Skip to content

The #1 Factor Experts Say Accounts for High Number of Mass Shootings in U.S.

The #1 Factor Experts Say Accounts for High Number of Mass Shootings in U.S.

June 21, 2016 SVadmin

Welcome to the world of environmental criminology.

By Patricia Pearson / Reprinted from AlterNet

June 21, 2016

GunsCanadians are reputed to be polite. But that isn’t a very compelling argument for why the lone wolves there are less inclined to engage in the kind of mass shooting that occurred in Orlando. All three pathologies that appeared to be in play at the horrific Pulse nightclub massacre—homophobia, psychological instability and adherence to a cult-like “Ism” that could act as a justifying frame in the killer’s mind—exist for some of Canada’s citizens as well. Two of those factors resulted in rifle bullets whizzing around the halls of the Canadian Parliament in October 2014.

The shooter, Michael-Zahef Bibeau, had an illegally acquired Winchester Model 94, a deer-hunting rifle that enabled him to fire off all of seven rounds before he had to halt in his tracks and fumble to reload. He was handily tackled at that point by security. Just hold that thought.

Canadians have had their fair share of “mass stabbings,” which virtually by definition don’t turn out to be particularly massive. Knives don’t kill people, people kill people, but people kill people on a markedly diminished scale with knives, and that’s hard not to notice for those of us who live outside the U.S.

To acquire and carry a gun in Canada, you need to go through a mind-boggling number of tests and procedures, the results of which are then vetted by police. Each one of these steps surely acts as a cool-down procedure on a mentally unstable mind.

Explosively enraged at the world? First attend your “gun safety class” on a Saturday, next available slot in two months, in the town 20 miles from your house. Then study for, write and pass the safety test that enables you to apply—to the police—for a license. That will entail extensive background checking on their part, after which you may or may not be freed to research where you can go to purchase your weapon and finally unleash your hateful rage.

A commonly repeated argument in the U.S. is that men of murderous intent will just go ahead and buy their guns on the black market. Perhaps, but in Canada apparently there aren’t many assault rifles lying around. The black market, after all, isn’t just down the street beside the corner store. It’s more akin to a word-of-mouth social network. Think loosely assembled gangs passing around Glocks as opposed to isolated, fantasizing aggressors with no real-world criminal ties, like Adam Lanza in Sandy Hook.

The internet is a grand marketplace for pathologies but not that helpful when things have to be delivered by UPS. So if the guns aren’t legally on offer, or indeed, in Lanza’s case, in the house, then the black market will tend to act as a baffle.

Canada’s largest gun massacre took place in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down. It was directed at female engineering students in Montreal, slaying 14. The date, December 6, has become a national day of mourning and activism for violence against women. In other words, mass shootings in your neighbor to the north are sufficiently rare that we all still focus on that particular event 27 years ago, in an annual memorial event. (The Montreal Massacre also led to an overhaul of gun laws.)

What, then, has enabled so many mentally unstable Americans to inflict so much carnage that America can sometimes feel as chaotic and unsafe as the marketplaces of Baghdad? If florid gun availability isn’t your go-to answer, consider the answer a different way. There is a subfield within criminological theory called “environmental criminology.” The ideas kicked around in this field are that people don’t commit crimes due to intrinsic factors like poverty or instability unless they are swimming in an environment of criminal possibility. Readily available, high-velocity weapons, for instance, would be a feature of that environment.

One of the frames for this discussion in criminology is “routine activities theory,” first proposed by Marcus Felson and Lawrence Cohen. According to this theory, a woman is more likely, for example, to be sexually assaulted in an urban area near a transit route than in an empty farmhouse far from help, because the farmhouse is simply not on her attacker’s routine pathway.

The criminologist Kim Rossmo of Texas State University in Austin has developed an investigative approach he calls geographic profiling, in which you can map the routine activities of unidentified violent offenders and determine where to look for them based on where they committed their crime. Why? Because the perpetrator will have traversed his daily life routes multiple times, like an animal circling its territory, before summoning the nerve to attack. Multiple times he will travel past the same bus stop where he began taking note of a potential victim, while on the way home from his job.

In light of these ideas, one might imagine what fermentation takes place in an unstable mind passing several times a month past a gun display. Guns like the AR-15 are, or have been until recently, on sale at Walmart, Target, Costco, and every other shop you’d routinely pass by as an American living in a state like Florida. What if, over time, an inchoate idea becomes fixed, or a plan becomes psychologically plausible because the opportunity repeatedly presents itself?

It’s like a nightmare funhouse version of the children’s story, The Little Engine That Could. The notion that those guns are easily available to you, and can be used to commit mass murder, is then, arguably, reinforced each time a mass murder makes headlines.

ISIL and Al Qaeda are undeniably goading anyone who will listen to take up arms against the West. But in North America at least, they aren’t the ones supplying the arms. Without ready access to guns, radicalized Canadians have done their best: one used a car to run over a Canadian Armed Forces Officer in Quebec two years ago. Others have been arrested for scheming to blow up a train.

Yet, from our standpoint as witnesses to the roiling tragedies of American gun violence, Omar Mateen actually has more in common with Adam Lanza of Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, in spite of their ostensibly different sources of inspiration. Senator MaCain may wish to blame Orlando on Obama’s foreign policy, but on what does he blame Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech and Georgia? The reality is that all of these shooters were swimming in the same violent sea.


Canadian journalist Patricia Pearson’s most recent book is Opening Heaven’s Door.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Articles, Environment, Science

Post navigation

PREVIOUS
Local Citizens’ Group Takes Legal Action Against City of Grass Valley
NEXT
The Age of Disintegration: Neoliberalism, Interventionism, the Resource Curse, and a Fragmenting World

Join Our Mailing List

Comments are closed.

DONATE TO THE FOOD BANK OF NEVADA COUNTY

(CLICK IMAGE)

DONATE TO NEVADA COUNTY RELIEF FUND (click image below)

Erika Lewis, Shaye Cohn, Craig Flory – Got A Mind To Ramble

Jack Kornfield: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part I)

Tara Brach: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part II)

Subscribe to Sierra Voices Journal

Recent Posts

  • Timothy Snyder: “It was clear to me in October that Trump’s behavior presaged a coup, and I said so in print”
  • The Most Urgent Issue in U.S. Politics is Not Biden or Trump, Not Who is President This Time
  • How can America heal from the Trump era? Lessons from Germany’s transformation into a prosperous democracy after Nazi rule
  • We Need More in Congress Like Jamie Raskin
  • After the Desperate Ignorance of the Trump Years, Biden’s Words About Science Make Me Weep With Gratitude

Recent Comments

  • Douglas Keachie on The Most Urgent Issue in U.S. Politics is Not Biden or Trump, Not Who is President This Time
  • The Most Important Issue in US Politics is Not Biden or Trump, or Even Who is President This Time on How to stop an Insurrection Caucus: These reforms could reduce GOP extremism and save our democracy
  • (Posted by) Don Pelton on GOP Warns Dems About Court Packing (Cartoon)
  • Criminal Incompetence, Malignant Ignorance Will Lead to Hunger and Violence on A Nice Depression Now Benefits the GOP in 2022 and 2024
  • togel singapura hari ini on How Wall Street Has Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme — Again

Archives

  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009

Categories

  • Aging
  • Articles
  • Atlas Obscura
  • Authoritarianism
  • Black Lives
  • Black Lives Matter
  • Blog
  • Buddhism
  • Cartoon
  • Climate Change
  • Constitution
  • Corona Virus
  • Corruption
  • Depression
  • Disenfranchisement
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Election Fraud
  • Environment
  • Farming
  • Fascism
  • Fire!
  • Food Insecurity
  • Foreign Policy
  • Forest Management
  • Gender
  • Health Care
  • History
  • Humor
  • Hunger
  • Ignorance
  • Labor
  • Local
  • Masks
  • Medical Care
  • Men
  • Mental Health
  • Middle Class
  • Mining
  • MMT
  • Modern Monetary Theory
  • Music
  • Native Americans
  • Pandemic
  • Parenting
  • Poetry
  • Police
  • Politics
  • Press
  • Race
  • Reviews
  • Revolution
  • Right-wing terrorism
  • Russiagate
  • Science
  • Technology
  • Trump Virus
  • Tyranny
  • Uncategorized
  • Voting
  • War
  • War on Government
  • Water
  • Watersheds
  • Wildfires

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
© 2021   All Rights Reserved.