Article

Public Mass Shooters and Firearms: A Cross-National Study of 171 Countries

January 2016
Violence and Victims 31(2)

Authors:

University of Alabama

Objective: Model the global distribution of public mass shooters around the world. Method: Negative binomial regression is used to test the effects of homicide rates, suicide rates, firearm ownership rates, and several control variables on public mass shooters per country from 1966 to 2012. Results: The global distribution of public mass shooters appears partially attributable to cross-national differences in firearms availability but not associated with cross-national homicide or suicide rates. Conclusion: The United States and other nations with high firearm ownership rates may be particularly susceptible to future public mass shootings, even if they are relatively peaceful or mentally healthy according to other national indicators.

MASS MURDERS WITH GUN WEAPONS IN MODERN RUSSIA МАССОВЫЕ УБИЙСТВА С ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЕМ ОГНЕСТРЕЛЬНОГО ОРУЖИЯ В СОВРЕМЕННОЙ РОССИИ

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2023

In the last 30 years, there has been increased interest in mass murders (MM; with three or more victims) among a wide range of specialists in many countries of the world. The aim is to study MM with the use of firearms in the Russian Federation and compare various types of MM, including MM weapons with each other. Materials and methods. We analyzed 129 crimes (142 men, 1 women) committed with the use of firearms in the Russian Federation in 1991-2022. The age of the killers ranged from 16 to 70 (mean age is 34.3±15.1). Most of the cases of “mass shooting” were taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_ in_Russia, as well as from electronic media of 59 regions of the Russian Federation. The comparison groups included 288 cases of MM, 177 cases committed with piercing objects (PO), 36 cases of arson, and 75 other instruments, including a combination of these. The latter group also included 11 cases of the use of firearms in combination with PO (6), blunt weapons (2) and arson (3). Mathematical and statistical processing was carried out using descriptive statistics and χ2 distribution. Results. Over the time period studied, electronic media began to cover incidents with multiple victims significantly more frequently. Approximately every fourth (24.8%) case out of 129 incidents occurred in security forces (armed forces, law enforcement agencies, penitentiary services) using a Kalashnikov assault rifle while on combat duty or guard duty. In most cases, murders were committed with civilian firearms (most often hunting rifles), in isolated cases – with unregistered civilian firearms, service firearms, and military handguns; seven cases occurred in groups of 2–4 people. There were 593 victims (on average 4.59±3.6 victims), the majority of cases had three deaths (53.2%). In our proposed working typology of MM, we distinguish: corporate MM (in law enforcement agencies; in educational institutions; in other organizations), non-corporate MM (acquaintances, friends, neighbors, etc.; strangers; acquaintances and strangers), family MM (relatives and friends (family members), blood and non-blood relatives) and mixed MM (victims from two or three of the above groups). Corporate MM is distinguished by the use of firearms, most often committed in law enforcement agencies and educational institutions. The largest number of victims (6.0±3.7) occurred in corporate MM, especially those that occurred in the academic environment 13.3±5.9 victims). Non-corporate MM was more often committed by PO and other instruments. Among aggressors who used firearms, there were more people aged 19 and younger (20.3% vs 5.9% in the comparison group), they were less likely to drink alcohol (22.0% vs 56.3%) but more likely to commit suicides after MM (31.4% vs 7.3%). Conclusion. Cases of MM with the use of firearms in the Russian Federation were more often observed in security (paramilitary) and training (educational) corporations with the largest number of victims (from 3 to 18, on average – 6). They were less likely than other aggressors to be intoxicated, but more often committed suicide after MM. Media coverage increased significantly from 1991 to 2022 cover incidents with multiple victims, which may indicate an increase in the number of MM in Russia.

Public mass shootings in developed countries: uncovering stability and change at the turn of the century

Article

Oct 2023
Global Crime

Jason R. Silva

This study examines the stability and change in public mass shootings in developed countries outside of the United States (2000-2021). Public mass shootings refer to incidents involving public/populated locations, random/symbolic victims, and at least four fatalities. Results identified an increase in the frequency of attacks in developed countries, although particularly deadly incidents remained relatively consistent. Offenders were commonly and consistently male, middle-aged, single, and diagnosed with a mental illness. Incidents often involved handguns, more than one firearm, and open-area locations. Offenders were often motivated by a desire for fame; although, early fame-seekers were younger, school shooters, while recent offenders had far-right ideological beliefs. Other changes included an increase in offenders obtaining their firearms illegally, using assault rifles, diversifying their target locations, and being shot and killed. This provides the first step for understanding mass shooting trends in the often-overlooked developed countries outside of the United States.

Advancing Understanding of Global Mass Murder: A Comparison of Public Mass Stabbings and Shootings

Article

Jul 2023
HOMICIDE STUD

Jason R. Silva

Previous studies of global mass murder focus on public mass shootings, but there is little known about incidents involving other weapon types. To fill this gap in research, this study examines public mass stabbings and compares them with public mass shootings around the world (1999-2022). Findings identify significant differences in the geographic locations, target locations, offenders' age and resolution, and number of victim casualties that illustrate these are unique forms of mass murder. This work provides the next step toward advancing knowledge of global mass murder and paves the way for future research aimed at understanding and addressing the phenomenon.

Mass shootings, fatality thresholds and defining by numbers: Political and social consequences

Article

Jul 2022

Sarah Watson

Mass shootings are one example of a focusing event that has particular significance for firearms legislation. Mass shootings shock, disturb and provoke enormous and controversial debate, often causing significant public and media resonance, becoming the subject of intense discussion politically. At times providing an impetus for legislative amendments, often in distinct ways that routine gun violence does not. If certain events highlight the need for reform, policy change becomes more likely. Cases with the lowest number of victims are likely to generate the least amount of attention and are most likely to be missed in data collection, rendering them the least noteworthy, least important in terms of lethality and social and political consequence. Various problems come to the attention of people in and around government, necessitating an understanding of why such problems occupy officials’ attention and appear to be more ‘deserving’ of attention.

Global mass shootings: comparing the United States against developed and developing countries

Article

Mar 2022

Jason R. Silva

This study compares mass shootings in the US against developed and developing countries (1998-2019). Findings indicate US mass shootings were more likely to involve workplaces, employment/financial problems, relationship problems, and multiple firearms. Mass shootings in all developed countries (including the US) were more likely than developing countries to involve foreign-born perpetrators, ideological motives, fame-seeking motives, schools, open-spaces, and handguns. Mass shootings in the US account for 73% of all incidents and 62% of all fatalities in developed countries. Mass shootings in developing countries were more likely to involve military and police perpetrators, rifles, and military/police locations. A discussion of findings offers insight for understanding and addressing the global mass shooting problem.

Country-Level Firearm Availability and Terrorism: A New Approach to Examining the Gun-Crime Relationship

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2021
J RES CRIME DELINQ

Objectives: This study examines the association between a country’s gun availability and firearm-related terrorism. Methods: Employing data from 140 countries, we assess the possible relationship between a country’s rate of suicide by firearm and their count of terrorist attacks involving a firearm through a series of structural equation models. Results: Collectively, we find that there is a positive relationship between gun availability and firearm-related terrorism in 2016 and 2017. However, this result fails our robustness check and is sensitive to the inclusion of the U.S. Conclusion: With important caveats, we believe the U.S. to be unique in terms of both gun availability and terrorism.

The timing of opportunities to prevent mass shootings: a study of mental health contacts, work and school problems, and firearms acquisition

Article

Jul 2021

Although it is important to know what public mass shooters have in common, it is also helpful to understand when different variables were present on their pathways to violence. This study explored the timing of key life events for the deadliest public mass shooters in the United States since Columbine (N = 14). Using data from official reports and supplementary sources, we found perpetrators’ mental health contacts often began more than a decade before their mass shootings, and often ended more than a year before their attacks. Mental illness was typically a constant in their lives, not something that automatically caused them to attack. While treatment may help prevent some mass shootings, mental health professionals have limited influence over patients they have not recently seen. In turn, perpetrators’ work and school problems also typically began long before their mass shootings, but these issues continued closer to their attacks. Employers and educators may therefore have an opportunity to intervene later in the process. Firearms acquisition often occurred in the final stages, after perpetrators were already interested in mass murder. Red flag laws and ERPOs which prohibit sales to explicitly dangerous individuals may therefore help reduce the prevalence of these attacks.

Mass Shootings as a Global Phenomenon

Chapter

Nov 2023

Jason R. Silva

There has been extensive media coverage, public concern, and calls for action surrounding mass shootings in the United States at the turn of the 21st century. To address this concern, there is a growing body of research aimed at understanding and remedying this problem in America. However, recent attacks around the world—like the Kerch Polytechnic College shooting in Ukraine, the Christchurch Mosque shooting in New Zealand, and the Suzano School shooting in Brazil—illustrate that mass shootings are a global phenomenon. To this end, it is critical for research to shed light on this troubling and complex issue and contribute to a more informed public and scholarly discourse on mass shootings and their impact around the world. To understand the global problem, it is necessary to evaluate the prevalence of incidents across countries, mass shooter backgrounds and profiles, and common locations targeted during these attacks. To address this phenomenon, it is important to consider strategies for prevention and harm mitigation, including instituting responsible gun legislation, addressing warning signs and leakage, implementing situational crime prevention measures, and advancing law enforcement responses.

Introduction to the special issue on global mass shootings

Article

Sep 2023

The globalization of American mass shootings? An assessment of fame-seeking perpetrators and their influence worldwide

Article

Dec 2022

This study examined fame-seeking mass shooters worldwide who attacked from 1999 to 2022 to identify their profiles, behaviours, influences, and trends. Quantitative analyses revealed many similarities between fame-seeking shooters in the United States and in other countries: compared to other mass shooters, they were more frequently young and more likely to target schools, commit suicide, and kill and injure many victims. Fame-seeking mass shooters who attacked outside the United States appeared more likely to have been influenced by American mass shooters than by perpetrators from all other countries, combined. Findings also showed a substantial rise in the number of fame-seeking shooters over time, along with increases in the proportion of mass shooters who sought fame and the average number of victims they killed. We discuss the implications of these disturbing trends and offer an assessment for the future.

An epidemiological analysis of public mass shooters and active shooters: Quantifying key differences between perpetrators and the general population, homicide offenders, and people who die by suicide.

Article

Sep 2021

This study compared public mass shooters (n = 171) and active shooters (n = 63) in the United States to the general population, homicide offenders, and people who die by suicide. Comparisons with the general population are the foundation of epidemiological research, and comparisons with homicide offenders and people who die by suicide are helpful because public mass shooters and active shooters always intend to kill and often take their own lives. Findings indicate that public mass shooters were more often male, unmarried, and unemployed than the average American. Active shooters were not significantly different from the general population based on prior felony convictions or preexisting firearm ownership. Public mass shooters and active shooters appeared more like people who die by suicide than homicide offenders, given their high frequency of premeditation, acting alone, suicidal ideation, and unnatural death. Overall, this suggests that felony histories and firearm ownership may have limited utility for threat assessment, but several suicide prevention strategies might help reduce the prevalence of these attacks.

The Gun Talk: How to Have Effective Conversations with Patients and Families About Firearm Injury Prevention

Chapter

Jan 2021

Having the “Gun Talk” with a patient is similar to having the “sex talk” with an adolescent - it is a bit awkward and controversial to some, but can be extremely important and done in a manner that is both evidence-based and clinically effective. With suicide and violence risk assessments being routine steps in the evaluation of behavioral emergencies, effective inquiry and appropriate engagement surrounding a patient’s access to firearms can be useful skills for emergency clinicians. However, cultural, social, political, and legal considerations can make this more challenging, especially if the clinician fails to explore the patient’s perspective and solely focuses on firearm removal. Furthermore, absolute safe storage may be a false concept, and promoting safer storage and preserving therapeutic alliance may be more realistic goals of intervention. Synthesizing these concepts, in this chapter we briefly summarize the scope and impact of firearm access in the United States, and discuss approaches to engage and counsel patients about firearm access, storage practices, and security, with particular attention given to suicide and violence risk.

Подростковые постгомицидные самоубийства

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2020

Andrei Vch Golenkov

Identification of Performance Improvement Objectives After Management of a Mass Shooting Incident: A Retrospective Study

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2023

Mass shootings are firearm incidents involving four or more victims at one or more locations close to one another. Although some American College of Surgeons designated trauma centers have the experience and resources to adequately treat mass shooting victims who arrive simultaneously or in close proximity to each other, many others do not. Therefore, the objective of this retrospective case series was to evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment of five consecutive gunshot wound victims who presented to a Level II trauma center within 36 minutes of each other. Lessons learned from that experience were used to identify the most effective pre-hospital and hospital management interventions. Opportunities for performance improvement were analyzed with respect to the current literature and the American College of Surgeons 2022 consensus recommendations for mass shootings.

Towards an Indoor Gunshot Detection and Notification System Using Deep Learning

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2023

Tareq Khan

Gun violence and mass shootings kill and injure people, create psychological trauma, damage properties, and cause economic loss. The loss from gun violence can be reduced if we can detect the gunshot early and notify the police as soon as possible. In this project, a novel gunshot detector device is developed that automatically detects indoor gunshot sound and sends the gunshot location to the nearby police station in real time using the Internet. The users of the device and the emergency responders also receive smartphone notifications whenever the shooting happens. This will help the emergency responders to quickly arrive at the crime scene, thus the shooter can be caught, injured people can be taken to the hospital quickly, and lives can be saved. The gunshot detector is an electronic device that can be placed in schools, shopping malls, offices, etc. The device also records the gunshot sounds for post-crime scene analysis. A deep learning model, based on a convolutional neural network (CNN), is trained to classify the gunshot sound from other sounds with 98% accuracy. A prototype of the gunshot detector device, the central server for the emergency responder’s station, and smartphone apps have been developed and tested successfully.

Outdoor Participation and Spending Trends in Virginia: How much is too much?

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2023

Student research project on spending trends on outdoor recreation in the state of Virginia.

Do Mass Shootings in Central and Eastern Europe Differ from U.S. Mass Shootings? Insights from the MSCEE Data Set

Article

Jan 2023

Alexei Anisin

Since transitioning out of communist socio-political orders, more than a dozen Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries have experienced mass shootings. To date, scholars have yet to identify a sample of cases that occurred throughout these regions of the world. This study puts forward the first collection of data on attempted and completed mass shootings through introducing 76 cases that occurred in 15 countries from 1993 to 2021. Data comprise 24 variables including offender characteristics of age, sex, motivation, life experiences, mental illness history as well as case-level characteristics including shooting type, location, fatality and injury counts, along with motivational factors including fame seeking and extremism. These data are presented for public access and are encouraged to be used for research triangulation and cross-national social inquiry on mass murder.

Mass Shootings Involving Intimate Partners in the United States: Prevalence and Patterns

Chapter

Full-text available

Jun 2023

Policy & Change: An Analysis of Veteran Perpetrated Mass Shootings & Social Work's Call to Action

Article

Full-text available

May 2023

Christopher Collins

Public mass shootings are relatively rare occurrences in the United States. As such, focusing on individual-level factors to develop a prevention framework is ill-advised. However, starting with veterans, as an overrepresented group of offenders, may be an important step to determining and developing policies that work to prevent mass shootings. The Veteran’s Administration (VA) is the largest employer of social workers in the United States and employs more than 15,000 master’s level social work professionals. Policy and training changes made to the VA system have the potential to begin reducing incidents of public mass shootings. The purpose of this study was to determine whether veteran-status or the phenomenon of leakage influences the number of casualties in public mass shootings. Further, a renewed call-to-action is issued for social workers engaged with veterans, military personnel, and their families. A negative binomial regression analysis was utilized to examine 168 public mass shootings events in the United States from 1966 until 2019. While veteran status was not associated with increased casualty this does not underscore the importance of policy changes that limit access to firearms for high-risk people. Further, because leakage was statistically significant in explaining casualty rates in mass shootings additional training related to duty to warn may be necessary for social workers engaged in therapeutic relationships with veterans, military personnel, and their families. The results of the negative binomial regression offer insights into what effective policy interventions may look like to reduce mass shootings.

Representaciones de la Psiquiatría y los Trastornos Mentales en el Imaginario Punk Español (1981-2010)

Thesis

Full-text available

Nov 2022

Fabián Pavez

Introduction. The bidirectional relationships between culture and medicine are essential in psychiatry due to the nature of its endeavour. Thus, the relevance of the analysis of popular culture lies in understanding popular ideas about mental disorders and psychiatric praxis (the focus of this thesis) and identifying the social impact of the circulation of such ideas (an open field of research). Objective. To describe the representations of psychiatric practice and mental disorders in Spanish punk songs (1981-2010). Specifically, the aim is to identify the uses, meanings, viewpoints, value judgements and emerging themes. Material and method. A systematic review was conducted to assess the extent of the available literature and the methodologies employed in the field. It guided the selection of the most appropriate strategies for a systematic approach to the subject matter, which led to the qualitative analysis of the lyrics of Spanish punk songs (1981-2010) through an inductive process. First, the general notion of ‘madness’ was addressed, followed by psychotic disorders and psychiatry. Finally, the contents related to criminality and violence were explored, along with their links to mental disorders from a punk perspective. The methodological strategy included content analysis as an initial approach, providing information on the type and extent of the allusions; while, in a second stage, the thematic analysis deepened into the uses, meanings, viewpoints, value judgements and emerging themes. Results and conclusions. The songs under study reflected general observations, clinical, therapeutic and social aspects, references to other cultural representations, new meanings for the psychiatric language, and a seemingly elusive use of it (musically driven), thereby confirming the interdiscursive, polyphonic and polysemic character of Spanish punk songs. The depictions of psychiatry were critical, characterised by their specificity and immutability (the stereotype of social control). The restricted format of the songs, intertextual influences and, perhaps more importantly, the connections with the allegorical function of the psychiatrist in the lyrical discourses of Spanish punk may explain these findings. Psychopathological terms related to psychotic disorders did not allude to positive meanings, showing a pejorative use in almost one-third of the cases. On the other hand, although most descriptions of psychotic symptoms or disorders were neutral, negative views reached almost 40%. The study of madness as a broader concept also showed a preponderance of negative depictions. Thus, most of the analysed songs reproduced the stereotypes prevailing in the general population, with an overestimation of the links between violence, criminality and mental disorders. The negative appraisals of madness and the madman can be explained mainly by the attributions of dangerousness attached to them. Associations with crime and violence also appeared in songs depicting psychotic disorders or symptoms. Additionally, the study of songs alluding to crime within mental disorders confirmed an almost absolute representation of offenders as ‘mentally disturbed.’ The cultural construction of mental illness retains a stigmatised dimension, which would be determined, at least partly, by intertextual factors. Apart from intertextuality, identity factors were relevant in the songs under study. Thus, the identity affirmation of the punk subculture can be expressed through the figure of the madman, encompassing provocative dimensions that challenge social patterns by exalting madness. The finding of a higher proportion than might be expected regarding the positive appraisal of the apparently negative attributes of madness was consistent with one of the hypotheses of this work; since it was expected to find either the same stigmatising views that are present in the general population but containing differentiated appraisal undertones or an idealisation of madness. Both cases were found in the songs examined, confirming the heterogeneity of the discoursive landscape.

Viewing Firearm Danger Through the Lens of Police Officers

Article

Jul 2022
HOMICIDE STUD

Despite danger being an integral part of officer decision-making during potentially lethal encounters (see Graham v. Connor), the study of officers’ perceptions of danger is scarce. Using a survey of over 800 police officers located in a large metropolitan police department, this study assesses officers’ perceptions of danger in different types of armed citizen situations involving various levels of citizen resistance. It also identifies various contextual factors and officer characteristics in relation to danger. The findings are used to inform future research, departmental policy, officer training, and the “objective reasonableness” standard put in place by the Supreme Court.

US Mass public shootings since Columbine: victims per incident by race and ethnicity of the perpetrator

Article

Jul 2022
PREV MED

White individuals in the United States (US) have historically had disproportionate access to firearms. The real-life availability of firearms, including those most lethal, may still be greater among White populations, manifesting in the number of victims in shootings. We compared the severity of US mass public shootings since Columbine by race and/or ethnicity of the perpetrator using The Violence Project Database of Mass Shooters, assessing fatalities (minimum four), total victims, type, and legal status of guns used. We used data visualization and Quasi-Poisson regression of victims minus four – accounting for truncation at 4 fatalities – to assess fatality and total victim rates comparing Non-Hispanic (NH) White with NH Black shooters, using winsorization to account for outlier bias from the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. In 104 total mass public shootings until summer 2021, NH White shooters had higher median fatalities (6 [IQR 5–9] versus 5 [IQR 4–6]) and total victims (9 [IQR 6–19] versus 7 [IQR 5–12]) per incident. Confidence intervals of NH Black versus NH White fatalities rate ratios (RR) ranged from 0.17–1.15, and of total victim RRs from 0.15–1.04. White shooters were overrepresented in mass public shootings with the most victims, typically involving legally owned assault rifles. To better understand the consequences when firearms are readily available, including assault rifles, we need a database of all US gun violence. Our assessment of total victims beyond fatalities emphasizes the large number of US gun violence survivors and the need to understand their experiences to capture the full impact of gun violence.

Auditing ethics: the pricing of Shariah non-compliant business activities

Article

Jan 2022

In this article, we examine whether firms’ involvement in socially provocative business activities that are inconsistent with Shariah principles affect auditor’s perceived risk associated with the financial reporting information. Our study makes several key contributions: (1) this study is a pioneer in documenting the relationship between Shariah non-compliant risk criteria and auditors’ pricing in a non- Muslim majority research setting, (2) the findings suggest that on average, ethical contextualisation on perceived acceptable behaviours is relatively consistent across beliefs and the severe lack of it has implications on auditors’ business risk assessment and (3) our research helps enhance understanding on auditors’ business risk evaluation with respect to Shariah non-compliant business activities.

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on interest in owning a firearm in the American public

Article

Jan 2022

News outlets ran stories suggesting that firearm purchases in the United States might have increased during the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic. Such claims were made because gun stores were deemed essential businesses at the onset of the pandemic. However, there is no scientific evidence to validate this claim. We tested whether intentions to own a firearm actually increased at an unprecedented rate, by comparing the rate of increase in firearm checks (a conservative estimate of intentions to obtain a firearm) at the onset of the pandemic with the same time period in previous years as well as with significant events in recent American history. We defined the month of February as the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic in the United States because this was the month in which (a) the pandemic caught wider national attention, (b) the first official presidential address relevant to the Coronavirus was made, and (c) the CDC initiated its first measures to stop the spread of the virus. Understanding why (inclination toward) firearm ownership increases during times of national crises can help researchers and gun policy makers better understand the psychological needs driving firearm ownership, and potentially improve gun regulations and gun policies for the future.

Examining differences between mass, multiple, and single-victim homicides to inform prevention: findings from the National Violent Death Reporting System

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2021

Background Multi-victim homicides are a persistent public health problem confronting the United States. Previous research shows that homicide rates in the U.S. are approximately seven times higher than those of other high-income countries, driven by firearm homicide rates that are 25 times higher; 31% of public mass shootings in the world also occur in the U.S.. The purpose of this analysis is to examine the characteristics of mass, multiple, and single homicides to help identify prevention points that may lead to a reduction in different types of homicides. Methods We used all available years (2003–2017) and U.S. states/jurisdictions (35 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico) included in CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS), a public health surveillance system which combines death certificate, coroner/medical examiner, and law enforcement reports into victim- and incident-level data on violent deaths. NVDRS includes up to 600 standard variables per incident; further information on types of mental illness among suspected perpetrators and incident resolution was qualitatively coded from case narratives. Data regarding number of persons nonfatally shot within incidents were cross-validated when possible with several other resources, including government reports and the Gun Violence Archive. Mass homicides (4+ victims), multiple homicides (2-3 victims) and single homicides were analyzed to assess group differences using Chi-square tests with Bonferroni-corrected post-hoc comparisons. Results Mass homicides more often had female, child, and non-Hispanic white victims than other homicide types. Compared with victims of other homicide types, victims of mass homicides were more often killed by strangers or someone else they did not know well, or by family members. More than a third were related to intimate partner violence. Approximately one-third of mass homicide perpetrators had suicidal thoughts/behaviors noted in the time leading up to the incident. Multi-victim homicides were more often perpetrated with semi-automatic firearms than single homicides. When accounting for nonfatally shot victims, over 4 times as many incidents could have resulted in mass homicide. Conclusions These findings underscore the important interconnections among multiple forms of violence. Primary prevention strategies addressing shared risk and protective factors are key to reducing these incidents.

Evaluating threats of mass shootings in the psychiatric setting

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2021

Psychiatrists may encounter patients at risk of perpetrating mass shootings or other mass violence in various settings. Most people who threaten or perpetrate mass violence are not driven by psychiatric symptoms; however, psychiatrists may be called upon to evaluate the role of mental illness plays in the risk or threat, and to treat psychiatric symptoms when present. Regardless of whether psychiatric treatment is likely to reduce symptoms or the potential for violence, the psychiatrist should collaborate closely with law enforcement, potential targets, and other agencies involved to mitigate risk. Such communications are governed by various privacy laws and duties to third parties. Additional measures, like protective orders, may be a means of restricting the subject’s access to firearms.

Exploring the empirical literature on mass shooting: A mixed-method systematic review of peer-reviewed journal articles

Article

May 2021
AGGRESS VIOLENT BEH

Due to the devastating impact on victims and society, scholars have started to pay more attention to the phenomenon of mass shootings (MS) in the United States. While the extant literature has given us important insights, disparities in conceptualizations, operationalizations, and methods of identifying and collecting data on these incidents have made it difficult for researchers and audiences to come to a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the characteristics of offenders, causes and consequences. Using a mixed-method systematic review, this study seeks to assess the state of scholarly research in journal articles regarding MS in the United States. Using SCOPUS as the search database, a total of 73 peer-reviewed journal articles on MS within the United States published between 1999 and 2018 were included in this study. This study finds the number of articles published on MS has increased dramatically between 1999 and 2018. Also, most of the MS studies tend to rely heavily on open-source data using the different definitions of MS. We further examined and discussed theoretical frameworks, methodology, and policy suggestions used in each study. Based on the findings of this study, we suggested implications for future research.

Guns, School Shooters, and School Safety: What We Know and Directions for Change

Article

Mar 2021

We summarize current data and understanding about the prevalence of gun violence at schools and risk of rampage school shootings. Following that comes a discussion of gun availability among youth and strategies and practices in the United States and abroad that have been implemented to limit access to firearms for minors. Next, we review the current evidence for arming school teachers, a strategy that could also increase the number of firearms in schools. We then focus on three specific strategies that schools have implemented to reduce school shootings and improve school safety: (a) addressing the role of mental health in school shootings and violence perpetration; (b) implementing multidisciplinary threat assessment protocols; and (c) target hardening and utilizing school resource officers. Based on available evidence, a public health approach to addressing firearm violence in schools is the most effective way to prevent school shootings, even if these effects are indirect through improvements in student social competence and positive school climate. Finally, we offer some recommendations for future practice, policy and research.IMPACT STATEMENT Based on the available evidence, singular approaches like target hardening or utilizing SROs will not reduce risk for school shootings and may lead to other deleterious effects. A public health approach that emphasizes student social–emotional learning and improved school climate may indirectly reduce firearm violence. Policies that limit youth access to firearms may also help to lower the risk of gun violence at school.

Gender-Based Mass Shootings: An Examination of Attacks Motivated by Grievances Against Women

Article

Jan 2021
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOM

This study provides a quantitative examination of gender-based mass shootings in America from 1966-2018. Gender-based mass shootings refer to attacks motivated by grievances against women, divided into four categories based on a specific woman or women in general, as well as whether they directly target the source of their grievances. Findings indicate that specific woman-targeted shooters were the most common and significantly different from their counterparts in their domestic violence history, racial diversity, and engagement in spree attacks. When comparing all gender-based attacks against other mass shootings, significant differences include relationship status, children, domestic violence history, substance abuse history, and suicide. This investigation provides implications for gender and mass shooting scholars, as well as practitioners developing strategies for intervention and prevention.

Gun Crime/Gun Control

Chapter

Nov 2019

Peter Squires

The mass shooting phenomenon, rather more than underlying levels of “ordinary” gun crime, has brought new urgency to the global gun debate, leading to renewed international efforts at gun control even as, in many societies, those who can, acquire firearms for their own personal defense, lacking confidence in the authorities' ability to protect them. Yet the global evidence is unequivocal: More guns invariably lead to more gun violence and significantly more gun suicides. While many jurisdictions have introduced new gun controls in the wake of mass shooting tragedies, the size and strength of the US gun lobby has been especially successful in preventing the adoption of significant new gun control measures, even, in many cases, liberalizing existing gun laws and securing a favorable reinterpretation of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. The commentary develops the concept of a “gun control regime” to better understand, from a social science perspective, the culture and politics, use and misuse, of firearms in any given country.

Global Guns, Violence and Criminology

Article

Jun 2023

Peter Squires

These four books published recently reflect, in their different ways, how criminology is coming to grapple with questions of firearms and violence. These are timely topics; at home, in Europe and across the wider world, gun violence has seldom been out of the news. In the United Kingdom, following the recent Inquest verdict and the coroner’s report on the Plymouth mass shooting of 2021, not forgetting a series of domestic killings with lawfully held weapons (in Sussex 2020; Skye 2022; Cambridge 2023; and Epsom 2023) the licensing of firearms is under urgent review. In Hamburg, Germany, eight people died during a mass shooting in the city, the fourth such event in Germany in two decades. Concerns have arisen over allegedly lax firearm laws and the failure of police to act on information received anticipating the attack. Meanwhile, in the United States, the killing has continued unabated. As of 5 March 2023, 5,149 people had been killed by gunfire in the year so far, a rise of 75% on the same period in 2022, while the shooting at the Covenant school in Nashville marked the 131st mass shooting in the United States this year. Yet, while gun violence in the United States and the global North regularly makes the news and the United States is widely viewed as exceptional in this regard, as Wallace points out in his powerful collection, rates of gun violence are much higher in many Southern, poor, developing and highly weaponized societies. It is just that we do not hear so much about it and seldom reflect upon the colonial legacies often responsible.

The U.S. cable televisions' framing of mass shooting: a grounded discovery of competing narratives

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2023

Maurice N Emelu

News frames play a vital role in shaping the audience's interpretation of the news, their participation in policy discussions, and their engagement in public discourse. This study uses the Analysis of Topic Model Networks (ANTMN) frame analysis grounded approach and examines the 2017 Sutherland Springs, Texas, mass shooting coverage in a house of worship by three U.S. cable television networks—CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. News reports for the first seven days following the shooting were collected from the cable networks' Twitter, YouTube, and website accounts. A total of 290 news reports were analyzed and 760 aggregate units for frames were coded. The results demonstrate that ANTMN grounded approach is an effective method for frame analysis and support research about the news media's emphasis on victims, community, and individual frames in cases of mass shootings. They identify differences in the issue-based frame of gun vs. mental health debates. Additional new frames of empathy, interventions, reactions, and security were discovered. Results also show differences in frames used and their frequency between the digital platforms of Twitter, YouTube, and websites and cable organizations. These differences show each media network's ideological perspectives or competing news narratives. The findings raise relevant questions to news coverage, policy debates about mental health and gun violence, and cultural awareness of the problem of mass shootings and public safety as the world becomes more global.

Socio-Psychological Problems of Digital Education in Subject's Development

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2023

American uniqueness revisited: A comparative examination of two school shootings using the path to intended violence

Article

Jun 2023

Социально-психологические проблемы развития субъектов цифрового образования

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2022

Проблемы цифрового образования следует изучать в ракурсе его социально-психологических процессов и эффектов, влияния на становление и развитие учеников и педагогов как субъектов. Цель-анализ социально-психологических проблем развития субъектов цифрового образования. Метод исследования-теоретический анализ проблем развития цифрового образования и его субъектов на примере использования систем искусственного интеллекта (смарт-технологий) в образовании. Материалы, результаты и обсуждение. Смарт-технологии предъявляют серьезные требования к культуре, и искусственный интеллект не является субъектом воспитания: он транслирует цели, ценности и модели поведения, которые предложены ему заказчиками и разработчиками. Эти цели могут служить как развитию субъектности, так и десубъективизации участников и стейкхолдеров образования. Поэтому смарт-технологии в образовании предъявляют серьезные требования к общечеловеческой и цифровой культуре и компетенции педагогов и учеников. При отсутствии культуры использования технологии искусственного интеллекта деформируют отношения человека с собой и миром, приводя к десубъективизации. Выводы. Центральными моментами продуктивного и эффективного образования, активно использующего цифровые технологии, позволяющего развивать субъектность его участников, выступают: а) формирование и развитие цифровой культуры; б) обращенность образования к формированию и развитию человека как субъекта. Эффективное смарт-образование должно быть ориентировано на формирование и развитие субъектности, цифровой культуры разработчиков, организаторов и пользователей смарт-технологий, осмысление места смарт-технологий в образовании разных ступеней и типов, а также повышение прозрачности и иных характеристик процессов и результатов их использования. Ключевые слова: системы искусственного интеллекта; цифровое обучение; цифровые средства обучения; цифровая культура; смарт-образование; субъектность

Estimating the Global Prevalence of Mass Public Shootings

Article

Dec 2022
INT J OFFENDER THER

Previous studies have yielded widely divergent conclusions about the percentage of all mass public shootings globally that take place in the US, ranging from a low of 3% to a high of 36%. Because of documented underreporting of lower-severity attacks involving fewer than 10 victim fatalities in US cases in these studies, it is reasonable to assume that this underreporting issue also applies to their measurement of mass public shootings outside the US. To estimate the total number of mass public shootings worldwide, we use multiple assumptions and modeling approaches, including a hierarchical Bayesian model. Our estimates show the US accounted for anywhere between 16% and 26% of the world's mass public shootings during the 1976 to 2012 period. These estimates suggest the US share of the total is between four and six times higher than its 4% share of the world's population.

Comparing the Global Rate of Mass Public Shootings to the U.S.’s Rate and Comparing Their Changes Over Time

Article

Jan 2020

John Lott

School shootings in Russia vs. the United States: new reality, key similarities and differences

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2022

Background: The Cumulative Strain Theory (CST) is a multi-stage explanatory model which is used to analyse students' involvement in mass shootings at schools across the world. School shootings were once considered a uniquely American phenomenon. However, over the last decade, the incidence of these violent attacks has spiked around the globe. In particular, recent reports from Russia have demonstrated a worrying increase in the number of school shootings despite efforts to implement policies to prevent them. Aim: The aims of this report are (1) to discuss the genesis of school mass murders in the context of cumulative strain theory, and (2) to analyse the scope of the problem in the US versus Russia. Methods: We used the five-stage cumulative strain theory to analyse the factors contributing to school shootings using two case studies from each country. We gathered information and evidence from a variety of sources including interview transcripts, statistical data, journal articles, reviews, and other secondary sources published in Russian and English. Results: Our analysis revealed some common features among the school shooters in Russia and the US, such as the self-perception of superiority, vindictiveness and a lack of social support, including challenging relationships with parents and peers. However, the American shooters displayed a readiness for encounters with and possible firearm use against law enforcement officers during the mass murders. We further found that auto-aggressive behaviours were prevalent in the attacks that occurred-in Russia in particular. Unlike those from the US, the reports from Russia pointed towards an association between cumulative economic hardships and various behavioural outcomes ranging from poor psychological health to severe behavioural outbursts and violent behaviours. Conclusion: We believe that the cult of weapons and militarism increase the risk of school shootings in both countries. Neither a single stage of CST nor all five stages together can predict or confirm the association with mass shootings.

Defining Rampage Violence Across Completion Status: Towards a More Comprehensive Model

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2022

The definitions and terms used to describe single-incident mass casualty events vary widely and remain contested. To allow for the inclusion of more incidents, larger and more representative samples, and more comprehensive analyses, we argue in favor of using the broad term “rampage” and propose a new model, the Rampage Violence Status Model (RVSM), which provides additional context on completion status and can subsume previous terminology. Additionally, by expanding upon previous researchers’ distinctions and definitions of various stages and completion statuses, we suggest adopting the following terms as stages in the progression of rampage violence, per the RVSM: researched, planned, prepared, initiated, interrupted, attempted, and completed.

Mass Killings Past, Present, and Future

Chapter

Aug 2022

Mass shootings have been of interest and concern to a variety of experts including psychologists, sociologists, criminologists, public health experts, and policy makers. Journalists have tracked mass shooting events for a long time. Recently, mass shootings in public places have dominated the national dialogue about gun violence, gun control, and Second Amendment protections due to several mass pubic shootings in recent years that resulted in double-digit victim counts. Regardless of the why, it seems clear that the ability to identify and predict this behavior as early as possible is important, for the killer as well as the community.

BİREYSEL SİLAHLANMA VE ŞİDDET: ATEŞLİ SİLAH ŞİDDETİNİN GÜNCEL DURUMU-

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2022

Toplumlar ilerledikçe şiddet ve suç davranışlarının azalacağı önündeki görüşlerin aksine şiddet ve suç davranışları her geçen gün artmaktadır. Ancak aktörler, roller ve araçlar değişiklik göstermektedir. Özellikle son zamanlarda yaşanan şiddet olaylarında karşılaşılan araçlardan biri ateşli silahlardır. Dünyada her yıl ateşli silah şiddetinden dolayı 200.000'den fazla kişi hayatını kaybetmektedir. Bunların 150.000'i cinayet, 65.000'i intihar ve 20.000'den fazlası silah kazasıdır. Türkiye'de ise her yıl 2.000'den fazla kişi ateşli silahlardan dolayı hayatını kaybederken 3.000'in üzerinde kişi çeşitli yerlerinden yaralanmaktadır. Bu çalışmanın amacı, hem dünyada hem de Türkiye'de her geçen gün artan ateşli silah şiddetinin güncel durumunun betimlenmesi ve bireysel silahlanma sayılarının belirlenmesidir. Nitel araştırmalarda kullanılan Doküman Analizi yönteminin kullanıldığı çalışmada, bireysel silahlanma sayıları ve ateşli silahların kullanımıyla ilgili problem alanları tespit edilmiştir. Sonuç olarak bireysel silahlanmanın yüksek olduğu bölgelerde ateşli silah şiddetinin de yüksek olduğu görülmektedir. Dünyada ateşli silah şiddetinin Brezilya, ABD ve Hindistan gibi büyük nüfus yoğunluğu olan ülkelerde yoğunlaştığı belirlenirken Türkiye'de ateşli silah şiddeti nüfus yoğunluğu fazla olan İstanbul, Samsun, Adana ve İzmir gibi şehirlere yoğunlaşmaktadır.

Zero Tolerance as a Policy Response to Mass Shootings

Chapter

Jun 2022

The growth of shootings and rise of violence in schools have forced legislators and educators to take action. However, there has been limited change. Consequently, schools have had to resort to their own preventative measures including zero tolerance policies. Data clearly shows that zero tolerance has been the dominant way of dealing with discipline since the passage of the GFSA act of 1994. Despite the original intent of implementing zero tolerance policies in schools—that is, to ensure guns and other dangerous weapons were kept out of schools—these policies have instead grown to encompass an endless variety of seemingly minor infractions. This chapter explores the effects that zero tolerance policies, particularly, the unintended consequences that have resulted due to the increased utilization of such practices. Zero tolerance policies have implications for children and youth that are vulnerable (disabilities, immigrants, poor socio-economic status) increasing risks for repeated offenses and exposure to criminal justice.

Injury Characteristics, Outcomes, and Health Care Services Use Associated With Nonfatal Injuries Sustained in Mass Shootings in the US, 2012-2019

Article

Full-text available

May 2022

Importance: Civilian public mass shootings (CPMSs) in the US result in substantial injuries. However, the types and consequences of these injuries have not been systematically described. Objective: To describe the injury characteristics, outcomes, and health care burden associated with nonfatal injuries sustained during CPMSs and to better understand the consequences to patients, hospitals, and society at large. Design, setting, and participants: This retrospective case series of nonfatal injuries from 13 consecutive CPMSs (defined as ≥10 injured individuals) from 31 hospitals in the US from July 20, 2012, to August 31, 2019, used data from trauma logs and medical records to capture injuries, procedures, lengths of stay, functional impairment, disposition, and charges. A total of 403 individuals treated in hospitals within 24 hours of the CPMSs were included in the analysis. Data were analyzed from October 27 to December 5, 2021. Exposures: Nonfatal injuries sustained during CPMSs. Main outcomes and measures: Injuries and diagnoses, treating services, procedures, hospital care, and monetary charges. Results: Among the 403 individuals included in the study, the median age was 33.0 (IQR, 24.5-48.0 [range, 1 to >89]) years, and 209 (51.9%) were women. Among the 386 patients with race and ethnicity data available, 13 (3.4%) were Asian; 44 (11.4%), Black or African American; 59 (15.3), Hispanic/Latinx; and 270 (69.9%), White. Injuries included 252 gunshot wounds (62.5%) and 112 other injuries (27.8%), and 39 patients (9.7%) had no physical injuries. One hundred seventy-eight individuals (53.1%) arrived by ambulance. Of 494 body regions injured (mean [SD], 1.35 [0.68] per patient), most common included an extremity (282 [57.1%]), abdomen and/or pelvis (66 [13.4%]), head and/or neck (65 [13.2%]), and chest (50 [10.1%]). Overall, 147 individuals (36.5%) were admitted to a hospital, 95 (23.6%) underwent 1 surgical procedure, and 42 (10.4%) underwent multiple procedures (1.82 per patient). Among the 252 patients with gunshot wounds, the most common initial procedures were general and trauma surgery (41 [16.3%]) and orthopedic surgery (36 [14.3%]). In the emergency department, 148 of 364 injured individuals (40.7%) had 199 procedures (1.34 per patient). Median hospital length of stay was 4.0 (IQR, 2.0-7.5) days; for 50 patients in the intensive care unit, 3.0 (IQR, 2.0-8.0) days (13.7% of injuries and 34.0% of admissions). Among 364 injured patients, 160 (44.0%) had functional disability at discharge, with 19 (13.3%) sent to long-term care. The mean (SD) charges per patient were $64 976 ($160 083). Conclusions and relevance: Civilian public mass shootings cause substantial morbidity. For every death, 5.8 individuals are injured. These results suggest that including nonfatal injuries in the overall burden of CPMSs may help inform public policy to prevent and mitigate the harm caused by such events.

Gun Ownership and Gun Control

Chapter

May 2021

Paul J Hazell

By some estimates, it is reckoned that there are close to 1 billion firearms in existence in the world today and 85%

Examining homicides and suicides cross‐nationally: Economic factors, guns and video games

Article

Mar 2021

Understanding why different nations have different homicide and suicide rates has been of interest to scholars, policy makers and the general public for years. Multiple theories have been offered, related to the economy, presence of guns and even exposure to violence in video games. In the current study, several factors were considered in combination across a sample of 92 countries. These included income inequality (Gini index), Human Capital Index (education and employment), per capita gun ownership and per capita expenditure on video games. Results suggest that economic factors primarily were related to homicide and suicide cross‐nationally. Video game consumption was not a major indicative factor (other than a small negative relationship with homicides). More surprisingly, per capita gun ownership was not an indicator factor cross‐nationally. The results suggest that a focus on economic factors and income inequality are most likely to bear fruit regarding reduction of violence and suicide.

Firearm Violence in the Pediatric Population: An International Perspective

Chapter

Feb 2021

Firearm injuries are a serious public health problem for children and adolescents in the United States and even more of a problem in some low- and middle-income countries. A number of countries in Central and South America report extremely high rates of firearm death, though data in these countries are less reliable than data from high-income countries. Globally, there were more firearm homicides than firearm suicides among those 0–24 years old in 2016. Among high-income countries, the United States has the highest pediatric firearm death rates. It appears that a main reason for our relatively high firearm death rate is widespread firearm availability. Unfortunately, pediatric firearm injury prevention is still a topic about which little is known, not only for low- and middle-income countries but also for high-income nations. More research is needed on risk and protective factors specific to children and adolescents, and better data are needed especially for nonfatal gun injuries.

Assessing How Violent Threats from Students Toward Schools Are Affected Before and After a School Shooting

Article

Feb 2021

The objective of this study was to examine whether the number of children presenting for emergency psychiatric evaluations for making threats of mass school violence increases in the wake of a school shooting that receives heavy media attention. The records reviewed were for all children who presented to our hospital's pediatric behavioral health emergency service in the 6 weeks before and after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, that occurred on February 14, 2018. The inclusion criterion was threat of mass casualty school violence recorded in the encounter history of present illness. The proportion of patients reporting school violence was higher after the Parkland shooting than before ( P = .0164). The mean number of admission days was longer for patients presenting after the Parkland shooting rather than before ( P = .0164), and for those with documented gun access rather than undocumented ( P = .0128). Our findings suggest that school violence threats increase in the weeks after a school shooting in which there was heavy media attention. [ Psychiatr Ann . 2021;51(2):88–94.]

Masculinity, Ritual, and Racialized Status Threat: Examining Mass Shooter Manifestos Using Structural Topic Models

Article

Dec 2020

Both media and research often frame mass shootings as an individual issue having to do with mental illness or other psycho-social problems. This work has unfolded in much the same fashion as that on other negative or antisocial behaviors-such as the individual pathologization of suicide or rape. However, what this work has shown is that there are often a set of circumstances that are uniquely social that motivate such actions. Following work in sociology, which offers social psychological and cultural explanations for gun violence, we argue that mass shooter motivations reflect social conditions-especially those that instantiate toxic masculinity, social exclusion, and racism-conducive to these events. This article uses a computational textual modeling approach to analyze the distinct social logics that motivate mass shooters. To do this, we identify a sample of 27 publicly available mass shooter "manifestos," or documents left behind by shooters following their actions. Using topic models, we show that mass shooters exhibit a variety of preoccupations that underlie their actions. While shooters can exhibit a multitude of possible motivations, we find that expressions of masculine overcompensation, ritualistic responses to exclusion, and racialized status threat are prominent features of mass shooter manifestos, corroborating recent sociological explanations of mass shootings. 2

Culturally independent risk factors of school and campus rampages: An analysis of international case studies of educational institution violence

Article

Nov 2020
AGGRESS VIOLENT BEH

We investigated risk factors for school and campus rampages, using international case studies. The factors rejection (chronic/acute), psychological problems, fascination with guns and/or explosives as well as fascination with violence and/or death have already been found for U.S. cases in previous research. However, school rampages are not just a U.S.-American phenomenon. Therefore, we analyzed 20 international cases from six continents between 1999 and 2016 to investigate culturally independent evidence of these factors. In addition to the five risk factors, cultural characteristics of the nations involved were compared, including six universal dimensions, firearm possession rate, and the Global Peace Index. After examining non-U.S./international cases, our results also show evidence for five factors: rejection (chronic/acute), psychological problems, gun/explosives fascination, as well as violence/death fascination. These results can help to establish effective and efficient prevention of school and campus rampages all around the globe.

Finding Your Inner Gun: A Jungian Perspective on Mass Shootings and American Gun Culture

Article

Apr 2020

Randi Gross Nathenson

Mass shootings have become a recurrent tragedy in the United States. This paper examines these incidents from a Jungian perspective. While much of the discourse around mass shootings surrounds finger-pointing and the gun control debate, making meaningful action and legislation untenable, my aim is to look deeper, reflecting on what may be amiss in both the individual and collective psyche. The symbolic meaning of the gun specific to American history and culture is amplified, and the role the gun continues to play as a cultural and political symbol. The author posits that mass shootings point to an archetypal possession, the constellation of both a cultural and personal gun complex, where shadow aspects of ourselves, including power, rage, and aggression, become enacted with destructive and fatal consequences. The trend of mass shootings is investigated from a mythopoetic standpoint, using the myth Ares to further explore this phenomenon. The author also examines the necessity of owning our shadow side, namely our power, rage, and aggression, both personally and collectively. In this work comes the importance of connecting with the positive creative potential of the inner gun.

Suicide by cop: Committing suicide by provoking police to shoot you (Title and Contents pages only)

Book

Full-text available

Jan 2004

Guns, Violent Crime, and Suicide in 21 Countries

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2001
Can J Criminol

Research on the role of firearms in violence and fatal events has focused heavily on American data and research. This implies certain limitations, since the United States is one of the Western countries with exceptionally high homicide and gun ownership rates. Thus, the American context offers only limited variance in the most prominent independent as well as dependent variables. International comparisons offer challenging new perspectives. This research is based on data on gun availability in private households, collected through the international victimization surveys of 1989, 1992, and 1996, and World Health Organization data on homicide and suicide from 21 countries. It updates and extends former research conducted on this issue, based on the surveys of 1989 and 1992. In addition, data from the International Crime Victimization Surveys were used on total and gun-related robbery and assault (including threats).

Cultural and Institutional Adaptation and Change in Europe: A Test of Institutional Anomie Theory Using Time Series Modelling of Homicide Data

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2014

Diana Dolliver

This study examined whether geographic differences in intentional homicide rates in Europe were a function of societies that exhibit Anomic cultural tendencies and an institutional imbalance, as guided by Institutional Anomie Theory. This research is temporally sensitive, taking into account these differences over a 15-year time period. Additionally, separate operations of the theory within developed and transitioning countries were tested, and various cultural–institutional configurations were uncovered that led to increases or decreases in homicide rates. While still restricted by a lack of guidance from Messner and Rosenfeld and inconsistency in past research on how to operationalize key concepts of Institutional Anomie Theory, this study significantly contributes to the literature by assessing core theoretical questions of the theory while employing appropriate measurement strategies.

The Routine of Mass Murder in China

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2014
HOMICIDE STUD

Using data obtained from 165 mass murders in China, this research examines the crime of mass murder through a routine activities perspective as it relates to the location of where they occur (rural areas), while taking into consideration the motivation (revenge and profit), and most common weapon (knife) used. This adds to the literature on mass murders and routine activities theory from an area (China) where little academic research has been published regarding this crime.

A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013

Technical Report

Full-text available

Sep 2014

The Columbine LegacyRampage Shootings as Political Acts

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2009

Ralph W. Larkin

The purpose of this article is to explore how the Columbine shootings on April 20, 1999, influenced subsequent school rampage shootings. First, school rampage shootings are defined to distinguish them from other forms of school violence. Second, post-Columbine shootings and thwarted shootings are examined to determine how they were influenced by Columbine. Unlike prior rampage shooters, Harris and Klebold committed their rampage shooting as an overtly political act in the name of oppressed students victimized by their peers. Numerous post-Columbine rampage shooters referred directly to Columbine as their inspiration; others attempted to supersede the Columbine shootings in body count. In the wake of Columbine, conspiracies to blow up schools and kill their inhabitants by outcast students were uncovered by authorities. School rampage shootings, most of which referred back to Columbine as their inspiration, expanded beyond North America to Europe, Australia, and Argentina; they increased on college campuses and spread to nonschool venues. The Columbine shootings redefined such acts not merely as revenge but as a means of protest of bullying, intimidation, social isolation, and public rituals of humiliation.

Violent Masculinities as Tropes for School ShootersThe Montréal Massacre, the Columbine Attack, and Rethinking Schools

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2009

Karen Tonso

Attacks at Montréal École Polytechnique and Columbine High frame a decade of school shootings and may offer insights into some other rampages. Though times, rationales, and sites of peer-group production differed at these two sites, “school shooter” encoded ways to react in situations where some young men felt unfairly subordinated in society; shooters used deadly violence to assert and reclaim the “rightful” places they felt denied. “School shooter” seemed to borrow from violent masculinities, common socioculturally produced images, or tropes, for acting, implicating not only shooters (who take up extreme versions of these tropes), but also simultaneously everyday sociocultural contexts where violent masculinities are produced, reinforced, and valorized. This article suggests the importance of context to the production of shooters and as such competes with attempts to develop remedies to school shootings grounded in de-contextualized, individualistic approaches that focus only on shooters.

Firing Back: The Growing Threat of Workplace Homicide

Article

Full-text available

Nov 1994

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.

Mass Murder at School and Cumulative StrainA Sequential Model

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2009

To explain the genesis of mass murder committed by students at their schools, the authors propose a five-stage sequential model in which several criminological theories (strain theory, control theory, and routine activities theory) are brought to bear collectively to demonstrate their cumulative effect. These stages are as follows: chronic strain, uncontrolled strain, acute strain, the planning stage, and the massacre. Long-term frustrations (chronic strains) experienced early in life or in adolescence lead to social isolation, and the resultant lack of prosocial support systems (uncontrolled strain) in turn allows a short-term negative event (acute strain), be it real or imagined, to be particularly devastating. As such, the acute strain initiates a planning stage, wherein a mass killing is fantasized about as a masculine solution to regain lost feelings of control, and actions are taken to ensure the fantasy can become reality. The planning process concludes in a massacre facilitated by weapons that enable mass destruction in schoolrooms and campuses, where students are closely packed together. Based on this analysis, prevention strategies are suggested.

Social support, inequality, and homicide: A cross-national test of an integrated theoretical model

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2003
CRIMINOLOGY

Social support, institutional anomie, and macrolevel general strain perspectives have emerged as potentially important explanations of aggregate levels of crime. Drawing on insights from each of these perspectives in a cross-national context, the analyses show that 1) our measure of social support is inversely related to homicide rates, 2) economic inequality also maintains a direct relationship with homicide rates, and 3) social support significantly interacts with economic inequality to influence homicide rates. The implications of the analysis for ongoing discourse concerning the integration of these criminological theories and the implications for the development of effective crime control policies are discussed.

Rampage school shooters: A typology

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2009
AGGRESS VIOLENT BEH

Peter Langman

A number of researchers have sought to identify the features that school shooters have in common in terms of family life, personalities, histories, and behaviors. This article examines the cases of 10 rampage school-shooters in an effort to find out not only how they are alike, but also how they differ. Based on available information, these youths are categorized into three types: traumatized, psychotic, and psychopathic. Out of the 10 shooters discussed, three were traumatized, five were psychotic, and two were psychopathic. The three traumatized shooters all came from broken homes with parental substance abuse and parental criminal behavior. They all were physically abused and two were sexually abused outside of the home. The five psychotic shooters had schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, including schizophrenia and schizotypal personality disorder. They all came from intact families with no history of abuse. The two psychopathic shooters were neither abused nor psychotic. They demonstrated narcissism, a lack of empathy, a lack of conscience, and sadistic behavior. Most people who are traumatized, psychotic, and psychopathic do not commit murder. Beyond identifying the three types of rampage shooters, additional factors are explored that may have contributed to the attacks. These include family structure, role models, and peer influence.

International Correlations Between Gun Ownership and Rates of Homicide and Suicide

Article

Full-text available

Jun 1993

Martin Killias

To examine international correlations between reported rates of household gun ownership and rates of homicide and suicide with a gun. Survey. People who responded to a telephone survey conducted by the 1989 International Crime Survey in 11 European countries, Australia, Canada and the United States. Positive correlations were obtained between the rates of household gun ownership and the national rates of homicide and suicide as well as the proportions of homicides and suicides committed with a gun. There was no negative correlation between the rates of ownership and the rates of homicide and suicide committed by other means; this indicated that the other means were not used to "compensate" for the absence of guns in countries with a lower rate of gun ownership. Larger studies are needed to examine more closely possible confounding factors such as the national tendency toward violent solutions, and more information on the type and availability of guns will be helpful in future studies. Nevertheless, the correlations detected in this study suggest that the presence of a gun in the home increases the likelihood of homicide or suicide.

Australia’s 1996 gun law reforms: Faster falls in firearm deaths, firearm suicides, and a decade without mass shootings

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2007

After a 1996 firearm massacre in Tasmania in which 35 people died, Australian governments united to remove semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns and rifles from civilian possession, as a key component of gun law reforms. To determine whether Australia's 1996 major gun law reforms were associated with changes in rates of mass firearm homicides, total firearm deaths, firearm homicides and firearm suicides, and whether there were any apparent method substitution effects for total homicides and suicides. Observational study using official statistics. Negative binomial regression analysis of changes in firearm death rates and comparison of trends in pre-post gun law reform firearm-related mass killings. Australia, 1979-2003. Changes in trends of total firearm death rates, mass fatal shooting incidents, rates of firearm homicide, suicide and unintentional firearm deaths, and of total homicides and suicides per 100,000 population. In the 18 years before the gun law reforms, there were 13 mass shootings in Australia, and none in the 10.5 years afterwards. Declines in firearm-related deaths before the law reforms accelerated after the reforms for total firearm deaths (p = 0.04), firearm suicides (p = 0.007) and firearm homicides (p = 0.15), but not for the smallest category of unintentional firearm deaths, which increased. No evidence of substitution effect for suicides or homicides was observed. The rates per 100,000 of total firearm deaths, firearm homicides and firearm suicides all at least doubled their existing rates of decline after the revised gun laws. Australia's 1996 gun law reforms were followed by more than a decade free of fatal mass shootings, and accelerated declines in firearm deaths, particularly suicides. Total homicide rates followed the same pattern. Removing large numbers of rapid-firing firearms from civilians may be an effective way of reducing mass shootings, firearm homicides and firearm suicides.

Self-Reported Suicidal Behavior and Attitudes Toward Suicide and Suicide Prevention Among Psychology Students in Ghana, Uganda, and Norway

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2008

Self-reported suicidal behavior and attitudes toward suicide in psychology students are reported and compared in Ghana, Uganda, and Norway. Small differences only were found in own suicidal behavior. However, experience of suicidal behavior in the surroundings was more common in Uganda than in Ghana and Norway. Although differences were found between the three countries in attitudes toward suicide, which emphasizes the need for culture-sensitive research and prevention, many of the differences were not as big as expected. The most pronounced difference was that the Norwegian students were more reluctant to take a stand on these questions compared to their African counterparts. Some differences were also found between the two African countries. The implications of the results for suicide prevention in Africa are discussed.

Democracy in America

Chapter

Apr 2011

A. De Tocqueville

Social Mobility in Industrial Society

Article

Jan 1960

Violent Land: Single Men and Social Disorder from the Frontier to the Inner City.

Article

Aug 1998
J South Hist

Triggering the debate: Faulty associations between violence and mental illness underlie u s gun control efforts

Article

Jan 2013

School Shooters: Understanding High School, College, and Adult Perpetrators

Book

Jan 2015

Peter Langman

Handgun regulations, crime, assaults, and homicide: A tale of two cities

Article

May 1989
NEW ENGL J MED

This article has no abstract; the first 100 words appear below. Benneyan — Robert Noel Benneyan, M.D., of Greenfield, died on February 22. He was 56. Dr. Benneyan received his degree from Cornell University Medical College in 1958. He was a member of the American Medical Association and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. Borenstein — Morris V. Borenstein, M.D., formerly of Springfield, died on March 4 at the age of 82. Dr. Borenstein received his degree from Universitaet Wien, Medizinische Fakultaet in 1936. He was a member of the American Physicians Fellowship, Inc., the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Society of Law and Medicine. Delisle — Antonio . . .

Celebrity Culture and the American Dream: Stardom and Social Mobility

Article

Mar 2011

Karen Sternheimer

Celebrity Culture and the American Dream, Second Edition considers how major economic and historical factors shaped the nature of celebrity culture as we know it today, retaining the first edition's examples from the first celebrity fan magazines of 1911 to the present and expanding to include updated examples and additional discussion on the role of the internet and social media in today's celebrity culture. Equally important, the book explains how and why the story of Hollywood celebrities matters, sociologically speaking, to an understanding of American society, to the changing nature of the American Dream, and to the relation between class and culture. This book is an ideal addition to courses on inequalities, celebrity culture, media, and cultural studies.

Harsh Justice: Criminal Punishment and the Widening Divide Between America and Europe

Article

Jan 2012

James Whitman

Criminal punishment in America is harsh and degrading-more so than anywhere else in the liberal west. Executions and long prison terms are commonplace in America. Countries like France and Germany, by contrast, are systematically mild. European offenders are rarely sent to prison, and when they are, they serve far shorter terms than their American counterparts. Why is America so comparatively harsh? This book takes a comparative legal history perspective and argues that the answer lies in America's triumphant embrace of a non-hierarchical social system and distrust of state power which have contributed to a law of punishment that is more willing to degrade offenders.

How Exceptional is the American Political Economy?

Article

Sep 1990

Richard Rose

Mass Shooters in the USA, 1966–2010: Differences Between Attackers Who Live and Die

Article

Dec 2013

Adam Lankford

Previous research suggests that there are fundamental psychological and behavioral differences between offenders who commit murder and offenders who commit murder-suicide. Whether a similar distinction exists for rampage, workplace, and school shooters remains unknown. Using data from the 2010 NYPD report, this study presents results from the first regression analysis of all qualifying mass shooters who struck in the USA between 1966 and 2010 (N = 185). Findings suggest that there are fundamental differences between mass shooters who die as a result of their attacks and mass shooters who live. Patterns among offenders, the weapons they use, the victims they kill, and the locations they attack may have significant implications for scholars and security officials alike.

The Myth of Martyrdom: What Really Drives Suicide Bombers, Rampage Shooters, and Other Self-Destructive Killers

Article

May 2014
BEHAV BRAIN SCI

Adam Lankford

For years, scholars have claimed that suicide terrorists are not suicidal, but rather psychologically normal individuals inspired to sacrifice their lives for an ideological cause, due to a range of social and situational factors. I agree that suicide terrorists are shaped by their contexts, as we all are. However, I argue that these scholars went too far. In The Myth of Martyrdom: What Really Drives Suicide Bombers, Rampage Shooters, and Other Self-Destructive Killers, I take the opposing view, based on my in-depth analyses of suicide attackers from Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and North America; attackers who were male, female, young, old, Islamic, and Christian; attackers who carried out the most deadly and the least deadly strikes. I present evidence that in terms of their behavior and psychology, suicide terrorists are much like others who commit conventional suicides, murder-suicides, or unconventional suicides where mental health problems, personal crises, coercion, fear of an approaching enemy, or hidden self-destructive urges play a major role. I also identify critical differences between suicide terrorists and those who have genuinely sacrificed their lives for a greater good. By better understanding suicide terrorists, experts in the brain and behavioral sciences may be able to pioneer exciting new breakthroughs in security countermeasures and suicide prevention. And even more ambitiously, by examining these profound extremes of the human condition, perhaps we can more accurately grasp the power of the human survival instinct among those who are actually psychologically healthy.

The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981-2010

Article

Sep 2013
AM J PUBLIC HEALTH

Objectives: We examined the relationship between levels of household firearm ownership, as measured directly and by a proxy-the percentage of suicides committed with a firearm-and age-adjusted firearm homicide rates at the state level. Methods: We conducted a negative binomial regression analysis of panel data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Web-Based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting Systems database on gun ownership and firearm homicide rates across all 50 states during 1981 to 2010. We determined fixed effects for year, accounted for clustering within states with generalized estimating equations, and controlled for potential state-level confounders. Results: Gun ownership was a significant predictor of firearm homicide rates (incidence rate ratio = 1.009; 95% confidence interval = 1.004, 1.014). This model indicated that for each percentage point increase in gun ownership, the firearm homicide rate increased by 0.9%. Conclusions: We observed a robust correlation between higher levels of gun ownership and higher firearm homicide rates. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides.

The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective

Article

Jan 2000

Mary O'Toole

The Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative: Implications for the Prevention of School Attacks in the United States

Article

Jan 2004

Bryan Vossekuil

Why are U.S. Incarceration Rates So High?

Article

Oct 1999
CRIME DELINQUENCY

Michael Tonry

Most explanations of the unprecedented increase in American incarceration rates are inadequate. Crime rate increases, more punitive public attitudes, postmodernist angst, and cynical politics are all only part of the explanation. Those things characterize all Western countries; in some of these countries, imprisonment rates have long been stable or declining, and, where they are rising, absolute levels and rates of increase are dwarfed by those in America. The scale of the phenomenon is distinctly American. It arises partly from American moralism and partly from structural characteristics of American government that provide little insulation from emotions generated by moral panics and longterm cycles of tolerance and intolerance.

Violent Land: Single Men and Social Disorder from the Frontier to the Inner City

Article

Aug 1998
J South Hist

Social Mobility in Industrial Society

Article

Aug 1960

Repeat TragedyRampage Shootings in American High School and College Settings, 2002-2008

Article

Apr 2009

The authors examine rampage shootings in American high schools after 2002 and consider whether factors identified in their prior research on rampages from 1974 to 2002 account for the more recent cases. The authors find that the five factors—social marginality, individual predisposing factors, cultural scripts, failure of the surveillance system, and availability of guns—remain important features. The authors then contrast these high school shootings with the recent spate of college rampage shootings that resemble the high school cases in some ways but differ in others. College shooters are older and therefore typically further along in the development of serious mental illness.

American Exceptionalism Revisited: The Military-Industrial Complex, Racial Tension, and the Underdeveloped Welfare State

Article

Apr 2010

We examine Democrats’ decline in the House of Representatives from the mid-1930s to the late 1940s. Debates over American exceptionalism in the realm of social policy pay surprisingly little attention to a profound transformation that occurred during and after World War II: on the international stage, the United States emerged as the hegemon; at home, the Pentagon became the largest and most powerful agency in the federal bureaucracy. In modeling electoral losses suffered by Democrats, we show that World War II mobilization played an important role. First, Democrats lost ground in congressional districts where the nascent military-industrial complex was created, specifically in aircraft manufacturing centers. Second, the impact of aircraft manufacturing intersected with wartime in-migration of non-whites. Democrats suffered significantly greater losses where both non-white population and aircraft manufacturing employment increased. Our findings corroborate accounts of the social welfare state that stress partisan control and path dependence. Conservative congresses of the immediate postwar years left an imposing legacy, making it difficult to establish social welfare reforms for decades to come. Whereas most accounts of the rise and fall of the New Deal emphasize different aspects of domestic processes, we demonstrate that militarism and expansion of national security agencies undermined congressional support at a critical juncture. This intersection of wartime mobilization and social policy—and not an inherent and enduring institutional impediment to social welfare—contributed to under-development of the welfare state and abandonment of universal social welfare programs in the United States.

From Columbine to Palestine: A comparative analysis of rampage shooters in the United States and volunteer suicide bombers in the Middle East

Article

Mar 2011
AGGRESS VIOLENT BEH

Previous research comparing rampage shooters in the U.S. and volunteer suicide bombers in the Middle East appears to be virtually non-existent. When these two types of suicidal killers have been mentioned in the same context, it has primarily been to dismiss any possible connections. Rampage shooters are generally assumed to be mentally unbalanced, while suicide bombers are seen as extreme, but rational, political actors. However, this review explores the possibility that the primary differences between the two types of killers are cultural, not individual, and that in terms of their underlying psychology and motivation, they are actually quite similar. In both cases, substantial evidence indicates that these perpetrators of murder–suicide share many of the following characteristics: (1) they had troubled childhoods, (2) they lived in oppressive social environments, (3) they suffered from low self-esteem, (4) they were triggered by a personal crisis, (5) they were seeking revenge, and (6) they were seeking fame and glory.

The Historiography of American Violence

Article

May 2003
HOMICIDE STUD

Historians have generally agreed that the United States has always been an extremely violent nation; however, since the 1950s they have been myopic in their treatment of violence in America and have not provided the American people with essential information about their society and culture. Those historians who focused on violence in America, until the 1990s, have focused on only one form of violence-collective social violence. Largely overlooked, and equally significant, are interpersonal violence (including criminal and domestic violence) and the effect of war. This deficiency helps explain why Americans seem genuinely at a loss to understand the nature, character, and frequency of violence in America's past and present, especially when a high-profile violent incident occurs. This article surveys the historiography of violence in America through the 1990s and examines the contributions of historians and legal scholars who have focused on interpersonal and criminal violence.

A People''''s History of the United States: 1492 to Present

Article

Howard Zinn

American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword

Article

Nov 1996

Seymour Martin Lipset

Income inequality and homicide rates: Cross-national data and criminological theories

Article

Mar 2006
CRIMINOLOGY

Previous studies have identified but failed to explain satisfactorily the positive relationship between income inequality and homicide rates. This paper proposes an explanation based on the concept of relative deprivation, but also reviews the criminological literature in a search for other theoretically relevant variables. After assessing problems of sampling and measurement, and using a considerably larger sample than used in previous studies, multiple regression analyses reveal positive net effects of both inequality and population growth (reflecting a higher proportion of young people) on homicide rates. Further analyses show that the effects of inequality on homicide are more pronounced in more democratic nations, a finding supporting the relative deprivation explanation. Income inequality also has stronger effects in more densely populated countries, in wealthier nations, and in countries with larger internal security forces.

A Methodological Addition to the Cross-National Empirical Literature on Social Structure and Homicide: A First Test of the Poverty-Homicide Thesis

Article

Feb 2008
CRIMINOLOGY

William Alex Pridemore

Dozens of cross-national studies of homicide have been published in the last three decades. Although nearly all these studies test for an association between inequality and homicide, no studies test for a poverty—homicide association. This absence is disconcerting given that poverty is one of the most consistent predictors of area homicide rates in the abundant empirical literature on social structure and homicide in the United States. Using a sample that coincides closely with similar recent studies, applying a proxy for poverty (infant mortality) that is commonly employed in noncriminological cross-national research, and controlling for several common covariates (including inequality), this study provides the first test of the poverty—homicide hypothesis at the cross-national level. The results reveal a positive and significant association between a nation's level of poverty and its homicide rate. The findings also suggest that we may need to reassess the strong conclusions about an inequality—homicide association drawn from prior studies, as this relationship disappears when poverty is included in the model.

Homicide: Explaining America's Exceptionalism

Article

Feb 2006

Eric Monkkonen

A people's history of the United States : 1492-present / Howard Zinn

Article

Jan 2005

Howard Zinn

Incluye bibliografía e índice

Democracy In America

Article

Jan 2000

Alexis de Tocqueville

The electronic version of this book has been prepared by scanning TIFF 400 dpi color and greyscale images of the pages of the text. Original source: Democracy in America / by Alexis de Tocqueville ; translated by Henry Reeve ; with an original preface and notes, by John C. Spencer.; Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805-1859.; xvi, 455 p. ; 24 cm.; New York :; This electronic text file was created by Optical Character Recognition (OCR). No corrections have been made to the OCR-ed text and no editing has been done to the content of the original document. Encoding has been done through an automated process using the recommendations for Level 2 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines. Digital page images are linked to the text file.

Handgun regulations, crime, assaults, and homicide. A tale of two cities

Article

Dec 1988

To investigate the associations among handgun regulations, assault and other crimes, and homicide, we studied robberies, burglaries, assaults, and homicides in Seattle, Washington, and Vancouver, British Columbia, from 1980 through 1986. Although similar to Seattle in many ways, Vancouver has adopted a more restrictive approach to the regulation of handguns. During the study period, both cities had similar rates of burglary and robbery. In Seattle, the annual rate of assault was modestly higher than that in Vancouver (simple assault: relative risk, 1.18; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.15 to 1.20; aggravated assault: relative risk, 1.16; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.12 to 1.19). However, the rate of assaults involving firearms was seven times higher in Seattle than in Vancouver. Despite similar overall rates of criminal activity and assault, the relative risk of death from homicide, adjusted for age and sex, was significantly higher in Seattle than in Vancouver (relative risk, 1.63; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.28 to 2.08). Virtually all of this excess risk was explained by a 4.8-fold higher risk of being murdered with a handgun in Seattle as compared with Vancouver. Rates of homicide by means other than guns were not substantially different in the two study communities. We conclude that restricting access to handguns may reduce the rate of homicide in a community.

The Approval of Suicide: A Social-Psychological Model

Article

Feb 1998

Robert Agnew

This article develops and tests a model that seeks to explain individual variation in the approval of suicide. The model draws on the three leading theories of crime/deviance: strain, social learning, and social control theories. It is predicted that individuals will be most approving of suicide when (1) they have had major life problems that could not be solved through conventional channels, (2) they were taught or exposed to beliefs that favored or were conducive to suicide, and (3) they are not strongly attached or committed to conventional individuals and groups. These predictions are explored with data from the 1990 and 1991 General Social Surveys, based on a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States. The results provide partial support for the predictions, especially the second prediction, with the strongest correlates of suicide approval being education, political liberalism, and a set of religion variables.

Firearm Availability and Homicide Rates Across 26 High-Income Countries

Article

Jan 2001
J TRAUMA

Among developed nations, the United States has the highest rate of civilian gun ownership, and the highest homicide rate. We examine whether the United States is merely an exception, or if a relationship between gun availability and homicide exists across all developed nations. Homicide rates for the early 1990s come from 26 of 27 of the highly industrialized or high-income countries with greater than 1 million population as classified by the World Bank. Two common proxies for gun availability are used, the percentage of suicides with a firearm, and the"Cook index," the average of the percentage of suicides with a firearm and the percentage of homicides with a firearm. In simple regressions (no control variables) across 26 high-income nations, there is a strong and statistically significant association between gun availability and homicide rates. Across developed countries, where guns are more available, there are more homicides.

Suicide Acceptability Is Related to Suicide Planning in U.S. Adolescents and Young Adults

Article

May 2007

The association between adolescents' and young adults' attitudes toward suicide and their own suicidality across five racial-ethnic classifications was studied in a nationally representative sample of 3,301 youth ages 14 to 22 years from the National Annenberg Risk Survey of Youth. Results indicate that adolescents and young adults who most strongly believe that it is acceptable to end one's life are more than fourteen times more likely to make a plan to kill themselves as those who do not have such beliefs (p < .001). Future behavioral prevention and intervention research should take into consideration adolescents' and young adults' approval of suicide as a risk factor for taking their own lives.

The Association of Suicide Rates with Individual-Level Suicide Attitudes: A Cross-National Analysis

Article

Mar 2008
SOC SCI QUART

Objective. Research on the predictors of individual-level attitudes toward suicide has neglected the possible role of contextual-level predictors. The present study addresses this gap in the literature by assessing the association between suicide rates and the attitudes of individuals. Based on social learning theory, it is argued that persons socialized in nations with relatively high rates of suicide are more likely to be exposed to suicidal role models, which provide positive definitions of suicide. Methods. Data refer to 40,873 adults in 31 nations, and are taken from the World Health Organization and World Values Surveys. Given the bi-level nature of the data, hierarchical linear modeling techniques (HLM) are utilized. Additional predictor variables are incorporated from previous research and include religious participation and political orientation from social learning theory, marital status and life satisfaction from control theory, and basic demographics such as age and gender. Results. The results of the HLM indicate that controlling for individual-level predictors, as well as other Level 2 variables, persons residing in nations with relatively high suicide rates are more approving of suicide than their counterparts. The model was replicated for the prediction of support for euthanasia. A social learning perspective was further supported by results linking 1970 suicide rates with suicide acceptability among older adults in 1990. Conclusion. National suicide rates are predictive of individual-level suicide acceptability. However, the main predictors of suicide acceptability included a measure from social learning theory, religiosity, and a neglected measure of control theory, life satisfaction.

Going postal: Rage, murder, and rebellion: From Reagan’s workplaces to Clinton’s columbine and beyond

M Ames

Ames, M. (2005). Going postal: Rage, murder, and rebellion: From Reagan's workplaces to Clinton's columbine and beyond. Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press.

The Sandy Hook shootings and America’s culture of death

L R Beres

Beres, L. R. (2012, December 19). The Sandy Hook shootings and America's culture of death. U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved from http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/12/19/ the-sandy-hook-shootings-and-americas-culture-of-death

Death in the office: Workplace homicides

Jan 1995
20-25

S Duncan

Duncan, S. (1995). Death in the office: Workplace homicides. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 64(4), 20-25.

Public Mass Shooters and Firearms: A Cross-National Study of 171 Countries

Abstract

No full-text available

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