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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.

Crosses with the names of Tuesday's shooting victims are placed outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. | Jae C. Hong/AP Photo

By MELANIE WARNER

05/27/2022 02:54 PM EDT

Melanie Warner is a writer in Honolulu and author, most recently, of The Magic Feather Effect: The Science of Alternative Medicine and the Surprising Power of Belief.

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. POLITICO talked to Peterson and Densely from their offices in St. Paul, Minn., about how our national understanding about mass shooters has to evolve, why using terms like “monster” is counterproductive, and why political talking points about mental health need to be followed up with concrete action.

POLITICO: Since you both spend much of your time studying mass shootings, I wonder if you had the same stunned and horrified reaction as the rest of us to the Uvalde elementary school shooting. Or were you somehow expecting this?

Jillian Peterson: On some level, we were waiting because mass shootings are socially contagious and when one really big one happens and gets a lot of media attention, we tend to see others follow. But this one was particularly gutting. I have three elementary school kids, one of which is in 4th grade.

James Densley: I’m also a parent of two boys, a 5-year-old and a 12-year-old. My 12-year-old knows what I do for a living and he’s looking to me for reassurance and I didn’t have the words for him. How do I say, “This happened at a school, but now it’s OK for you to go to your school and live your life.” It’s heartbreaking.

POLITICO: Are you saying there’s a link between the Buffalo and Uvalde shootings?

Peterson: We don’t know for sure at this point, but our research would say that it’s likely. You had an 18-year-old commit a horrific mass shooting. His name is everywhere and we all spend days talking about “replacement theory.” That shooter was able to get our attention. So, if you have another 18-year-old who is on the edge and watching everything, that could be enough to embolden him to follow. We have seen this happen before.

Densley: Mass shooters study other mass shooters. They often find a way of relating to them, like, “There are other people out there who feel like me.”

POLITICO: Can you take us through the profile of mass shooters that emerged from your research?

Peterson: There’s this really consistent pathway. Early childhood trauma seems to be the foundation, whether violence in the home, sexual assault, parental suicides, extreme bullying. Then you see the build toward hopelessness, despair, isolation, self-loathing, oftentimes rejection from peers. That turns into a really identifiable crisis point where they’re acting differently. Sometimes they have previous suicide attempts.

What’s different from traditional suicide is that the self-hate turns against a group. They start asking themselves, “Whose fault is this?” Is it a racial group or women or a religious group, or is it my classmates? The hate turns outward. There’s also this quest for fame and notoriety.

POLITICO: You’ve written about how mass shootings are always acts of violent suicide. Do people realize this is what’s happening in mass shootings?

Peterson: I don’t think most people realize that these are suicides, in addition to homicides. Mass shooters design these to be their final acts. When you realize this, it completely flips the idea that someone with a gun on the scene is going to deter this. If anything, that’s an incentive for these individuals. They are going in to be killed.

It’s hard to focus on the suicide because these are horrific homicides. But it’s a critical piece because we know so much from the suicide prevention world that can translate here.

POLITICO: I’ve heard many references over the last few weeks to “monsters” and “pure evil.” You’ve said this kind of language actually makes things worse. Why?

Densley: If we explain this problem as pure evil or other labels like terrorist attack or hate crime, we feel better because it makes it seem like we’ve found the motive and solved the puzzle. But we haven’t solved anything. We’ve just explained the problem away. What this really problematic terminology does is prevent us from recognizing that mass shooters are us. This is hard for people to relate to because these individuals have done horrific, monstrous things. But three days earlier, that school shooter was somebody’s son, grandson, neighbor, colleague or classmate. We have to recognize them as the troubled human being earlier if we want to intervene before they become the monster.

Peterson: The Buffalo shooter told his teacher that he was going to commit a murder-suicide after he graduated. People aren’t used to thinking that this kind of thing could be real because the people who do mass shootings are evil, psychopathic monsters and this is a kid in my class. There’s a disconnect.

POLITICO: Do you get criticism about being too sympathetic toward mass shooters?

Peterson: We’re not trying to create excuses or say they shouldn’t be held responsible. This is really about, what is the pathway to violence for these people, where does this come from? Only then can we start building data-driven solutions that work. If we’re unwilling to understand the pathway, we’re never going to solve this.

POLITICO: So, what are the solutions?

Densley: There are things we can do right now as individuals, like safe storage of firearms or something as simple as checking in with your kid.

Peterson: Then we really need resources at institutions like schools. We need to build teams to investigate when kids are in crisis and then link those kids to mental health services. The problem is that in a lot of places, those services are not there. There’s no community mental health and no school-based mental health. Schools are the ideal setting because it doesn’t require a parent to take you there. A lot of perpetrators are from families where the parents are not particularly proactive about mental health appointments.

POLITICO: In your book, you say that in an ideal world, 500,000 psychologists would be employed in schools around the country. If you assume a modest salary of $70,000 a year, that amounts to over $35 billion in funding. Are you seeing any national or state-level political momentum for even a sliver of these kind of mental health resources?

Densley: Every time these tragedies happen, you always ask yourself, “Is this the one that’s going to finally move the needle?” The Republican narrative is that we’re not going to touch guns because this is all about mental health. Well then, we need to ask the follow-up question of what’s the plan to fix that mental health problem. Nobody’s saying, “Let’s fund this, let’s do it, we’ll get the votes.” That’s the political piece that’s missing here.

POLITICO: Are Democrats talking about mental health?

Densley: Too often in politics it becomes an either-or proposition. Gun control or mental health. Our research says that none of these solutions is perfect on its own. We have to do multiple things at one time and put them together as a comprehensive package. People have to be comfortable with complexity and that’s not always easy.

Peterson: Post-Columbine there’s been this real focus on hardening schools — metal detectors, armed officers, teaching our kids to run and hide. The shift I’m starting to see, at least here in Minnesota, is that people are realizing hardening doesn’t work. Over 90 percent of the time, school shooters target their own school. These are insiders, not outsiders. We just had a bill in Minnesota that recognized public safety as training people in suicide prevention and funding counselors. I hope we keep moving in that direction.

Densley: In Uvalde, there was an army of good guys with guns in the parking lot. The hard approach doesn’t seem to be getting the job done.

POLITICO: Do you support red flag laws?

Peterson: Our research certainly supports them, because so many perpetrators are actively showing warning signs. They are talking about doing this and telling people they’re suicidal. But what Buffalo showed us is that just because you have a red flag law on the books doesn’t mean people are trained in how it works and how they should be implementing it.

POLITICO: What has to change to make the laws more effective?

Densley: There are two pieces. One is training and awareness. People need to know that the law exists, how it works and who has a duty to report an individual. The second piece is the practical component of law enforcement. What is the mechanism to safely remove those firearms? Especially if you have a small law enforcement presence, maybe one or two officers, and you’re asking them to go into somebody’s rural home and take care of their entire arsenal of weapons.

POLITICO: What should have happened in Buffalo, given that the state of New York has a red flag law?

Peterson: From what we know, it sounds like there should have been more education with the police, the mental health facility and the school. If any one of those three had initiated the red flag process, it should have prevented the shooter from making the purchase.

It really shows the limitations of our current systems. Law enforcement investigated, but the shooter had no guns at that moment, so it was not an immediate threat. The mental health facility concluded it was not an immediate crisis, so he goes back to school. If it’s not a red-hot situation in that moment, nobody can do anything. It was none of these people’s jobs to make sure that he got connected with somebody in the community who could help him long term.

Densley: Also, something happens to put people on the radar. Even if they’re not the next shooter, something’s not right. How can we help these individuals reintegrate in a way that’s going to try and turn their lives around? That gets lost if we fixate just on the word “threat.”

POLITICO: I was struck by a detail in your book about one of the perpetrators you investigated. Minutes before he opened fire, you report that he called a behavior health facility. Is there always some form of reaching out or communication of intent before it happens?

Peterson: You don’t see it as often with older shooters who often go into their workplaces. But for young shooters, it’s almost every case. We have to view this “leakage” as a cry for help. If you’re saying, “I want to shoot the school tomorrow,” you are also saying, “I don’t care if I live or die.” You’re also saying, “I’m completely hopeless,” and you’re putting it out there for people to see because part of you wants to be stopped.

We have to listen because pushing people out intensifies their grievance and makes them angrier. The Parkland shooter had just been expelled from school and then came back. This is not a problem we can punish our way out of.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/27/stopping-mass-shooters-q-a-00035762

We can certainly re-distribute the guns already in circulation. But reality is that's not really that likely.

Arming the 3-3.5 million teachers as a "solution" is escalation. It's arming people currently unarmed.

And my comment was very much in response to and intended in the same vein as "Oh right. I forgot the only message that truly works is "gun bad mmmmmkay" ....

OH - and to "At which point am I not engaging in conversation? The point where I don't agree with you? "

Nope - I never said anything about agreeing with me. I was going back to you going to that troupe about the only message is Gun Bad. that's not conversation. That's you spewing rhetoric and responding to something no-one on this board has engaged you on a conversation about.

400 million guns and the answer is "MORE GUNS" .... MURICA !!!!

Peterson: There’s this really consistent pathway. Early childhood trauma seems to be the foundation, whether violence in the home, sexual assault, parental suicides, extreme bullying. Then you see the build toward hopelessness, despair, isolation, self-loathing, oftentimes rejection from peers. That turns into a really identifiable crisis point where they’re acting differently. Sometimes they have previous suicide attempts.

Peterson: Post-Columbine there’s been this real focus on hardening schools — metal detectors, armed officers, teaching our kids to run and hide. The shift I’m starting to see, at least here in Minnesota, is that people are realizing hardening doesn’t work. Over 90 percent of the time, school shooters target their own school. These are insiders, not outsiders. We just had a bill in Minnesota that recognized public safety as training people in suicide prevention and funding counselors. I hope we keep moving in that direction.

POLITICO: Do you support red flag laws?

Peterson: Our research certainly supports them, because so many perpetrators are actively showing warning signs. They are talking about doing this and telling people they’re suicidal. But what Buffalo showed us is that just because you have a red flag law on the books doesn’t mean people are trained in how it works and how they should be implementing it.

POLITICO: What has to change to make the laws more effective?

Densley: There are two pieces. One is training and awareness. People need to know that the law exists, how it works and who has a duty to report an individual. The second piece is the practical component of law enforcement. What is the mechanism to safely remove those firearms? Especially if you have a small law enforcement presence, maybe one or two officers, and you’re asking them to go into somebody’s rural home and take care of their entire arsenal of weapons.

POLITICO: I was struck by a detail in your book about one of the perpetrators you investigated. Minutes before he opened fire, you report that he called a behavior health facility. Is there always some form of reaching out or communication of intent before it happens?

Peterson: You don’t see it as often with older shooters who often go into their workplaces. But for young shooters, it’s almost every case. We have to view this “leakage” as a cry for help. If you’re saying, “I want to shoot the school tomorrow,” you are also saying, “I don’t care if I live or die.” You’re also saying, “I’m completely hopeless,” and you’re putting it out there for people to see because part of you wants to be stopped.

Why would we need teachers to be armed if we already asked bad people to "self-prohibit" themselves from buying guns?

The suicide angle I think is highly relevant. I was doing some reading earlier and it indicated 40% of shootings are ended by the shooter, either with a bullet or rarely by walking away. If you factor in the idea of suicide by cop that number likely shoots up significantly.

I remember back to the mall shooting in OR a few year ago. There was someone else armed in the mall and when he brought his handgun to bear the shooter committed suicide. I would guess he was trying to take as many people with him before he went.

This is still a people issue and not a gun issue.

aight, so a few things stood out in this article:


1. we are not the only country that has kids with these issues.

2. sounds like a bunch of crap parenting and broken homes.

3. sounds like a perfect reason to fund mental health institutions and on-site counselors. which should've been funded anyway, but Reagan gutted it. Carter signed legislation called Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 to help fund exactly that. Reagan came in, and in 1981, most of that legislation was repealed.

you see Vers, the Dems aren't perfect, but they've been calling for this funding for years. overall increased funding in healthcare that would be used to also fund mental health institutions.

but that's increasing government spending. remember, Vers: republicans call that communism and woke policies. to fund mental health is to inherently increase government spending on healthcare, and we know how republican and republican voters feel about that. they've made it loud and clear....


again, right now we have people on this board talking about arming teachers.....


this right here is where we start getting into the weeds. the country has seen enough cases of law enforcement being absolute cowards when it comes to these sort of situations. law enforcement always want funding, but i can promise you they don't want it to be on the condition that they train for situations like this. they want the funding without being told how to use the funds.


i dunno how to even solve that issue without firing everybody and starting over.



this is a part of the situation that no amount of legislation can fix: American culture. the competition aspect of our economy has disastrously leaked into our overall society. too many aspects of american culture promotes isolation and go it alone attitudes.

i'm trying my hardest to post some logical answers right now, but it has to be restated that with all their flaws, the Dems have pushed for more education, more healthcare spending, and more funding for mental health institutions since before i was alive.

ever since Reagan, the republicans have been against that, doing their best to do the exact opposite. as i said in my previous post, we have too many people who believe and vote for politicians who care more about access to a gun than they do access to healthcare or safety of our children.

and so now i have a question for you Vers, and i asked this in another thread and nobody who votes GOP on this board responded:

what can the government do right now on this issue that isn't gonna be labeled marxist-socialist-woke-communist policies that will be blocked by the republicans and their voters?

The above is fascinating and we need more studies like this in order to help reduce the mass shootings. I don't believe we are going to stop them, but profiling is a great tool in stopping the criminal mind.

Studies of this were effectively banned from Federal Funding up until 2019 -- that's why we're just starting to see them now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment

I did not know that. Thanks for the info.

On the teacher deal, I think in nearly 100% of the cases the teacher would no longer be thinking about a student. They would be thinking about themself and a room full of students and whould have no hesitation at all if all the chips were on the line.

I do, actually, understand what a gun free zone is, but thank you for being typical.

The school had one RSO, who was not on campus. In critical systems when you have one you have none.

BTW, thinking machine guns should be illegal is the same as saying you are for banning certain guns.

so the guy is legally carrying a rifle, gets robbed at gunpoint, goes and gets his other gun in the car, starts blasting at the thief, hits two innocent bystanders, then takes off.

That's not the way you made it sound. Nor does anyone else of your ilk.


And whose fault would that be?


That's my opinion on the subject. As I said it's not a hill I would stand on in terms of trying to negotiate common sense gun reform.

And just because he is in the Army doesn't mean he doesn't have an agenda to sell.

Sure. All guns have the same basic function that troops use to kill the enemy. You discharge the ammunition and the projectile hits the target. You do this until the target is dead or stopped.

I'd like to know which battle the AR-15 has been used in as a primary arm. I know the military uses AR-15s for police work. The Navy yard shooting the first guard killed had one, which was then used in the rampage. BUt I am not aware of the AR-15 being a primary arm in any battle the military engages in.

And just because he is in the Army doesn't mean he doesn't have an agenda to sell.

The standard rifle used by the U.S. Army as American involvement in the Vietnam War grew was the M-14. In 1960, Colt introduced the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. This was later developed into the United States Rifle, Caliber 5.56 mm, M16, the U.S. military's version of the ArmaLite AR-15 rifle. The M16 would eventually replace the M14 rifle in Vietnam as the standard weapon of the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. General dissatisfaction with the M14 and numerous studies led the Army to the development of a light weight weapon capable of firing a burst of small caliber bullets with a controlled dispersion pattern. The M14 Rifle was designed primarily for semi-automatic fire. The magazine fed, gas operated M14 had an effective range of 500 yards, and used a standard NATO 7.62mm cartridge in a 20-round magazine.

In the early 1960's, U.S. Special Forces in Vietnam used the AR15 and it was given glowing reports. Although opposed by the Ordnance Corp, the Armalite AR-15 was adopted by the Secretary of Defense as the 5.56mm M16 rifle. In November 1965, the 1st Cavalry Division turned back North Vietnamese regulars in a savage battle in the Ia Drang Valley. LTC Harold G. Moore lauded the new M16 rifle his troops had used. "Brave soldiers and the M16 brought this victory," he declared.

https://www.paperlessarchives.com/vw_m16.html

Today, the M16 rifle and M4 carbine are ubiquitous among American troops. These lightweight rifles, which both fire the 5.56mm NATO round, have been around for decades and are mainstays. The civilian version, the AR-15, is owned by at least five million Americans. But the troops hauling it around almost got a similar rifle in the 1950s that fired the 7.62mm NATO round.

Armalite, though, wasn’t ready to give up on getting that juicy U.S. military contract, so they began work on scaling down the AR-10 for the 5.56mm cartridge. The Army tried the resulting rifle, the AR-15, out in 1958 and liked what the saw, pointing to a need for a lightweight infantry rifle. It was the Air Force, though, that was the first service to buy the rifle, calling it the M16, which serves American troops today.

https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-tactical/original-m16-fired-762mm-rounds/

Damn dude I am.

I don't believe restricting a free people's means of self defense is going to be effective. I have, in the past, mention my partner works in a school, and was the intended second victim of a school shooter.

I have skin in the game, I have had ample time to consider this. More restrictions on gun owners won't change this. Some have estimated there are 150 million gun owners in this country, how many of them have shot someone?

A few bad guys get headlines and then people have to wring their hands and yell "CHANGE!". Go at the people, not the object.

Some have estimated there are 150 million gun owners in this country, how many of them have shot someone?