Abstract
Background: Mass shootings in the US are on the rise, and they have become increasingly deadlier as well. Despite this, US federal law is frozen in time, and research is still needed to be done in order to better understand what turns someone into a mass shooter.
Objectives: After observing a trend of deadlier mass shootings in the United States, we sought to understand what risk factors may be associated with the perpetrators of deadlier shootings.
Methods: The Violence Project’s (VPMSD) Mass Shooter Database includes over 160 characteristics from all public mass shooters from 1966 to 2022. A public mass shooting is defined as an event in which four or more victims are killed, excluding the shooter, that did not occur in a private setting (i.e. private household). A logistic regression model was used to identify predictors of mass shooters with a high victim count (defined as seven or more victims killed).
Results: Of 160 variables included in the analysis tied to the 189 shooters, we found seven predictors associated with a higher victim count. Of them, the shooter having a history of animal abuse (OR = 6.87, p = 0.04) and the shooter having suicidality (OR = 6.05, p = 0.03) were notably predictive for increasing the odds of a deadlier mass shooter.
Conclusions: We believe our findings suggest a common pathway in which deadly mass shooters embody: a repressed childhood that aggregates into anger (from denial of a parent or aggrieved entitlement), as witnessed by acts of animal abuse and sexual offenses (sexual assault offenses committed). This anger moves into a state of depression and suicidality, and consequently in an act to finally be heard by the world that has been hurting them, shooters seek to plan their event to have the loudest impact by making their mass shooting events more fatal. Ultimately, our findings suggest that well-designed red flag laws should be considered as they may have the potential to reduce gun deaths and reduce the number of fatalities from mass shootings.