The Epidemic of Mass Shootings Is Neither Inevitable Nor Unsolvable

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The Epidemic of Mass Shootings Is Neither Inevitable Nor Unsolvable
We can start by rejecting the big politicized myths that stand in our way.

MARK FOLLMAN
MAY 27, 2022; (UPDATED MAY 7, 2023)


Editor’s note, May 7, 2023: This essay was published three days after the gun massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022. Since then, we’ve had to update our mass shootings database 15 additional times, including with Saturday’s mass shooting at a shopping mall in Allen, Texas.


(Mother Jones) For many years now, every horrific gun massacre has ricocheted widely with a familiar theme of outrage and surrender. On May 25, the day after a heavily armed, suicidal 18-year-old murdered 19 children and two adults at a Texas elementary school, Washington Post columnist Brian Broome published one of the more powerful versions of that narrative I’ve ever read. “Nothing happened after innocent children were slaughtered the last time, or the time before that, and nothing is going to be done now,” he wrote, citing Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and Parkland.

Broome’s column articulated the enduring shame of our nation’s political stalemate and pathetic inaction on gun policy. It was piercing and poignant—and, in my view, wrong.

It’s not just that we shouldn’t resign ourselves in perpetuity to such outrage, rightful as it is. This narrative has become part of the problem itself—in some cases possibly even fueling the escalating cycle of mass shootings. That’s because it validates the recurring violence, framing it as an indefinite feature of our reality.

And mass shooters pay heed. After nearly a decade of studying these attacks and how to prevent them through the work of behavioral threat assessment, I documented extensive case evidence for my book, Trigger Points. The research shows that many perpetrators are keenly aware of media and political narratives about their actions.

....(snip)....

Mass shootings can be prevented. In fact, it happens with regularity at the hands of threat assessment teams. They work to intervene constructively with troubled people, often after someone in the orbit of those people becomes worried by their behavior and reaches out for help. The method relies to a great extent on community awareness—and its potential could grow if we do away with some big enduring myths about mass shootings.

One is that mental illness is fundamentally to blame for these massacres. After the horror at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde this week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pushed that argument in his public comments. Pro-gun politicians and leaders of the NRA have long used it as a tactic for distracting from the national debate over gun laws—essentially dismissing each new mass shooting as an inexplicable “evil,” as Abbott described it, and implying that responsibility for change lies squarely with the mental health field. (Never mind that Abbott just cut $211 million in April from state mental health services.) ............(more)

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/preventing-mass-shootings-myths-mental-illness-warning-signs-red-flags-uvalde/