Can we predict who will become mass shooters?

We know that in 95 percent of cases the mass shooter is male, they are typically Caucasian (nearly two thirds are white), and older than murderers in general. Research shows that half of mass shooters are older than 30, with just 12.2 percent under the age of 20, and 38 percent between the ages of 20 and 29.

Mass shooters also tend to have common psychological and behavioral characteristics such as depression, resentment, social isolation, the tendency to externalize rather than internalize blame, fascination with graphically violent entertainment, and a significant interest in weaponry.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to pick up these factors in individuals before they embark on a shooting spree because these psychological and behavioral characteristics are fairly prevalent in the general population. For example, the National Alliance on Mental Illness in the United States says that about 20 percent of Americans suffer with mental health disorders in any given year – that is more than sixty million individuals.

As a result, the profiles and checklists that have been developed to attempt to predict rare events – such as mass shootings – have a tendency to over predict, which results in a large number of “false positives.”

It has also been suggested that school shootings and mass shootings are quite often committed by people with neuro-developmental disorders – such as criminal autistic psychopathy or Asperger’s syndrome – with often a good deal of warning based on the person in question’s writings on the Internet and elsewhere.

In light of this, I was lead researcher in a team that recently looked for the presence of autism spectrum disorders in a sample of seventy-five mass shooters selected by Mother Jones, a reader-supported and non-profit news organization that made the selection to avoid possible in-built bias. In this study, we found six cases – or 8 percent of the total number of mass shooters in the sample – who either had a diagnosis of autism, or whose family and friends suspected they had an autism spectrum disorder. But although this is about eight times higher than the rate of autism spectrum disorders within the general population, the findings don’t suggest that people with autism are more likely to become mass shooters.

Work published earlier this year also outlined a theoretical model to help us better understand how an individual with an autism disorder could engage in intended violence, such as a mass murder. In particular it considered the lead up to violence in the case of Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter with Asperger’s who spent some time compiling a seven-by-four foot spreadsheet chronologically detailing about 500 events of mass murder.

Finding the answers
But there may be some hope, as highlighted in our previous papers – research techniques currently used for extremely rare but dangerous diseases could in fact also be used to investigate mass shooting events.

So while at the moment relatively little is known about the early warning signs in a potential mass shooter, it may well be possible to detect mass shooters in advance if we change our approach in researching the area.

It is imperative that we further our understanding of the potential stressors or triggers, psychological traits, and antecedents which contribute to such extreme violence. Such research would aid the identification of individuals who are more at risk of engaging in mass killings or are on the pathway to intended violence in order that preventative strategies and, if necessary, appropriate strategies are implemented in order to reduce the occurrence of such extreme violence.

One recommendation is that every time a mass shooting event occurs, as much information is collated on the individual’s background (for example, their mental health) and behaviors in the lead up to the event (which could be years) in order to build up a database which could eventually be used by researchers to identify patterns.

Clare Allely is Lecturer in Psychology, University of Salford. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution/No derivative).