The names of any of the shooters will not appear in this article.
On May 24, a school shooting occurred at Rob Elementary School in Texas, USA, and at least 21 people have been killed – 19 children and 2 teachers.
Emergency crews gathered near the scene of the shooting. ｜DARIO LOPEZ-MILLS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
After the shocking tragedy, the gun control debate has started again.
Indeed, guns are a big problem. Guns are readily available in the United States, with the largest number of guns per capita in the world. Research shows that the higher the number of guns per capita, the more mass shootings in public places .
In the United States, school shooters mostly acquire weapons legally. While many gunmen have psychiatric and psychological histories, those histories don’t make them unavailable for guns in the United States.
One suggestion is that if a person has ever expressed an interest in homicides, suicides, mass shootings , that person should not be allowed to legally own a gun.
However, the issue of guns in the United States has a long history and too many entanglements, and many researchers have to turn to another direction——
How to reduce school shootings.
Police patrol outside Rob Elementary School where the shooting occurred｜ DARIO LOPEZ-MILLS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The “Five Stages” and “Five Conditions” to the Campus Killer
Every school shooting tragedy is not caused by a single factor.
A study summed up the formation of these campus killers –
1. Chronic stress stage : Experience some long-term injury or setback in childhood or adolescence, leading to loneliness,
2. Uncontrollable stress stage : Due to loneliness and social isolation, there is a lack of a “pro-social support system”, so the stress accumulates and cannot be eliminated.
3. Acute stress stage : The occurrence of a short-term negative event (either real or imagined) that is particularly destructive to the individual, with a dramatic deterioration in mental health,
Fourth, the planning stage : urgently want to regain control, start to fantasize that the Holocaust is the only solution and way out, start to act, prepare for the massacre,
Fifth, the massacre stage : the use of guns, massacres in public places such as schools.
These five stages develop in succession, with each stage increasing the risk.
In addition, most school shooters meet five conditions-
①Believe yourself in an extreme marginal position in society,
②Have psychosocial problems , such as mental illness, severe depression, or antisocial psychopaths, that amplify the individual’s perceived social exclusion
③ I figured out a solution – weapon attack to change my reputation, from a loser to a notorious one,
④ The law enforcement and security system failed, even if the gunman sent some signals, but it was not detected
⑤ Obtained firearms, explosives or other weapons.
But just based on these criteria, or any “gunner feature checklist”, is not enough to identify all the shooters.
Additional prevention and deterrence methods are also required.
The list of gunman traits is not enough, other methods of prevention and deterrence are needed | Unsplash
Don’t rely on predictions, rely on reports
Both the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) believe that it is difficult or almost impossible to “recognize in advance who is going to shoot a mass shooting.”
People who shoot in public places such as schools do have certain characteristics, such as the fact that the shooter is mostly male – but the vast majority of men would never commit this crime; most of the shooters have mental health problems – but the vast majority of people with mental illness also is nonviolent. Even narrowing it down to the most at-risk populations, such searches are far from precise , and are likely to trouble a legion of law-abiding citizens while missing the real killer.
There’s a way to find the real shooter, though—he’ll say it himself .
Most of the shooters had trouble suppressing the urge to brag . The study found that most of the school shooters “leakage” in advance. They will brag, insinuate, threaten, express their violent attitudes, describe their violent fantasies, predict imminent violent events, and issue ultimatums, intentionally or unintentionally. The younger the shooter, the more likely it is to leak.
In 2014, the gunman in Isla Vista, California, not only posted a video of “Retribution Day” online, but also sent a stinky and long 100,000-word autobiographical manifesto “My Twisted World” to relatives, friends, teachers and psychiatrists. “.
They couldn’t help it.
Gunman finds it hard to resist the urge to brag｜Unsplash
In addition, the gunmen sometimes issue warnings to people they approve of , such as advising friends not to go to school on a certain day, or not to go to the school cafe – because that’s when and where he’s going to kill.
The U.S. Secret Service study found that in 81 percent of cases, “at least one person knew that the attacker was considering or planning to attack the school”; in 59 percent of cases, more than one person knew. A 2018 FBI study showed that 56 percent of people publicly expressed their violent thoughts and intentions prior to an attack.
The problem is that people who receive this information are often reluctant to report it to law enforcement . There are many reasons: first, they will think it is a joke and can’t identify the real crisis; second, they are worried that if they take the initiative to report, they will be targeted by the gunman and cause trouble; If the shooter is a good friend or family member of oneself, reporting it seems to be a “betrayal”; five, reporting it may not be useful.
FBI research shows that whistleblowing sometimes really doesn’t work . Among the shootings in the United States from 2000 to 2013, 41% of the shooters were reported as “worrying behavior”, but they were not stopped, and shootings still happened.
Why did law enforcement fail to identify the shooter? Because these gunmen are not like other criminals.
Most of the shooters are “lone wolves” . They are surrounded by ordinary people and have no connection with other criminals. Before the shooting, they often have no criminal record of violence. This makes it easy for them to escape detection by law enforcement.
In the 1999 Columbine school shooting, a criminal wrote online, “I’ll be going to everyone soon, I’ll be fully armed, and I’ll shoot you… I just want to kill you, the more the better.”
Another criminal wrote a fictitious story in his assignment about a mass shooting of a private high school student, ending with “I understand his behavior.”
The perpetrator of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting was repeatedly reported to campus police for stalking female students, causing trouble in class and making suicidal comments. But the school police did not receive a key message – in the writing assignment, the gunman said that the classmates were “despicable human beings, a disgrace to human beings” and hoped that the classmates would “go to hell”, and he also wrote a story, the protagonist of the story planned a Mass shooting on campus that “killed every damn person in this damn school”.
Every joke, every fictional story, has something real .
The only way to widely train the public is to let everyone know which statements may portend a risk of extreme violence and should be reported to law enforcement.
With the “leaked” information of these gunmen’s self-destruction, it is possible for law enforcement agencies to make correct judgments.
bad case, imitation threshold
In the United States, the 1999 Columbine school shooting is a particularly bad “example”.
Sociologist Ralph Larkin argues that the two shooters in Columbine wrote the “cultural script” for many of the subsequent shootings .
Later research revealed that one of the Columbine shooters was a typical psychopath and sociopath. He lacks empathy and is good at manipulating people, he has a long history, he writes “I am God” in German, his diary is full of fantasies about rape and mutilation, he wants to destroy the world, and he spends a whole Years went to plan, filmed a video explaining his motives, and wrote a long manifesto.
In the following 8 years, among the school shootings in the United States, 8 of the gunmen explicitly mentioned the Columbine case , and 6 were simply copies of Columbine.
The two gunmen in the Columbine shooting wrote the ‘cultural script’ for many subsequent shootings｜Unsplash
In Maryland mall, a gunman wore the same clothes, the same backpack, and the same weapons as the Columbine shooter, and he even hid in the mall locker room and waited until the same time – 11:14 a.m. . Then he came out, shot two people, and then killed himself.
Arrested by police after a gunman shot three people on the Seattle Pacific University campus, he also referred to the Columbine shooter’s “guidance” as “a mentor to all gunmen.”
After Columbine, the shooting became more and more “ritualized” and more of a show about the self.
The self-portrait of the Columbine shooter became a sample for subsequent shooters to imitate , and the shots taken by the later shooters went the same way—first pointing their guns at the camera, then at their temples, then holding a gun in each hand and opening their arms; Close-up; final wave goodbye.
Although the “show” is increasingly similar. But with the increase in shootings, the personal characteristics of the shooters have become more and more diverse. They don’t seem to be the same kind of people.
How to explain this ” shooter diversity “?
Sociologist Mark Granovetter of Stanford University once proposed a “threshold model of riots”. His point is that in the riots, something like a “snowball” actually happened.
Seeing other people’s criminal behavior will make people who have a higher threshold for doing evil join in to do evil | Unsplash
May be a born villain in the beginning, his threshold for evil is “zero”, and he will throw stones at the store whenever he has the opportunity.
Then there is the person whose threshold for doing evil is “one”. He won’t throw rocks and smash glass by himself, but when he sees someone else doing it, he will do it.
Then there is the person whose threshold for evil is “two”. He will follow the imitation when he sees two people smashing glass…
And so on, until a person who is upright and kind 99% of the time, unless everyone around him is smashing shop windows and grabbing items, in which case he might as well be shaken, Grab an item or two from the already smashed store.
“Most people don’t want to commit a crime, but group interactions are such that because bold male behavior brings identity and status, once other people are stealing cars and you don’t join in, you’re going to be held accountable,” Granovetter said. The high price of being labelled ‘a coward and sissy’.”
Seeing other people’s criminal behavior will make people who have a higher threshold for doing evil join in.
That’s exactly what happened after the school shooting went viral.
leave an immortal notoriety
A major motivation for perpetrators of school mass shootings is the pursuit of ” immortal notoriety .”
If it can’t be famous for a hundred generations, it will stink for thousands of years. I’d rather the world remember my notoriety than be ignored in obscurity.
Americans crave and worship fame and have a strong culture of “personal success” narcissism. This culture inspires a strong competitive mentality, where winners own the world, but losers suffer severe disappointment, frustration and anger.
Many gunmen are just angry losers who feel entitled to a better life and more success, but something is holding them back—perhaps the family or classmates around them, It may be a blond beauty who “doesn’t know what is good or bad”, it may be a rich N generation who is “indulgent and willful”… In short, the world has failed them and failed to give them the “deserved success”. But by killing innocent people, the media may rush to cover them, so they finally gain the “fame and honor” they should have…
Many gunmen are just one angry loser | Giphy
Psychologist Steven Pinker said exactly what the gunmen had to say in an interview: “If you think your life is worthless, you’re nobody, you can’t change the world, and you want to Do something to make sure your name is talked about across the country, what choice do you have? There’s only one, and that’s killing a lot of innocent people.”
In 1999, the Columbine shooter recorded a video predicting that he would go down in history. ” Better shame than obscurity ,” wrote the 2014 Isla Vista, Calif., shooter.
This kind of thinking has cultivated the “injustice collector mentality” and “warrior mentality” of many gunmen. First, they jot down the injustices the world has treated them—either real or their twisted fantasies. Then, they make up for their incompetence and frustration in reality through violent narcissistic delusions, and they actually take action to plan and prepare for crime.
forget his name
Because one of the gunman’s motives is to pursue the “notoriety” behind him, a natural inference is that if the news reports and discussions on social networks enhance the gunman’s reputation, let the gunman gain a lot of attention and become an anti-social” star” … well, it’s actually fueling the next shooting.
The school shooting is a show of gunmen, but the show requires the cooperation of the audience and the media.
Because of this, the “No Notoriety” and “Don’t Name Them” movements have emerged in recent years. These campaigns call for:
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Unless the gunman is still at large and needs to be hunted down, there is no need to report the gunman’s name, photos, and life at length. These are left to the study of sociologists and criminologists. If you need to report, you can use pronouns or abbreviations.
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Report on the grief and resilience of the entire community. Report the names of those victims, their pictures, their lives taken from them. Covering the heroes who came forward to stop the shooter spread the names and photos of the heroes.
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Don’t let potential shooters crave media coverage and attention.
Erase his name｜Unsplash
Although the shooters always blame the outside world for their unsatisfactory lives, in a sense, they know they are partly to blame. But their ego is arrogant and vulnerable at the same time, and they can’t handle self-blame, self-doubt and that feeling of worthlessness.
So they convince themselves every day that they are not wrong, that they are better than others, that they deserve a better life… and the world has failed them, so even if they kill innocent people, it is only what the world deserves to them compensate. They imagined that, through the Holocaust, the “oppressors” in their eyes paid the price, and the whole world would shudder to admit that they were the strongest, the smartest, and the most superior.
And one way to prove them wrong is to—
Let the gunman live and die in obscurity .
references
[1] Allely, CS (2020). The psychology of extreme violence: a case study approach to serial homicide, mass shooting, school shooting and lone-actor terrorism. Routledge.
[2]Lankford, A. (2016). Fame-seeking rampage shooters: initial findings and empirical predictions. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 27, 122–129.
[3] Lankford, A. (2018). Identifying potential mass shooters and suicide terrorists with warning signs of suicide, perceived victimization, and desires for attention or fame. Journal of Personality Assessment, 100(5), 471–482.
[4] Lankford, A. & Madfis, E. (2018). Don’t name them, don’t show them, but report everything else: A pragmatic proposal for denying mass killers the attention they seek and deterring future offenders. American Behavioral Scientist, 62(2), 260–279.
[5] Lankford, A., Adkins, KG & Madfis, E. (2019). Are the Deadliest Mass Shootings Preventable? An Assessment of Leakage, Information Reported to Law Enforcement, and Fire- arms Acquisition Prior to Attacks in the United States . Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 1043986219840231.
[6] Vossekuil, B., Fein, RA, Reddy, M., Borum, R. & Modzeleski, W. (2002). The final report and findings of the Safe School Initiative: Implications for the prevention of school attacks in the United States. Washington, DC: US Secret Service and US Department of Education.
[7] O’Toole, ME (2000). The school shooter: A threat assessment perspective. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
[8]Meloy, JR, Hempel, AG, Gray, BT, Mohandie, K., Shiva, A. & Richards, TC (2004). A comparative analysis of North American adolescent and adult mass murderers. Behavioral Sciences and The Law, 22(3), 291–309.
[9] Levin, J. & Madfis, E. (2009). Mass murder at school and cumulative strain: A sequential model. American Behavioral Scientist, 52(9), 1227–1245.
Murray, JL (2017a). The transcendent fantasy in mass killers. Deviant Behavior, 38(10), 1172–1185.
[10] NOVA (21 December 2012). Can science predict mass murder? https://ift.tt/Cn9lLpF
[11] Nast, C. (2015). How School Shootings Spread. New Yorker. Retrieved from https://ift.tt/PGzsMvJ
Author: You Shiyou
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