Public Mass Murderers and Federal Mental Health Background Checks

Abstract

The litany of public mass murders, from Aurora, Newtown, Charleston, Las Vegas, and Parkland to less well‐known incidents that occur yearly, has focused national attention on federally mandated mental health background checks of prospective gun purchasers. The call has been to put more gun‐disqualifying mental health records into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System database to prevent “deranged” murderers from buying guns and running amok. Our study examines whether increasing the robustness of the mental health background database will likely prevent potential public mass murderers from buying guns. Building on research that shows that serious mental illness contributes little to the risk of interpersonal violence and, further, that few persons with serious mental illness acquire gun‐disqualifying mental health records, we examine whether public mass murderers are among the small percentage of those with serious mental illness who do have gun‐disqualifying mental health records. Using a large sample of 106 US offenders who used a firearm to commit a public mass murder from 1990 to 2014, we find that half of the offenders had a history of mental illness or mental health treatment but that less than 5 percent had gun‐disqualifying mental health records. Implications of these findings and recommendations for further research are discussed.

Are the Deadliest Mass Shootings Preventable? An Assessment of Leakage, Information Reported to Law Enforcement, and Firearms Acquisition Prior to Attacks in the United States

“…U.S. federal law currently prohibits people from possessing firearms if they have been involuntarily committed, adjudicated to be mentally defective, or met several other disqualifying criteria (Giffords Law Center, 2018). However, even though a large proportion of mass shooters struggle with mental health problems, very few have been involuntarily committed or adjudicated to be mentally defective (Silver, Fisher, & Horgan, 2018). This suggests that the current criteria for legal purchase of firearms may be insufficient.…”

Homicide and the Internet

“…Some of these subcultures revere lone‐actor terrorists, school shooters, and other perpetrators of mass homicides (Langman, 2018; Mackintosh et al., 2020). The mass shooting at a Wal‐Mart in El Paso, TX, in August 2019 is illustrative and bears notable similarities to other incidents of mass violence in recent years: (1) the shooter was male, (2) he was involved with extremist communities on the Internet, (3) he posted a manifesto online (in this case, to 8chan) prior to the incident, and (4) he was influenced by at least one previous mass shooting linked to Internet‐based hate (in this case, the mass shooting at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, earlier that year) (ADL, 2020a; Marantz, 2019; Recupero & Rainey, 2021; Silver et al., 2018; White, 2017). Counterterrorism researchers have characterized the spread of white supremacist hate communities on the Internet and social media as an especially troubling development (Recupero & Rainey, 2021).…”

Are there Local Differences in Support for Violent Radicalization? A Study on College Students in the Province of Quebec, Canada

“…Unfortunately, many studies in the field of VR do not compare research conducted among minorities and majorities, implicitly assuming that majority groups are not radicalized. Yet, the recent increase in both mass shootings (Gould & Olivares, 2017; Silver, Fisher, & Horgan, 2018) and hate crimes by lone actors belonging to the majority (Gaudet, 2018) is often linked to populist and xenophobic radical rhetoric (e.g., the 2019 Christchurch Mosque and El Paso attacks by white supremacists; the 2017 killing at the Quebec main Mosque by a young white male from the majority group).…”