A Hypothesis for the Proliferation of Mass Shooters

I find it extraordinary that a popular response to another mass shooting in the United States is the attempt to explain how it was the result of a crazed lone gunman. This is of course only a half truth; the other half, if you take the frequency of all mass shootings and line them up next to each other, you have a long list of crazed lone gunmen. The cases are not so unique that each mass shooting can only be assessed on an individual basis; it’s a large social issue. I shudder to draw this comparison, but take birth. It happens in individual cases, but is also happening all over the world because of social reasons – people are drawn together to copulate, a woman becomes pregnant and chooses to carry the baby to term. Different people are involved in each and every case, but are all part of a larger social phenomenon.

Do we really believe that the pathology and motivations behind each shooter are completely unique and unrelated?

A good place to start in understanding their motivations is to ask how they were able to give themselves permission to kill people. It goes without saying that the vast majority of people, to extents and purposes, have a conscience. Even when angry, murdering somebody in cold blood is still abhorrent to most people. There are personality disorders such as psychopathy and antisocial personality, where there is a lot of literature documenting the lack or temporal nature of the conscience in those with these disorders. When people with these disorders do commit crime (which isn’t all of them) they don’t seem to fit the profile of the mass shooter and seem more attuned to acts of serial killing and sadism.

A mass shooting, in the vast majority of cases, is a final act. Although possible, it is hard to imagine somebody planning one of these acts to think they will escape and get away with it. This is borne out by the fact that many end up being shot by police or take their own lives. Some surrender and survive, but had to have known the act of mass shooting would be their last free final act.

A planned last act is the behavior of somebody who is suicidal.

Immediately, I feel the need to say that the vast majority of people who die by suicide do not kill others. But for those who feel suicidal impulses or experience strong suicidal ideation, it is likely they will have thought at length about how they would like to control their death. Time, place, and method are likely to have been strongly considered, and these become so rigid that the slightest interruption could be enough for their life to continue.

Could it be that a minority of those who are suicidal have planned, or are planning, a final act that will result in many deaths, including their own?

Suicidal impulses and ideation can be symptomatic of depression, and depression remains a significant problem. A recent study (Ettman et al., 2020) reported that before the pandemic, 8.5 percent of US adults reported being depressed; a percentage which has now risen to 27.8 percent a year into the COVID 19 pandemic.

One of the reasons a person with depression seeks therapy is to help provide some objectivity to the depressed person’s outlook. A good therapist can help explain why the person experiences depression in the way(s) that they do, and help the person to understand how their depression is shaping the way they see the world and other people.

The time spent attempting to understand the world, while experiencing bad depression, is perhaps the most crucial time for some oversight or intervention. With enough training and practice it is possible to know when you are under the influence of depression, and interactions with others can be assessed more accurately. However, if the depression influences how social interactions are perceived, the depressed person will start to steadily put together a worldview that is not based on reality.

Feelings of depression do spark a lot of questioning and soul searching in an attempt to understand just why a person feels so bad. This can be fevered, and the Internet can provide a whole range of answers – unfortunately, not all of them are healthy or accurate. There are many dangerous ideologies vying for followers, and the more time spent immersed in these groups, unchecked, the more likely an irreversible and dangerous pathology could develop. By definition, a depressed mind is a mind in pain, and if it is felt that there could be answers for this pain, then maybe it is also felt that there could be a resolution.

This is what makes a depressed mind fertile for dangerous ideologies.

If a young male understands their depression to be the result of loneliness or a lack of sexual intercourse, any ideology that expounds upon women being cruel or not fulfilling their “duty” as women could easily start to make sense to the depressed person. Likewise, if the problem is perceived to be socio-economic, the person might give credence to the idea that Jews are in control of world finances, Asians are more likely to be accepted into graduate school for reasons other than merit, or Mexicans are likely to be “murderers and rapists”, these groups will become the focus of anger. These ideologies, once adopted and believed, reduce the target groups for this anger to be less than human.

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Now, even with a conscience, the person has trained a loophole into it.

The reason that a depressed mind is crucial here, is that if the personal pain is felt for long enough, the person could be extremely motivated to end the pain, and if suicidality has married with a toxic ideology, for long enough, a last act of vengeance starts to become probable.

This explanation is not an easy one to hear. Any explanations offered as mitigating circumstances serve only to offend victims and their families. Depression does not somehow seem acceptable as a reason for murder, after all, many people experience depression and do not plan mass acts of vengeance. But when you whittle down the number of people who are depressed, to the number who are suicidal, to the number who are suicidal and ascribe to a belief system of hate, to the number who are planning a final act and have access to firearms, you are looking at a tiny percentage of the population.

The depression and suicidality do not exonerate the shooters of their crime, but it could hopefully make us all the savvier and aware when it comes to our friends and families. Helping a depressed person to maintain objectivity, if in a position, is not a bad idea, or at the very least encouraging some therapy.

The suicide rate and spread of hate ideology online are both increasing.