Shooting rampages are an American symptom. But is there a cure?
U.S. killer psyche might be helped by social safety net
Outside the yellow-taped perimeter of the Washington Navy Yards where “active shooter” police squads swarmed through Building 197 in search of a mass murderer, life went on as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
As the shooter killed 12 people and the shrill voices of American commentators filled the airwaves with overripe details, children played in neighbourhood schoolyards and tours continued to circulate through the unruffled U.S. Capitol. The people of Washington generally went about their business. Not that they were unaware or even unconcerned. They had just heard it all before.
Murderous rampages have become so commonplace in America they have reached a level of banality that has earned them their own massive, militaristic and bureaucratic response system. The shooter opens fire. Police “active shooter” squads — on call 24/7 — are deployed. The shooter either commits suicide or is shot dead. The police are declared heroes. The victims are mourned and become “patriots.” Their family photos drift ghostlike across TV screens. Friends of the shooter struggle to comprehend why such a goodnatured guy would do such a terrible thing. Blame inevitably falls on, as the Chicago Tribune ruled in an editorial Tuesday, “a lethal grudge and a gun.”
After last year’s Newtown, Conn. murders, American commentators debated whether they should even mention the murderer’s name — Adam Lanza — for fear it might encourage other potential-murderers. Psychiatrist Michael Welner insisted to CNN every American had “to repudiate his (Lanza’s) behaviour as disgusting” so as not to ignite the longings of fantasists seeking publicity. (One thing is certain. Lanza didn’t kill himself and 27 others so he could read about it later.)
But that hardly seems enough. Random killings have become such a unique American phenomenon that they deserve greater analysis and soul-searching than just blaming guns and grudges with the occasional foray into video games and publicity seeking. The murder of 21 primary schoolchildren in Newtown alone deserves much more.
Yet, across the American landscape, few experts look beyond the regular suspects. Few ask themselves why the citizens of other industrialized countries, which also have guns, grudges, video games and disenchanted populations (such as Canada), rarely indulge in mass murder. And when they do, it seems a sort of unwanted American cultural import — a one-off copycat act — like outlaw motorcycle gangs.
This is an American phenomenon. Americans do far more rampage shootings than anybody else and the problem is only getting bigger. Statistics show that Americans can expect about three or four big ones a year — many are too small to be reported — up from almost none in the 1950s.
In fact, the only thing that seems to stop Americans from killing each other is war. It took a few years to get back to mass killings after the Second World War and again after 9/11. Otherwise, the line graph shows a steady decade-on-decade increase.
Neither psychiatry nor psychology have been much use. We know that the perpetrators are eerily similar. The shooter is almost always a disaffected male who has suffered some kind of dislocation, isolation or job loss. He is often considered “mentally ill” which is a catch-all term for having a range of
“This is a collective phenomenon. It’s about American society and American culture.”
JACK LEVIN,
CRIMINOLOGY PROFESSOR
emotional problems. If it’s a school shooting, the shooter is almost always a young adult or student. If it’s a workplace rampage or occurs at some other location, the shooter is almost always middle-aged. But here again, people globally suffer emo- tional problems and problems of dislocation and they don’t open fire on a crowd.
One man takes the issue into a darker area of the American psyche. He is Jack Levin, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University in Boston who has studied mass murderers for more than 30 years.
“This is a collective phenomenon,” he said. “It’s about American society and American culture.”
The most important trigger for mass murder, he said, is “the eclipse of community, the decline of neighbourhoods, the reduction in the communal aspects of every day life.”
In other words, the huge decades-old relocation of Americans seeking employment and a better life has created a sort of mass loneliness and hardened the American soul. Too many have no place to turn to when they get into trouble. Job loss can be particularly catastrophic because, in the U.S., there is only the thinnest social welfare net. No health care. No financial help.
“That’s why most of these mass killers are middle-aged males,” he said. “At the very time in their lives when they feel they should reach the pinnacle of success they are, instead, sliding downhill fast.”
Their final gesture is to open a vengeful fire on American society. “So that is part of American culture.”
In other words, a little socialism could go a long way in saving Americans from the mass murderer within.