Abstract
As a tenured academic researcher who specializes in studying what causes violence in children, adolescents, and young adults, I must clearly state for the record that there is no such thing as a “senseless act of violence,” at least not to the perpetrator. This applies to mass murderers and any person who has intent to harm others.
The more interesting question is—where do mass murderers find the “sense” in their extreme actions? He (and it is virtually always a “he”) finds it in the coincidence of his personal grievance and his social position. He may feel like he is losing his place in the world or never had a place to begin with—often drifting along in a state of social isolation and emotional deprivation. And he may feel that someone else is to blame for the way he feels about himself in the world—perhaps he feels this way because he has been rejected by women or finds reason to discriminate against minorities or immigrants.
If that someone—the target of violence—is an individual, the attacker may strike at that individual or perhaps anyone who can serve as a substitute for that person. Or, the attacker may target a group or class of people who he sees as “the enemy” and the cause of his negative situation. This group of “others” can be defined by their gender, race, ethnicity, place of origin, or political identity. Whoever it is, it makes sense to the attacker. What needs to be clear is that the attacker always finds “sense” in attacking, harming, or killing his victim(s).
I have been interviewing murderers in the United States for nearly 30 years in my capacity as a psychological expert witness. Like mass shooters in the United States, these killers are almost exclusively young males. As such they are often afflicted with the double whammy of gender and immaturity. It is well researched and documented that human brains do not mature until about age 25 years, and males are more likely to have a range of emotional and cognitive disabilities that put them at risk for overreacting in a violent manner. Emotional development, or the stunting of this development, can be further hindered if they are exposed to a toxic masculine culture that makes them particularly susceptible to feeling ashamed, worthless, or dishonored (particularly if they have their roots in the Old South, where the Culture of Honor flourished alongside the evil institution of slavery). Context matters when it comes to lethal violence, as it does in most important human phenomena.
However, it seems mass killers are not like the “regular” killers I have come to know [as reported in my 2015 book Listening to Killers (Garbarino 2015) and its 2018 follow-up volume Miller's Children]. Beyond the fact that most of these killers do not murder groups of people, most killers come from a background marked by high levels of family and community adversity. For example, when posed with the 10 questions of the Adverse Childhood Experience Scale, most regular killers report high scores—worse than 99% of the general population. It seems most mass killers come from much less adverse circumstances in terms of the conventional issues of child abuse, poverty, family dysfunction, and racism. The origins of their murderous pathway seem to lie in more subtle developmental risk factors in combination with some powerful cultural contextual factors. This is certainly the case with the type of mass killing with which I have had first-hand experience as a professional: school shooters.
Of course, no discussion of mass killing in the United States can proceed without mentioning the availability of deadly weapons. One feature of that context is the availability and cultural validation of guns, particularly rapid-fire guns that can create massive casualties in a very short period of time. Much has been said and written about the lethal impact of the gun culture in America—where there are more guns than people and even the most peripheral gun regulation is hotly debated and seems improbable.
The American gun culture is part of a larger cultural context in which the young male mass shooter exists. An anthropological study Luhrmann (2015) reported that among the roughly 50% of schizophrenics who experience auditory hallucinations (“hear voices”), 70% of those in the United States are led to commit acts of violence against themselves or others. In India this figure is 20% and in Ghana it is 10%. When politicians cite “mental health problems” as the cause of mass shootings, they are missing the crucial point that only in America is the link between experiencing mental health issues and violence so strong, even while we recognize that the mentally ill are not on average more violent than others in our society (being more likely to be victims than perpetrators in fact).
Then there are those mass killers who do not have an official psychiatric diagnosis, but who nonetheless have a warped sense of social reality. These individuals also are subject to social and cultural influences. Research demonstrates that playing violent video games suppresses empathy and disinhibits aggression. Watching violent television and movies increases the odds that a person (particularly a young person) will act violently. But when it comes to domestic terrorism (indeed all forms of terrorism), there is another factor, namely the rationales, interpretations, and incitements offered by cultural and political leaders. These are the foundations out of which a troubled male youth “makes sense” of his plan to engage in mass murder.
Chatting with a clerk in a local store, I listen as he describes how he must increase the size of his gun collection, because the election of Hillary Clinton would have meant civil war in the United States because she would have “come for our guns.” A taxi driver explains to me how the “invasion of America by Hispanics” must be stopped, whatever it takes. I asked both how they knew this, and both responded with words to the effect that, “President Trump said so and Fox News confirmed it.”
America has two long-standing political themes. One is the value of civility and human dignity as important public virtues. The second is racism and xenophobia. The seeds of both are always present in the psyche of the American people. It is up to leaders of the country to water the seeds of the former and not the latter.
Some politicians, members of the media, and others demonstrate that in modern political life it is acceptable to water the seeds of racism and xenophobia—that it is even, perhaps, a good political strategy for re-elections. President Trump and Fox News exemplify this. Mass killing can and does exist apart from the process by which the seeds of racism and xenophobia are watered, of course, but it seems clear the number of such recent events is very likely linked to that seed watering.
So long as politicians and others continue to provide validation for domestic terrorism by spewing racist and xenophobic rhetoric on TV and other media platforms, we can expect to see more of these “deluded but not officially crazy” young males make use of their “Second Amendment rights” to bear arms, and more of our friends, neighbors, and colleagues will be gunned down.