlines a proposed classification system to coordinate future research efforts. The final communications of two mass murderers are analyzed to demonstrate that the forensic psycholinguistic approach may assist in providing an enhanced understanding of the motives, psychopathology, and classification of mass murderers whose offenses can seem similar from a purely behavioral perspective.
Few events obtain the same instant worldwide news coverage as multiple victim public shootings. These crimes allow us to study the alternative methods used to kill a large number of people (e.g., shootings versus bombings), marginal deterrence and the severity of the crime, substitutability of penalties, private versus public methods of deterrence and incapacitation, and whether attacks produce "copycats." The criminals who commit these crimes are also fairly unusual, recent evidence suggests that about half of these criminals have received a "formal diagnosis of mental illness, often schizophrenia." Yet, economists have not studied multiple victim shootings. Using data that extends until 1999 and includes the recent public school shootings, our results are surprising and dramatic. While arrest or conviction rates and the death penalty reduce "normal" murder rates and these attacks lead to new calls from more gun control, our results find that the only policy factor to have a consistently significant influence on multiple victim public shootings is the passage of concealed handgun laws. We explain why public shootings are more sensitive than other violent crimes to concealed handguns, why the laws reduce the number of shootings and have an even greater effect on their severity.
Incidents of mass murder have gained considerable media attention, but are not well understood in behavioral sciences. Current
definitions are weak, and may include politically or ideological motivated phenomenon. Our current understanding of the phenomenon
indicates these incidents are not peculiar to only western cultures, and appear to be increasing. Methods most prominently
used include firearms by males who have experienced challenging setbacks in important social, familial and vocational domains.
There often appears to be important autogenic components (Mullen Behavioral Sciences and the Law (22)3, 2004), including dysthymic reactions and similar antecedents. There have been observations of possible seasonal variations in
mass murders, but research to date is inadequate to establish this relationship. It is recommended behavioral sciences and
mental health researchers increase research efforts on understanding mass killings, as the current socioeconomic climate may
increase vulnerability to this phenomenon, and the incidents are not well understood despite their notoriety.
KeywordsMass murder-Spree killings-Multiple homocides
Mass murder involves the slaughter of four or more victims by one or a few assailants within a single event, lasting but a few minutes or as long as several hours. More than just arbitrary, using this minimum body count—as opposed to a two- or three-victim threshold suggested by others (e.g., Ressler et al., 1988, Holmes and Holmes, 2001)—helps to distinguish multiple killing from homicide generally. Moreover, by restricting our attention to acts committed by one or a few offenders, our working definition of multiple homicide also excludes highly organized or institutionalized killings (e.g., war crimes and large-scale acts of political terrorism as well as certain acts of highly organized crime rings). Although state-sponsored killings are important in their own right, they may be better explained through the theories and methods of political science than criminology. Thus, for example, the definition of multiple homicide would include the crimes committed by Charles Manson and his followers, but not those of Hitler's Third Reich, or the 9/11 terrorists, despite some similarities in the operations of authority.
The potential influence of violent video games on youth violence remains an issue of concern for psychologists, policymakers and the general public. Although several prospective studies of video game violence effects have been conducted, none have employed well validated measures of youth violence, nor considered video game violence effects in context with other influences on youth violence such as family environment, peer delinquency, and depressive symptoms. The current study builds upon previous research in a sample of 302 (52.3% female) mostly Hispanic youth. Results indicated that current levels of depressive symptoms were a strong predictor of serious aggression and violence across most outcome measures. Depressive symptoms also interacted with antisocial traits so that antisocial individuals with depressive symptoms were most inclined toward youth violence. Neither video game violence exposure, nor television violence exposure, were prospective predictors of serious acts of youth aggression or violence. These results are put into the context of criminological data on serious acts of violence among youth.
The pseudocommando is a type of mass murderer who kills in public during the daytime, plans his offense well in advance, and comes prepared with a powerful arsenal of weapons. He has no escape planned and expects to be killed during the incident. Research suggests that the pseudocommando is driven by strong feelings of anger and resentment, flowing from beliefs about being persecuted or grossly mistreated. He views himself as carrying out a highly personal agenda of payback. Some mass murderers take special steps to send a final communication to the public or news media; these communications, to date, have received little detailed analysis. An offender's use of language may reveal important data about his state of mind, motivation, and psychopathology. Part I of this article reviews the research on the pseudocommando, as well as the psychology of revenge, with special attention to revenge fantasies. It is argued that revenge fantasies become the last refuge for the pseudocommando's mortally wounded self-esteem and ultimately enable him to commit mass murder-suicide.
How do we think about mass murder? While the principle of responsibility provides an effective mechanism for the repression
of mass murder (notably through Article 25 ICCSt.), analysis of the ‘acting out’ of mass murder by perpetrators requires a
criminological perspective. Analysis of criminogenic processes, and of genocidal logic, helps us go some way in understanding
how perpetrators ‘act out’ mass murder. Such an approach also leads us to identify a long silence in the social sciences:
mass murder has become a legitimate field of social scientific study only recently; it also has the advantage of exposing
the shortcomings of many concepts. This article deals with works focusing on ‘mass murder’ and suggests new research paths
in the social sciences.
In this article, we attempt to uncover whether mass murders (the killing of multiple victims in single events) are preventable acts, the extent to which they are contributed to by biological and psychological factors, the notion that they are inextricably linked to mental illness, the role of the media, and what lessons can be learned by mental health professionals.
“The massive threats to human welfare are generally brought about by deliberate acts…, It is the principled resort to aggression that is of greatest social concern but most ignored in psychological theorizing and research.”
This paper presents the first systematic evidence that violent, fictional television stories trigger imitative deaths and near-fatal accidents in the United States. In 1977, suicides, motor vehicle deaths, and nonfatal accidents all rose immediately following soap opera suicide stories. The U.S. female suicides increased proportionally more than male suicides. Single-vehicle crashes increased more than multiple-vehicle crashes. All of these increases are statistically significant and persist after one corrects for the presence of nonfictional suicide stories, linear trends, seasonal fluctuations, and day-of-the-week fluctuations in the data. These increases apparently occur because soap opera suicide stories trigger imitative suicides and suicide attempts, some of which are disguised as single-vehicle accidents.
Tragic and high profile killings by people with mental illness have been used to suggest that the community care model for mental health services has failed.
To consider whether such homicides have become more frequent as psychiatric services have changed.
Data were extracted from Home Office-generated criminal statistics for England and Wales between 1957 and 1995 and subjected to trends analysis.
There was little fluctuation in numbers of people with a mental illness committing criminal homicide over the 38 years studied, and a 3% annual decline in their contribution to the official statistics.
There are many reasons for improving the resources and quality of care for people with a mental disorder, but there is no evidence that it is anything but stigmatising to claim that their living in the community is a dangerous experiment that should be reversed. There appears to be some case for specially focused improvement of services for people with a personality disorder and/or substance misuse.
Using clinical judgment alone, mental health professionals cannot predict individual patient violence much more accurately than chance. Clinicians could improve their prediction of violence if they routinely used structured risk assessment instruments, but they don't; the use of such tools for screening is not currently the standard of care in the United States and is not commonly reimbursed by insurance. The author argues, however, that clinicians actually can predict and prevent violence if they consider their patients as a group from the perspective of public-health epidemiology. Optimizing treatment for all patients will help prevent violence by the few who pose a risk of violence, even when such patients are not identified in advance.
Mass murders: Implications for men-tal health professionals Poll ranks top 10 news stories of 2012. USA Today PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and their government Social learning theory of aggression
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More treatment programs
- D Brooks
Brooks, D. (2012, July 23). More treatment programs. New York Times. Retrieved from http://
www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/opinion/brooks-more-treatment-programs.html
The blame game: Youth and media violence Gallup News Service Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com/poll Predicting violent behavior and classifying violent offenders
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Carlson, D. K. (2002, January 22). The blame game: Youth and media violence. Gallup News Service. Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com/poll/5626/Blame-Game-Youth-Media-Violence.aspx Chaiken, J., Chaiken, M., & Rhodes, W. (1994). Predicting violent behavior and classifying violent offenders. In A. Reiss & J. Roth (Eds.), Understanding and preventing violence (Vol. 4, pp. 217-295). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
The copycat effect: How the media and popular culture trigger the mayhem in tomorrow's headlines
- L Coleman
Coleman, L. (2004). The copycat effect: How the media and popular culture trigger the mayhem
in tomorrow's headlines. New York, NY: Pocket Books.
Mass murder in the United States: A history
- G Duwe
Duwe, G. (2007). Mass murder in the United States: A history. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and
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Detectives investigating Newtown massacre find Adam Lanza’s violent video games, ponder the 20-year-old mimicking a gory game scene
- A Edelman
Edelman, A. (2013, February 17). Detectives investigating Newtown massacre find Adam
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