What Do 26 of 27 Mass Shooters Have In Common?

It's a serious issue. Bill Bennett speaks with some frequency about growing up without a father present, but notes the effort to which his mother went to be sure that he had the company of and guidance from appropriate men.

When I was in highschool, I always felt that the police regarded me with some suspicion. Now, I am sure they did, and with good reason. Lots of the activities to which young men are naturally drawn are problematic.

Bending a lad toward a happy and productive adulthood demands a lot of influence from a lot of people. Without fathers, coaches, professors and wives, many of us would have a hard time finding a purpose beyond our immediate satisfaction. It's hard to see how a fellow who sees himself with place and purpose would see killing a crowd of random strangers as a good plan.
 
My father was killed when I was 11, my older brother and I grew up with no older males in our lives. My brother became a partner in the second largest CPA firm, I worked thirty years for the Federal gov't. Not sure if a man in my young life would have caused any difference.'

I did have more problems when growing up compared to my brother; maybe that is why I ended up packing a gun on my side while my brother picked a pencil.:D

I do believe there is more to it than just a fatherless upbringing. Since my Dad was killed while working my mom got a descent pension and she continued to work till she was 62. But she sure did make sure we were raised right, finished school and moved on as adults.
 
RETG said:
My father was killed when I was 11,...

I do believe there is more to it than just a fatherless upbringing.
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I've read that there is more to the problem than the physical absence of the father, and that a dead father is less a detriment than a father who voluntarily abandoned a family. The idea is that a mother can say of a dead father "He would have wanted you to do X", or "he would be proud to see that you've done Y", but those sorts of statements that include the father in aspirations and achievements work less well in abandonment cases.
 
The vast majority of kids who grow up in a home with no father figure turn out fine. I suppose that some could be more likely to make bad choices without a fathers guidance. But I'd rather see them with no dad in the picture, than a dad who was a bad influence.

Kids who grow up in a traditional home with both biological parents are in the minority. And we reached that tipping point about 30 years ago. I haven't seen any figures on it in about 20 years, but the number was just under 50% then. Probably well under 50% today.
 
stinkeypete said:
Correlation does not imply causation.
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When looking at one or two isolated cases, that is [almost] correct. Sooner or later, "anecdotes" begin to coalesce into "data." If you take "Correlation does not imply causation" to its extreme, you could say that there's nothing to demonstrate that cigarette smoking is linked to lung cancer.

Further, even one or two isolated incidents can very much "imply" causation. They don't constitute a large enough pool of data to prove causation, but they can imply it.

Isn't this what all clinical trials are about? Trials subject enough subjects to the same conditions (correlation) that if a significant percentage of subjects all have the same result, causation is taken to have been proven. The question then becomes: How big does the sample size have to be and what percentage is high enough to shift from "imply" to "demonstrate"? 27 incidents isn't a huge sample, but 26 out of 27 is 96.3 percent -- that's a rather high percentage. The sample size may still not be large enough to "prove" causation, but the percentage is certainly high enough to imply causation.
 
We've been tracking marriage and divorce rates for a pretty small time in the grand scheme of things. Are there more kids growing up without dads than there were 150 years ago? I have no idea.

One thing I do know is that this is the first generation to have grown up without any concept of life without smartphones and social media. And that seems like a pretty horrible thing to fill the void created by a lack of parenting with.
 
I feel that there’s some pharmaceutical connection to a lot of the mass shootings, but that doesn’t fit too many agendas.

I don’t really buy into the broken home theory. Lots of people come out of terrible homes and become good people. I feel that I developed my sense of right and wrong on my own.

I also know of children that were all raised the in the same family in the same manner and some of the siblings were good and the others evil and malicious.
 
I don’t think being from a broken home makes you a killer (obviously) but I think it is reasonable to assume it creates a higher risk for bad behavior.

Regardless of whether that correlation holds out, the young people running around now are going to be the people paying your social security + congressional largesse as adults. Getting involved with them early gives you a lot of opportunity to shape thought about what constitutes civil society.
 
Lotta factors to the plague of violence . . .

There a a lot of factors that contribute to the plague of violence we see in our great nation. This is just one more. There is no single cause. I like the article, especially the part about "no gun" zones. I just don't see how anyone thinks a gun free zone means anything to scofflaws and criminals.

Prof Young
 
While somewhat interesting, isn't all this just another re-hash of the age old debate, Nature vs. Nurture? Or, if you prefer Heredity vs Upbringing??

No matter how many factors these mass shooters seem to have in common, there are masses of people (thousands, 10s of thousands? millions??) of people with the same factors in their lives that do not become mass shooters.

one of the classic examples is two brothers, raised in the same home, one becoming a priest and the other a thug. Same environment, same genetics, different outcome. Explanation???

Other than the obvious (and usually discounted) one, Free Will?
 
If a person has a thought of slaughtering other people, whether it’s one or many, something is wrong with them mentally, bottom line. Nothing excuses it, nothing else can explain it away. So the one and only cause for mass shootings is mental illness. How they arrive at that state is dependent upon each case. No one lives the same life, there can be similarities, but no one has identical lives... not even siblings.
 
The first thing is to establish that there are more mass killers (adjusted for population size) today than in times past. I don't think anyone has established that, nor do I see any evidence that it is true.

My guess is that in times past, such people had other outlets and inclinations. If you were a sociopath in the 19th century, there were lots of places you could go to get paid to be one. These days there aren't as many opportunities for males to engage in lethal conflict, so they find ways to do so. In the modern world, with such a huge population, there are probably numerically (but not proportionately) more such people, jammed elbow-to-elbow to other people, with no state-sanctioned way to express such emotions.

So they pop. And obviously, whether with bomb or firearm, it is easier to kill large numbers to day than 1000 years ago.

Most research indicates that hunter-gatherers are FAR more violent than modern peoples, in terms of lethal encounters. And if you look at history over the last 8000 years, violence was far more common. But back then, philosophers hadn't decided violence was evil. In fact, it was a virtue in many cultures. But I don't think we want to emulate Genghis Khan's social philosophy. That ain't progress.
 
I've hear but from less than reliable sources that all of the mass shooters were taking a mix of psychoactive drugs. In a few cases I've heard this though official channels but not so much in other cases... Take it for what it's worth.

Tony
 
Bartholomew Roberts said:
I don’t think being from a broken home makes you a killer (obviously) but I think it is reasonable to assume it creates a higher risk for bad behavior.
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^^^This.

Growing up as a kid in the 50s and 60s, I knew of very few kids growing up in a single parent home. Those that did, were generally living with their mom at grandpa and grandma's house. There was still that "family" experience and a positive male role model. Nowadays there are tons of second generation single parent families without a father or grandfather. Male role models are non-existent or whatever/whoever latches onto the kid. I often think mass murderers are trying to make other's lives as miserable and lonely as theirs.
 
It might be a factor to some extent, but that factor taken alone doesn't tell us much. Plenty of folks from single-parent households (myself included) grow up to be perfectly stable adults.

We like to put things in boxes. We crave an easy narrative. As such, we're tempted to take one factor, accept it as an explanation, and use it to simplify complex questions. The Columbine kids played violent video games, but so do most other teenagers. The Norway shooter spouted rhetoric about the "white race" but his victims were all white. The Orlando shooter was confused about his sexuality, but plenty of people in his position deal with that ways that don't involve indiscriminate homicide.

Mass shootings are strange things, and if there's one factor that unifies them, it's evil. These generally aren't impulsive, "spur of the moment" incidents. FBI studies show they tend to be planned over the course of months, or even years. If the shooter articulates a grievance, it's usually a generalized thing and not something directly caused by the people he targets.

We need a great deal more study before we can figure out what makes someone do something this abhorrent, and I'm very wary of easy explanations.
 
Mass shootings are strange things, and if there's one factor that unifies them, it's evil.
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We need a great deal more study before we can figure out what makes someone do something this abhorrent, and I'm very wary of easy explanations.
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I don't see how such a subjective concept as evil can warrant more study.
 
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