Motives for murder often unclear
On Aug. 1, 1966, Charles Whitman murdered his mother and wife in their homes. Then he went to the University of Texas at Austin’s observation deck where he fired at random for some 96 minutes. Sixteen people were killed and thirty-one were wounded before he was shot and killed by police.
On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old security guard, killed 49 people and wounded 58 others in a terrorist attack/hate crime inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, United States. He was shot and killed by members of the Orlando Police Department.
On Oct. 1, a gunman identified by authorities as Stephen Paddock opened fire on an outdoor music festival on the Las Vegas Strip killing at least 58 people and wounding more than 515. He died at the scene after officers went into the hotel room he was using.
The Independent reported that there have 273 mass shootings in America in the last 275 days. The database, Mass Shootings Tracker, lists the number as 338. The Gun Violence Archive – an independent, online database of gun violence incidents in the US – defines a mass shooting as a single incident in which four or more people are shot. According to their records, there have been 273 such incidents in the US in 2017 alone.
A television newscaster caught my attention when he shouted, “We have to find out why!” I remember teaching my class a chapter called “Motivation and Emotion” from my Psychology text. It presented theories and why we do what we do. It was always a fascinating experience. The students tried to explain reasons for criminal behavior as well as trying to discover why their older brother gave them a bloody nose when they were kids.
These psychological theories of motivation lead people in the public or the media to supply their own causal factors. Maybe Chapman was radicalized. Maybe he had bad parents or was abused by peers as a child or as an adult. Maybe he had some other childhood traumatic experiences. Maybe he was involved in a conspiracy. The explanations go on and on.
My high school classmate who lives in Vegas, William Vassil, sent me thses comments, “Everyone; the authorities, the media, the politicians, religious leaders, etc. are out to solve the Las Vegas murders. They are all seeking to find a motive for these killings that is beyond the very obvious which is that a man with profound physiological problems decided to and did harm as many people as he could. There is really nobody else or nothing else to blame.”
When I see that the media has exhausted psychological theories I often wonder about biological causes. Was the killer abusing prescribed medication or recreational drugs or both? Did he have some undiagnosed brain dysfunction? Psychiatric contributors to the report on Charles Whitman’s autopsy concluded that “the relationship between his brain tumor and Whitman’s actions cannot be established with clarity. However, the tumor conceivably could have contributed to his inability to control his emotions and actions.” Forensic investigators have theorized that the tumor pressed against Whitman’s amygdala, a part of the brain related to anxiety and fight-orflight response. That’s biology or more specifically neuro science.
My other perspective, shared by a few theorists, involves attention seeking. Facebook has become so popular in part because of our undying need for attention. Maybe Stephen Paddock needed attention so much that he wanted to be featured in the media and in history books even at the expense of giving up his life.
The biopsychosocial model might help us to understand the whys better. It attributes many behaviors to the intricate, variable interaction of biological factors (genetic, biochemical, etc.), psychological factors (mood, personality, behavior, etc.), and social factors (cultural, familial, socioeconomic, medical, etc.).
The bottom line is this. No one will ever know exactly why Paddock or any of the others committed murder.