Mass Shootings

I haven't written about the Uvalde school shooting as I haven't had anything positive to contribute to this sad story. The other DrC, who supervised student teachers in TX public schools, was amazed the school wasn't better protected. Apparently, the ones she visited in the Dallas suburbs and exurbs were much more controlled.

Politico has interviewed two professors who've studied mass shooters. A book - The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic - about their findings came out in 2021. 

The interview takes them through their conclusions. I agree with only some of these. Others seem like nods to "woke" conventional wisdom. They do make one important point I believe is rarely stressed.

I don’t think most people realize that these are suicides, in addition to homicides. Mass shooters design these to be their final acts. When you realize this, it completely flips the idea that someone with a gun on the scene is going to deter this. If anything, that’s an incentive for these individuals. They are going in to be killed.

It’s hard to focus on the suicide because these are horrific homicides. But it’s a critical piece because we know so much from the suicide prevention world that can translate here.

I agree with the notion "it's suicide." And suicide prevention could help. However taking a shot at a cop will get you dead, if death is what you seek. Mass shooters want more than just death, they want revenge on society for treating them as nobodies. 

"Someone with a gun" can be a local deterrent if their presence makes shooting many people difficult to carry out. The armed citizen can cut short the mass killing that makes the suicide and its attendant publicity attractive to the revenge-seeker. In a sense, "hardening the target."

I don't have many answers. If we literally round up every gun in society what's to keep revenge-seeking suicides from driving a car at high speed into a crowd at a concert or game? Or becoming a suicide bomber?

Identifying perps before they act could mean paying close attention to the mental health of every post-pubescent male in the society. We would have time for nothing else and would likely lock up many thousands who would never pull the trigger. Prima facie, it is not feasible.

Still, most of these revenge-seekers post their anger online. Using AI, could we identify the sets of key words peculiar to mass shooters and concentrate our suicide-prevention efforts on those who show the "earmarks?" It seems worth a try.