Mass shootingCan we predict who will become mass shooters?
The Orlando nightclub attack on 12 June was among the deadliest in American history, and it was the 133rd mass shooting to take place in the United States in 2016 alone. In the aftermath of the shooting, there has been a growing discussion about introducing new laws to make it harder for mad or bad people to get their hands on guns. But what else can we do to try to bring this under control? Working on ways to perhaps recognize people who might develop into mass killers – and the reasons they have for doing so – would obviously be an important step forward.
The Orlando nightclub attack on 12 June was among the deadliest in American history, and it was the 133rd mass shooting to take place in the United States in 2016 alone.
In the aftermath of the shooting, there has been much talk of the U.S. Second Amendment – the right to bear arms – and of how to introduce new laws to make it harder for mad or bad people to get their hands on guns. But what else can we do to try to bring this under control? Working on ways to perhaps recognize people who might develop into mass killers – and the reasons they have for doing so – would obviously be an important step forward.
There are inherent challenges in trying to identify people who are at high risk of committing an extremely violent act such as a mass shooting. And one of the biggest challenges in carrying out research in this area is that because the event rate is extremely low, conventional research techniques – such as cohort studies – aren’t useful.
U.S. academics James Fox and Monica DeLateur published a paper in 2014 which explored numerous myths and misconceptions surrounding both multiple homicide offenders and mass shooters, along with some of the challenges in attempting to avert these extremely violent acts. One of the myths they explored is the notion that more attention and response to “telltale warning signs” would allow mass killers to be identified before they acted.
Warning signs in the soon-to-become mass shooter can take the form of overt or veiled threats – known in the field as “leakage” – for example, Elliot Rodgers’s “Day of Retribution” video made before he killed six people and injured fourteen others near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014.
As pointed out by Fox and DeLateur, these telltale warning signs or indicators are “yellow flags that only turn red once the blood has spilled” as they are often identified in the aftermath of tragedy with crystal clear hindsight.
Warning signs
Relatively little is understood about what the warning signs are in a future mass shooter, and our current understanding is limited to past experience. That said, a number of features in the “typical mass shooter” have been identified.
