Mark Follman writes in MotherJones:
For many years now, every horrific gun massacre has
ricocheted widely with a familiar theme of outrage and surrender. On Wednesday,
the day after a heavily armed, suicidal 18-year-old slaughtered 19 children and
two adults at a Texas elementary school, Washington Post columnist
Brian Broome published one of the
more powerful versions of that narrative I’ve ever read. “Nothing
happened after innocent children were slaughtered the last time, or the time
before that, and nothing is going to be done now,” he wrote, citing Columbine,
Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and Parkland.
Broome’s column articulated the enduring shame of our
nation’s political stalemate and pathetic inaction on gun policy. It was
piercing and poignant—and, in my view, wrong.
It’s not just that we shouldn’t resign ourselves in perpetuity to
such outrage, rightful as it is. This narrative has become part of the problem
itself—in some cases possibly even fueling the escalating cycle
of mass shootings. That’s because it validates the recurring
violence, framing it as an indefinite feature of our reality.
And mass shooters pay heed. After nearly a decade of
studying these attacks and how to prevent them through the work of behavioral
threat assessment, I documented extensive case evidence for my book, Trigger
Points. The research shows that many perpetrators are keenly aware of
media and political narratives about their actions.
They hope the public will focus on sensational coverage of
their rage-filled “manifestos,”
their sinister photos uploaded to social media, their ghastly livestreams.
They want notoriety, and they seek justification and credibility for their acts
of violence. And in the message that America will never stop these mass
shootings, they find such affirmation.
“School shootings happen all the time,” remarked a troubled
17-year-old subject of one threat investigation I examined. He had become
fixated on watching videos about the 2018 school massacre in Parkland,
researched where he might buy a firearm, and later commented that committing
such an attack could be an easy way for him to “get famous.”
The mass shooter driven by racist
hatred in Buffalo, New York, cited livestreamed footage and writings
posted online from a 2019 massacre as a source of inspiration, detailing his
own plan to do the same, “to increase coverage and spread my beliefs.”
Mass shootings can be prevented. In fact, it happens with
regularity at the hands of threat assessment teams. They work to intervene
constructively with troubled people, often after someone in the orbit of those
people becomes worried by their behavior and reaches out for help. The method
relies to a great extent on community awareness—and its potential could grow if
we do away with some big enduring myths about mass shootings.
One is that mental illness is fundamentally to blame for
these massacres. After the horror at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde this
week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pushed that argument in his public comments.
Pro-gun politicians and leaders of the NRA have long used it as a tactic for
distracting from the national debate over gun laws—essentially dismissing each
new mass shooting as an inexplicable “evil,” as Abbott described it, and
implying that responsibility for change lies squarely with the mental health
field. (Never mind that Abbott just
cut $211 million in April from state mental health services.)
No mass shooter, by definition, is mentally healthy. These
are people with deep rage, despair and other problems, who need help in various
ways. But the exploitation of mental illness in lay terms is highly misleading
and counterproductive to preventing these attacks, as I wrote
after the massacre in Buffalo:
The claim that mental illness produces such attacks implies
that mass shooters are insane, as if they are disconnected from reality and act
based on no rational thinking. This goes hand in hand with the common theme
that these offenders “snap,” which suggests they commit impulsive acts of
violence, bursting forth from nowhere. Both explanations are wrong.
Extensive case history shows that mass shooters don’t just
suddenly break—they decide. They develop violent ideas that stem from
entrenched grievances, rage, and despair. In many cases they feel justified in
their actions and regard killing as the sole solution to a problem. They arm
themselves and prepare to attack, choosing where and when to strike. Often this
is a highly organized and methodical process.
Blaming mental illness for mass shootings inflicts a
damaging stigma on the millions of people who suffer from clinical afflictions,
the vast majority of whom are not violent. Extensive research shows
the link between mental illness and violent behavior is small and not useful
for predicting violent acts; people with diagnosable conditions such as
schizophrenia or bipolar disorder are in fact far more likely to be victims
than perpetrators of violence.
Another major falsehood is continually reinforced through
news reporting that quotes people who knew or came in contact with a shooter:
“I never thought he could do something like this,” and, “No one could’ve seen
this coming.” In many cases, nothing could be further from the truth. In the
scores of threat investigations and mass shootings I studied, every case subject
showed a mix of identifiable warning signs. These fall into eight areas:
Entrenched grievances: Shooters often stew over
mistreatment or injustices, real or perceived.
Threatening communications: Signs of intent, or
“leakage,” can be veiled or direct, noticeable in talk, writing or online
posts.
Patterns of aggression: Acts such as domestic violence
indicate a capacity to harm and correlate with risk.
Stalking behavior: Fixation and harassment are red flags
that were first studied in political assassins and celebrity stalkers.
Emulation: This is the so-called copycat problem; mass
shooters often signal that they identify with past attackers.
Personal deterioration: Breakdowns of routine and loss
of resilience point to tendencies that can culminate in a murder-suicide.
Triggering events: A major failure in school, work or a
relationship can set violence in motion.
Attack preparation: Acquiring a gun, practicing at a
range and surveilling a venue are common in the days or weeks before an attack.
Many of these warning signs, we now know, were
present and escalating long before Tuesday’s nightmare in Uvalde—as
they were before the one in Buffalo, and before that, in
the run-up to the massacre at Oxford High School in Michigan.
This is the true nature of these attacks. And the expanding
knowledge of these patterns represents opportunity for threat assessment teams
to intervene, before it’s too late.
Diminishing this American nightmare is going to take many
different forms of action: continuing a relentless,
long-term effort to strengthen our nation’s gun laws. Quashing a
surge in violent political extremism. Investing in a lacking mental health
care system. And building community-based violence prevention programs.
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