Why Do Mass Shootings Happen?
Would it surprise you to learn that there is probably no single explanation? Like any social phenomenon, mass shootings don’t happen for any particular reason. You might not like that answer, and I won’t try to defend it here. This article is about the reasoning people offer for why there was another school shooting or why a gay nightclub gets shot up.
One Problem, Many Incompatible Explanations
But, wait! When these things happen, tons of pundits and experts and activists tell us why these things happen. Guns are the problem, right? What about mental illness? Haven’t all the mass shooters been Democrats? Maybe the lack of religion is the problem? Or maybe parents have stopped being parents and that’s why their kids sometimes go on shooting sprees.
Did you notice something in that last paragraph? If you were thinking sociologically you may have noticed several factors that cause mass shootings. Everyone who blames “gun culture” or lack of religion or lack of mental health services has just tried to explain mass shootings by looking at one variable.
The social world is always more complicated than this. Always. Anyone who denies this is conning you. They may not be after money, but they want something that you may not wish to willingly give away. Scammers. If you don’t get anything else from my little Medium series on social science abuse, I hope you remember this point.
Back to the fake explanations for mass shootings…You may ask yourself “How can each of those variables be the main reason?”
The Illusion of Certainty
It feels good to understand how and why things happen, doesn’t it? The more troubling or scary a thing is, the better we often feel when we “know” what’s going on. Maybe the national conversation about mass shootings has been hijacked by this very desire for certainty.
See, mass shootings are troubling and especially troubling when children are the victims. We want to be told why these attacks happen and what to do about them. Sometimes people float different ideas out of a sincere desire to do something useful. Other times, people share ideas because they’ve been tricked into or because they have a cause to promote.
Let’s look at trickery first. Joe reads about another school shooting where three teenagers are killed and six are injured. He wants to learn why something this could happen yet again and what we can do about it. He reads about an obscure scientific study that shows something disturbing. According to the study, common anti-depressants can destroy a person’s impulse control. Joe learns that roughly 1 in 10 Americans take his type of prescription drug at any given time. Wow! Joe decides to his friends and relatives a favor by sharing this news on social media.
Joe has been conned. The article on that study only covered someone’s opinion of the study. The author seemed to know her stuff, and she had a Doctorate, so a reasonable person might not be all that suspicious. Joe didn’t realize that the good Doctor is a crank who promotes meditation and essential oils as cures for everything from autism to psychosis. Of course Doctor Crank also despises Big Pharma. Joe wasn't thinking about that stuff. Joe was just happy to feel he understood the problem better, even if he didn’t. Some of the people who read his shared anti-medication rant disguised as an article believed it. Now more people think anti-depression meds are the cause of mass shootings.
How Scientists Talk and How Charlatans Talk
Scientists will qualify their statements in many ways. A scientist would say something like this:
“Our research suggests that some adults who take psychotropic drugs may experience impulse control problems at some point in their treatment. There is no evidence this sort of impulse control disorder makes the individual more prone to violence.”
A charlatan who wants to peddle natural medicine or alternative treatments would say something like this:
“Psychotropic meds screw up the wiring in the mind. Sometimes people can’t deal with this and they turn violent. That’s why we have mass shootings.”
Mind Your Mind
When someone starts to explain mass shootings by talking about gun culture or anti-depression drugs or atheism, stop listening. If anyone says the cause of poverty is laziness (or capitalism, or genetics) just stop listening. Even if people who say those things don’t have an agenda, someone with an agenda wrote something or said something in a podcast that makes listeners think something that’s nonsensical.
