Mass shootingsThe Many Ways Domestic Violence Foreshadows Mass Shootings
The San Jose transit shooting is the latest to illustrate the deadly connection between intimate partner violence and mass murder. How are these seemingly separate issues intertwined, and what can be done to save lives?
More than a decade before a San Jose, California, transit employee killed nine co-workers on May 26, an ex-girlfriend accused him in court of physical abuse and sexual assault. The case did not lead to a criminal conviction or a permanent restraining order, which would have barred him from buying guns.
The woman told a local news station that the man had always been mentally unstable and prone to bouts of rage. But with this deadly public rampage, his abuse crossed a line into the public realm. “He’s a murderer,” she said. “He killed innocent people.”
The San Jose gunman is far from an anomaly. Perpetrators of some of the country’s deadliest shootings have had domestic violence charges, incidents, or allegations in their backgrounds. The man who killed 49 people at Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016 was abusive toward his ex-wife, who described frequent beatings. Five years before an Air Force veteran killed 26 people at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in 2017, he was court-martialed for attacking his then-wife and her infant daughter. The teenage perpetrator of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was reportedly abusive toward his ex.
A new study released late last month further solidifies the connection between domestic violence and a propensity for future, public acts of violence. Researchers from the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence and Johns Hopkins analyzed 110 gun murders of four or more people between 2014 and 2019 and found that in 68 percent of incidents, the perpetrator either killed an intimate partner or a family member, or had a history of domestic violence.
When that’s the case, more people tend to die. The study, published in Injury Epidemiology, also found that mass shootings in which gunmen target an intimate partner or family member have a fatality rate that’s just over 20 percentage points higher than other mass shootings. That could be because the victims are targeted by perpetrators with a clear intent, the researchers said, unlike gunmen who fire indiscriminately in a public place.
