Violence  by Tom Reynolds

For their 2021 book, The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic, Jillian Peterson and James Densley constructed a database of every mass shooting in the United States since 1966. They found a pattern among perpetrators.  It’s interesting to see some of their findings as they give insight into what drives these murderers - and it’s not access to a gun. 

POLITICO talked to Peterson and Densely about mass shooters. (It should be noted that Politico is a left leaning organization.  We ignored some comments that had a blatant leftist agenda as we could not tell if that was the authors’ bias or Politico’s bias.  However, the author’s psychological findings are worth reviewing since gun control advocates ignore them in favor of banning guns.)

Peterson: Mass shootings are socially contagious and when one really big one happens and gets a lot of media attention, we tend to see others follow.

You had an 18-year-old commit a horrific mass shooting. His name is everywhere…That shooter was able to get our attention. So, if you have another 18-year-old who is on the edge and watching everything, that could be enough to embolden him to follow. We have seen this happen before.

Peterson: There’s this really consistent pathway. Early childhood trauma seems to be the foundation, whether violence in the home, sexual assault, parental suicides, extreme bullying. Then you see the build toward hopelessness, despair, isolation, self-loathing, oftentimes rejection from peers. That turns into a really identifiable crisis point where they’re acting differently. Sometimes they have previous suicide attempts.

What’s different from traditional suicide is that the self-hate turns against a group. They start asking themselves, “Whose fault is this?” Is it a racial group or women or a religious group, or is it my classmates? The hate turns outward. There’s also this quest for fame and notoriety.

People aren’t used to thinking that this kind of thing could be real because the people who do mass shootings are evil, psychopathic monsters and this is a kid in my class. Three days earlier, that school shooter was somebody’s son, grandson, neighbor, colleague or classmate. We have to recognize them as the troubled human being earlier if we want to intervene before they become the monster.

What is the pathway to violence for these people, where does this come from?

Politico: In your book, you say that in an ideal world, 500,000 psychologists would be employed in schools around the country. If you assume a modest salary of $70,000 a year, that amounts to over $35 billion in funding. Are you seeing any national or state-level political momentum for even a sliver of these kind of mental health resources?

Densley: Every time these tragedies happen, you always ask yourself, “Is this the one that’s going to finally move the needle?” The Republican narrative is that we’re not going to touch guns because this is all about mental health. Well then, we need to ask the follow-up question of what’s the plan to fix that mental health problem. Nobody’s saying, “Let’s fund this, let’s do it, we’ll get the votes.” That’s the political piece that’s missing here. Too often in politics it becomes an either-or proposition. Gun control or mental health. 

SCOPE: It’s interesting that Densley singles out Republicans about not funding mental health issues when it’s Democrats who immediately single out the problem as guns and give lip service to mental health, since the Democrats real goal is no guns and is not increased mental health.  As evidence, consider Kathy Hochul’s much taunted recent gun laws which do not deal with mental health issues.

Politico: I was struck by a detail in your book about one of the perpetrators you investigated. Minutes before he opened fire, you report that he called a behavior health facility. Is there always some form of reaching out or communication of intent before it happens?

Peterson: You don’t see it as often with older shooters who often go into their workplaces. But for young shooters, it’s almost every case. We have to view this “leakage” as a cry for help. If you’re saying, “I want to shoot the school tomorrow,” you are also saying, “I don’t care if I live or die.” You’re also saying, “I’m completely hopeless,” and you’re putting it out there for people to see because part of you wants to be stopped.

We have to listen because pushing people out intensifies their grievance and makes them angrier. The Parkland shooter had just been expelled from school and then came back. This is not a problem we can punish our way out of.

SCOPE: Perhaps we can’t punish our way out but there has to be personal responsibility for bad acts.  Most people, not just the kind of people described earlier, will see a lack of being held responsible for bad acts as a green light.