Forget What You’ve Heard: Mass Shootings Aren’t Rising. But They Probably Aren’t Going Away.
Criminologist James Alan Fox on who shoots, and why.
By Megan McArdle | The Daily Beast | February 1, 2013
Mass shootings are rising. They’re committed by lunatics who suddenly snap and start shooting at random. If only we had better gun laws or mental health screenings, we wouldn’t have so many tragedies.
Stop. Almost everything you think you know about mass shootings is wrong. This morning, I sat down for an IM interview with Northeastern University Criminologist James Alan Fox, who has been studying mass murder for years, and has authored two books on the subject: Extreme Killing, and Violence and Security on Campus.
Megan: First of all, thanks for doing this. Second of all, can you start off by talking a bit about yourself? How did you start studying mass shootings?
James Alan Fox: I started studying mass murder in the early 1980s (along with Northeastern University colleague Jack Levin) to see if there were any common traits and characteristics to the crimes or the perpetrators. There had been a pervasive sense back then that mass murderers were crazed lunatics who suddenly snapped, went berserk, and killed indiscriminately. By studying 42 cases that had occurred in recent years (recent back then, anyway), we found that many common assumption were quite off the mark.
Megan: How so?
James Alan Fox: Mass murderers are extraordinarily ordinary.
Most mass killers kill people they know, with a clear-cut motive. They typically plan their crimes in advance, often weeks or months in advance. They are calm, deliberate and determined to get justice for what they perceive to be unfair treatment.
The idea that they suddenly snap actually makes little sense. They snap and just so happen to have 2 AK-47′s and 2000 rounds of ammunition around for just such an occasion? Hardly.
Megan: We can see the evidence of planning, but how do we know their motive? Do they typically leave behind an explanation?
James Alan Fox: Yes, they often do leave behind an explanation, or articulate it if they survive. Or they make it clear while they are doing their shooting.
And, by the way, they can be very selective, e.g., Joseph Wesbecker passed by some people in his way (saying, “not you, Joe”) while killing 8 and wounding 12. He had a sense of the good guys versus the enemy.
Another example is a gunman in Wakefield, MA (Michael McDermott), who went to his workplace during Christmas to bring his weapon there while no one was around. The next day, he went to work and started shooting–but only those in HR and accounting whom he blamed for teaming up with the IRS to garnish his wages for unpaid taxes.
Most of the time, the motive is to get even with those they hold responsible for their misfortunes. Usually people at work or at home, or sometimes a class of people (women, Jews, immigrants, whites, blacks, etc) . . . so the victims are chosen randomly, but not the type of victim, or the place to find them.
The rarest form is the completely random attack committed by someone who in their paranoid thinking suspects that the whole world s corrupt and unfair.
Megan: So they plan for a long time and they typically see themselves as victims of some sort of terrible injustice. Is that why so many of these shootings happen at school or work? I remember high school as a place of great injustice . . .
James Alan Fox: Yes, schools, workplaces, and residences. And do you ever notice how often witnesses say “he was smiling; and looked so calm” That’s because they had been through this in their mind for so long that they’re extremely comfortable with the plan.
Actually there have been adults who return to their old school where things hadn’t gone so well for them. Of course, we think of Adam Lanza. But a very similar case occurred back in 1989. Patrick Purdy killed 5 and wounded 29 at an elementary school in Stockton CA. That case didn’t quite have the same impact for several reasons. One, of course, is that the victims were poor Southeast Asians, not upper middle class white folks from a nice community in CT.
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