Two Professors Found What Creates a Mass Shooter. Will Politicians Pay Attention?

Mass shooters overwhelmingly fit a certain profile, say Jillian Peterson and James Densley, which means it’s possible to ID and treat them before they commit violence.

Each time a high-profile mass shooting happens in America, a grieving and incredulous nation scrambles for answers. Who was this criminal and how could he (usually) have committed such a horrendous and inhumane act? A few details emerge about the individual’s troubled life and then everyone moves on.

Three years ago, Jillian Peterson, an associate professor of criminology at Hamline University, and James Densley, a professor of criminal justice at Metro State University, decided to take a different approach. In their view, the failure to gain a more meaningful and evidence-based understanding of why mass shooters do what they do seemed a lost opportunity to stop the next one from happening. Funded by the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Department of Justice, their research constructed a database of every mass shooter since 1966 who shot and killed four or more people in a public place, and every shooting incident at schools, workplaces and places of worship since 1999.

Peterson and Densley also compiled detailed life histories on 180 shooters, speaking to their spouses, parents, siblings, childhood friends, work colleagues and teachers. As for the gunmen themselves, most don’t survive their carnage, but five who did talked to Peterson and Densely from prison, where they were serving life sentences. The researchers also found several people who planned a mass shooting but changed their mind.

Their findings, also published in the 2021 book, The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic, reveal striking commonalities among the perpetrators of mass shootings and suggest a data-backed, mental health-based approach could identify and address the next mass shooter before he pulls the trigger — if only politicians are willing to actually engage in finding and funding targeted solutions.

But, it triggers more people to talk about guns than actually resolving problems so,....

BizSuitStacy · M

Addressing the mental health issue makes total sense. That's why the gov't will have none of it. It gets in the way of the real objective.

We've long seen that the gov't isn't interested in reducing gun violence. 90% of all firearm homicides occur in America's inner cities. We've known for decades that the social policies designed to keep inner city residents reliant on the gov't, and remain in perpetual poverty, leads to crimes, drug use, gangs...and gun violence. The gov't can't admit it, because it's all by design. It's been that way long before school shootings became too common. So...blame is placed on the tool

Mass shootings are obviously a mental health issue. They are incredibly emotional regardless of your feelings about gun control, and conveniently distract attention away from the far deadlier issue within the inner cities. Again, blame is placed on the tool.

Infringing upon or even revoking the rights of law abiding citizens to defend themselves will never deter the criminals or the criminally insane. Yet, disarming Americans is absolutely the objective of the cabal and the deep state. Just ask Beto the Burglar.