U. S. is mass- shooting capital of world— by far
Since 1966, 31% of such rampages have occurred here. A new study examines why.
The United States is, by a long shot, theworld leader in mass shootings, claiming5% of the global population but 31% of the world’s mass shooters since 1966, a new study found.
The Philippines, Russia, Yemen and France — all countries that can claim a substantial share of the 291 documented mass shootings between 1966 and 2012— collectively didn’t even come close to the United States.
And what makes the U. S. such a fertile incubator for mass shooters? A comprehensive analysis of the perpetrators, their motives and the national contexts for their actions suggests that several factors have conspired to create a potent medium for fostering largescale homicide.
Those factors include a chronic and widespread gap between Americans’ expectations for themselves and their actual achievement, Americans’ adulation of fame, and the extent of gun ownership.
Set those features against a circumstance the United States shares with many other countries — a back drop of poorly managed mental illness — and you have a uniquely volatile brew, the study said.
With those conclusions, University of Alabama criminologist Adam Lankford set out to illuminate the darker side of American “exceptionalism” — the notion that the United States’ size, diversity, political and economic institutions and traditions set us apart in the world. Lankford’s paper is among those being presented this week at the American Sociological Assn.’ s annual meeting in Chicago.
Perhaps no single factor sets the country apart as sharply as gun ownership, Lankford wrote. Of178 countries studied in Lankford’s analysis, the United States ranked first in per capita gun ownership. A 2007 survey found 270 million firearms in U. S. civilian households— an ownership rate of 88.8 firearms per 100 people. Yemen followed, with 54.8 firearms per100 people.
Across the world, countries’ rates of homicides and suicides bore no clear relation to their likelihood of mass shootings in Lankford’s analysis. In several countries with sky- high homicide rates— Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria, for instance — mass shootings were extremely rare.
But the association between national firearm ownership rates and the number of mass shooters per country showed clear statistical significance, he found. Behind the United States, Finland and Switzerland ranked third and fourth, respectively, in per capita gun ownership. Though both countries enjoy reputations as safe places to live, both ( along with No. 2Yemen and No. 5 Serbia) ranked in the top 15 countries for mass shooters per capita.
America’s gun culture, wrote Lankford, is deeply rooted in the idea that broad gun ownership is a bulwark against the emergence of tyranny. And those roots continue to lie close to the surface, he wrote: Anational survey conducted in 2013 found that 65% of Americans believed that the purpose of their right to bear arms remained “to make sure that people are able to protect themselves from tyranny.”
But the American notion that individual rights must be protected against the state’s powers comes at a cost.
“Because of its worldleading firearm ownership rate, America does stand apart — and this appears connected to its high percentage of mass shootings,” Lankford wrote.
American mass shooters were also 3.6 times more likely to arm themselves with multiple weapons than were those who perpetrated similar crimes elsewhere, Lankford found. His analysis found that more weapons used in a mass shooting translated into more people killed. ( Curiously, however, American mass shooters who carried out attacks using multiple weapons tended to claim fewer lives than armed shooters elsewhere who did so.)
At the same time, mass shootings that took place in commercial spaces or schools were much more likely to have been carried out by American shooters than by those elsewhere, the research found.
Multiple studies have explored the motives of mass shooters, and in these measures Lankford also suggests that uniquely American notions are powerfully at work.
He cites survey data showing that young Americans continue to embrace the “American dream” of soaring financial and educational achievement, of doing better than one’s parents. When such dreams are frustrated, this bedrock belief in upward mobility predisposes some — especially those with a tenuous grasp on mental health — to psychological “strain.” In rare instances, severe strain helps forge mass shooters, he wrote.
As powerful as the drive for material success is a newer American dream— a yearning for fame, Lankford wrote. By this American pre occupation as well, he suggests, frustrated strivers can be nudged toward mass violence.
“Increasingly in America — perhaps more than in any other country on the globe— fame is revered as an end unto itself,” Lankford wrote. “Some mass shooters succumb to terrible delusions of grandeur and seek fame and glory through killing.”
The case of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in April 1999, illustrates the point, Lankford wrote.
Both sought fame and gained infamy by their actions, and their example has been cited as inspiration by school shooters since, in Germany, Argentina, Finland and Canada.