Explaining Mass Shootings

Fox, James Alan; Levin, Jack

doi:10.1002/9781119048015.ch3

Cited by 7 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…In the early study of mass shootings, the rarity of this phenomenon even put scholars off from attempting to theorize about why they occur. As Fox and Levin (2016) put it, up until the 2000s, some criminologists assumed that incidental occurrences of mass shootings are so rare that they are unworthy of extensive empirical research. As the incidental rate of mass shootings increased and high-profile cases (such as the Sandy Hook massacre) occurred, more and more empirical research has since emerged and frameworks that searched for single net-effects have since been expanded and elaborated upon.…”

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Mass Shootings, Why CEE Regions Need Attention

Anisin

2021

Mass Shootings in Central and Eastern Europe

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If one were to say that scholarship and public knowledge on mass shootings in the CEE regions is underdeveloped, they would be putting forward a grave understatement. In my time teaching in higher education at three different institutions in the CEE regions, I vividly recall the surprising expressions that would arise on students' faces when I told them that mass shootings are not simply an American phenomenon and that post-communist states have also had their share of mass shootings. On the one hand, lack of public knowledge about mass shootings in these regions of the world likely exists because there have been far fewer cases and in many of these countries, there have only been several cases in their entire history. On the other hand, media reporting that was cast on many of these incidents was often limited in terms of its global reachcases that predate 2010 tended to not go viral across social media and were only reported on in the local language of the country in which the shooting occurred. With that being said, even though this form of rare homicide is not as common in the CEE regions as it is in North America, over the last thirty or so years, cases have piled up and in total, there have been 76 different attempted and completed mass shootings which have claimed hundreds of lives, brought about around a thousand injuries,

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Mass Shootings, Why CEE Regions Need Attention

Anisin

2021

Mass Shootings in Central and Eastern Europe

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“…Here, biological factors are said to potentially be responsible for why an individual turns to violence and criminal behavior (Bedrosian & Nelson, 2018;Mednick et al, 1988;Raine & Liu, 1998). As explained by Fox and Levin (2016), recent technological advancements in brain imaging have made some of the first quantitative assessments of neural pathways possible and in turn, this has enabled researchers to study the structure and functions of the brain (Fox & Levin, 2016, p. 50). A highly fatal mass shooting that arose in 1983 at a McDonalds restaurant in California was carried out by an offender that was revealed to have toxic levels of lead and cadmium in his body due to being exposed to industrial workplaces while working as a welder.…”

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Theorizing Mass Shootings

Anisin

2021

Mass Shootings in Central and Eastern Europe

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Theorizing about mass shootings is difficult because many cases appear to be aberrations of violence that arise in random areas across a given country. Along with other rare events such as nuclear accidents, aircraft hijackings, genocide, and mass suicides, mass shootings fall into the spectrum of phenomena that are highly important in their historical impact on societies, but also are rare, infrequent, and difficult to study. In an inquiry of American mass murders in which four or more victims were killed in a 24-hour period, Duwe (2004) discovered that since 1976, there were an average of 28 mass murders per year. This contrasts to the average 14,000 homicides that occurred each year throughout the noted time period. Since mass murder is such a rare phenomenon in comparison to "regular" murder (only 0.2% of all homicide incidents in Duwe's data are mass murder incidents), this form of homicide has to be placed into the rare event category. In the US context, there were 125 mass shootings that arose from 1976 to 2013. From my own inquiry into US cases (Anisin, 2022), I identified 213 attempted and completed mass shootings. In Chapter 5 of this book, data on 76 attempted and completed mass shootings will be revealed and even though these cases are not related to the total homicide frequencies from each country in

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“…Mass murders are rare events of extreme violence. However, due to the sensational media coverage (Adler, 2010; Duwe, 2017; Fox & Levin, 2017; Peter & Bogerts, 2012), they have an immense impact on society and policy making. Mass murder is defined by either the number of fatalities or the motivation of the offender to kill as many victims as possible: It includes school and workplace shootings, mass shootings in public, terror attacks of lone offenders, felony related murders, and familicides (Dietz, 1986; Fridel, 2017; Knoll, 2012; Taylor, 2016).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Mass murder is defined by either the number of fatalities or the motivation of the offender to kill as many victims as possible: It includes school and workplace shootings, mass shootings in public, terror attacks of lone offenders, felony related murders, and familicides (Dietz, 1986; Fridel, 2017; Knoll, 2012; Taylor, 2016). There is a variance in sociodemographic characteristics such as age or ethnicity depending on the sample composition and data source (Bannenberg, Bauer, & Kirste, 2014; Fox & Levin, 2017; Huff-Corzine et al, 2014; Taylor, 2016). Nevertheless, mass murder is, like most violent crime, a predominantly male offense (Fox & Levin, 2017; Oliffe et al, 2015).…”

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Mass murder and consecutive suicide in Switzerland: A comparative analysis.

Ilic

Frei

2019

Journal of Threat Assessment and Management

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Mass murder, the killing of three people in a timely and locally narrowly defined space, is a rare event with extensive consequences on society. In many cases, mass murders end with the offender's suicide. We identified 49 cases of mass murder in Switzerland that had occurred between the years 1972 and 2015. We were granted access to official files of 33 cases. The aim of our study was to identify distinct risk factors for mass murderers who had committed suicide after the crime (MMS) and those who had not (MM) by analyzing differences in sociodemographic, psychological, and criminological features. We identified 16 MMS and 17 MM. The majority of MMS was familicides. Their motive was mainly a perverted sense of loyalty, as opposed to that of MM revenge. The aggression of MMS would mostly be instrumental, the one of MM also reactive. Threats were highly prevalent in both groups, with a higher rate of specific threats in MMS and more generalized threats in MM. They did not differ in the prevalence of mental disorders or rate of prior suicidal ideation. Both type of offenders mainly used firearms. Military weapons were of no importance, contrary to their role with suicide in Switzerland. Mass murder in Switzerland is an extremely rare event that makes the drawing of general conclusions somewhat difficult and the establishing of new laws futile. Our conclusion that the aggression of MMS is premeditated, however, could be helpful with the assessment of future putative offenders. Public Significance StatementMass murder is a rare act that, by its extreme violence, stokes the emotions of the public and hence implies an extraordinary challenge for risk assessment professionals. Mass murder is closely linked to suicide. In this article, we report about the particularities of mass murder with consecutive suicide in Switzerland, a country with a generally low incidence of violent criminality. Mass murders with consecutive suicides in Switzerland are premeditated acts executed by rather well-off middle-aged men suffering from a long-lasting strain and/or personality disorder who never sought professional help and who mainly killed their family and then themselves.

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Explaining Mass Shootings

Cited by 7 publications

References 18 publications

Mass Shootings, Why CEE Regions Need Attention

Mass Shootings, Why CEE Regions Need Attention

Theorizing Mass Shootings

Mass murder and consecutive suicide in Switzerland: A comparative analysis.

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