What were motives behind Danforth shooting?
Deceased shooter’s reasons may never be known, but experts say mass killers share some traits A video shared online shows the Danforth shooter.
In the aftermath of Sunday night’s mass shooting on the Danforth that shattered the lives of so many, shell-shocked residents are seeking to make sense of this seemingly senseless act. Why, many are inevitably asking, would someone do such a thing?
In truth, we may never know. The Special Investigations Unit, which is probing the circumstances surrounding the death of the suspect, named him late on Monday as 29-yearold Faisal Hussain, of Toronto.
The fact that the alleged killer is dead means we cannot ask him about his motivations. Indeed, those who study mass shootings note that because many people who commit such crimes take their own lives, or are killed by police, research into what makes them tick is not as robust as that examining serial killers, for example, who are often questioned for years by law enforcement.
A statement from the alleged killer’s family late Monday pointed to Hussain’s lifelong struggle with “severe mental health challenges,” including “psychosis and depression.” The family wrote that the interventions of professionals were not successful.
But Hussain also shared a characteristic in common with many mass murderers, one that has received particular attention in the wake of a string of explicitly misogynistic attacks: he was male.
“Much of it is this idea that (men) are owed something, or that someone has taken something from them and they must reassert themselves by taking something back,” said Rachel Kalish, a visiting professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Old Westbury and co-author of an article examining the relationship between masculinity and the concept of aggrieved entitlement.
“So for example, if a man is passed over for a job, say, and the job is given to a woman, he may feel like that woman ‘stole his job,’ but it was never actually even his to begin with.”
She also points to the fact that some men feel they are entitled to women’s attention or women’s bodies.
Alek Minassian, the man police say intentionally mowed down pedestrians with a rented van on Yonge St. in April, allegedly posted a Facebook message before the rampage praising American mass murderer Elliot Rodger.
Rodger, 22, went on a killing spree in May 2014, in which he murdered six people and injured 14 others in Isla Vista, Calif. He then killed himself, but not before emailing a document and posting a video on YouTube explaining his rationale, including his desire to take “retribution” on women who he believed rejected him.
Rodger’s message found a captive audience in a community of men known as “incels” who are “involuntarily celibate” and blame women for this, among other things.
There is nothing to suggest the Danforth shooter had any link to the incel community.
But what we do know, said Michael Kaufman, the sole male member of the G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council and co-founder of the White Ribbon Campaign — a worldwide network engaging men to work to end violence against women — is that men who carry out such acts feel a sense of entitlement to take away the lives of others.
“Whatever his excuse or rationale, the way he justifies this act, whether it’s his politics or individual hatred of women or something else, we see … a man who feels that he can play God,” said Kaufman, stressing that the overwhelming majority of men do not commit acts of physical or emotional violence.
He said this attitude stems from the way society tells boys from a young age that they need to be in control, to be the hero and never back down.
“We tell them that they will have all the answers, that they won’t feel pain. But the world isn’t like that. And so what happens is we set boys up for failure,” Kaufman said. “When they can’t live up to the armour- plated expectations of manhood, how do they prove to themselves and the world that they are real men? One solution in a minority of cases is to use violence.”
Jooyoung Lee, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, says determining motivations for mass murders is a challenging task given that the reasons are varied and complex.
“There are layers of grievances or perceived grievances mixed with potential mental health history, mixed with access to firearms, mixed with both short-term and long-term traumatic experiences that kind of propel a person towards the rage that they feel before they commit a shooting like this,” Lee said.
He added that those who have left manifestos, such as Rodger, the Columbine High School shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, provide some clues.
“Those manifestos at least allow us to peer inside the thought processes of these killers in the days, weeks and months leading up to the shooting, and you can see very much there is a sense that they’re going to use violence as a way of taking revenge against a society or an institution or people in general who they feel as if they’ve been wronged by,” Lee said.