[Completed 15 December 2016]
Men of the Hour:
Elliot, Dylan, Seung-Hui, James, and You
All but one of the five people listed above executed their own separate mass shootings in public places, taking the lives of a combined 66 people, wounding a total of 118, and spanning fifteen years. They are joined in infamy by around eighty other persons who have committed similarly confounding attacks in the United States in the last thirty years. These attacks, now known as a “mass shootings” have become more and more frequent (Follman, Aronsen and Pan). And after each latest attack occurs, and its details are displayed on television screens and newspaper covers everywhere, the nation spends agonizing hours pondering, arguing, and screaming that same one-word question in frustration: Why? It is my desire to be one voice offering an answer to this question. And it is my wish to go about answering it in a way which differs from the norm. Typical responses to an active shooter incident will often claim that a certain institution or policy is at fault. There will be calls for stricter gun control laws, or less strict gun control laws; more funding for mental health care, or better security and response teams for public places. All four of these responses are understandable and reasonable. But the sheer volume of works dedicated to such explanations is so gigantic that I feel I must contribute a different perspective to the discussion. This perspective is of a more personal shade. It's not something many of us initially want to think about; it is more comfortable to discuss mass shooters from afar than it is to examine them as if they are real men, just like us, who walk the same earth and breathe the same air as us. But in my research I have found that these young men have desires, wishes, dreams, flaws, strengths, high school crushes, friends, parents, and favorite songs, just as you and I do. It is a harmful mistake to pass off all shooters as simply hopeless, depraved, insane, or wackos.
But first we must lay out the boundaries of the topic. In their 2013 report on public mass shootings, the Congressional Research Service presented this definition: Public mass shootings are “incidents occurring in relatively public places, involving four or more deaths—not including the shooter(s)—and gunmen who select victims somewhat indiscriminately. The violence in these cases is not a means to an end such as robbery or terrorism”(Bjelopera, et al. 7). Of course, if there were truly no end goal to be accomplished by carrying out a mass shooting, this paper would not exist. Rather,the goals and motives behind these murders are present, but they are much more difficult to comprehend than most criminals’ motives. This difficulty of comprehension is what I intend to address with this paper. It is easy to hate someone whom you do not understand, and all too easy for that hate to cause you to make unproductive or harmful decisions. Thus, I seek to answer the question of why these men commit mass murders by showing you the similarities between them and you; this will allow you to understand the motives for mass shootings on a closer, psychological, more personal scale.
Though motivations for public mass shootings vary, examining a scope of cases and expert opinion gives us an idea of what is often going on in these men’s lives and thoughts. Mass shooters tend to kill because of their desire to rectify their lack of recognition and power, and because they feel that society has not treated them fairly.
We begin with the concept of recognition. Think back to when you were a kid, maybe six or eight years old. Every time you learned how to do something new, it presented an opportunity to get acknowledgement and praise from your parents or siblings or friends. “Mommy, look at me,” you squealed as you balanced atop the couch armrest, or set up a house of blocks, or rode a bike for the first time. Validation and attention from others makes you feel good. This is well proven in scientific literature; experiments have demonstrated that praising children “enhance[s] intrinsic motivation,” and so on and so forth(Henderlong and Lepper 18). However you want to spin it, humans like validation. It is this same concept which drives many men to wish to commit mass murder. They want to be recognized, remembered, and studied. For example, perhaps the most infamous mass shooting was carried out by two boys at Columbine High School in 1999. In home videos they recorded before their attack, Eric tells the camera that he and Dylan are “going to kick-start a revolution,” and Dylan predicts that “directors will be fighting over this story” (Harris and Klebold). This prediction to some extent came true when news media and documentarians went wild with the mystery of Columbine. And other troubled young men notice this. They see the past mass shooters and their effects, and they identify with or even idolize them. Seung-Hui Cho, a Virginia Tech college student who eventually murdered 32 of his peers, sent a video to NBC which mentioned and praised “martyrs like Eric and Dylan,” and claimed that the impending Virginia Tech massacre would “inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people”(Cho).
A mass shooting can act as a great equalizer in the minds of mass shooters, filling them with the recognition and self-worth that they lack. Oakland University psychologists Noser and Ziegler-Hill wrote that “individuals with tenuous feelings of self-worth may want to be famous in the hope that fame will provide them with a source of external validation” (3). Indeed, there is ample reason to believe that Seung-Hui Cho, for example, felt low self-esteem. The New York Times reported that since birth, Cho had tended to be the silent type. This was for understandable reasons; later in high school, classmates “mocked his poor English and deep-throated voice” when he was required to speak for assignments. His parents worried constantly about him and hoped he would come out of his cocoon in college; but he only retreated farther into it, having few to no observable friends (Kleinfield).
Cho felt estranged. He felt like nobody liked him. This feeling was with him all his life, and eventually turned into the idea that everyone was out to get him. We will soon focus more in depth on how this affects these young men’s decisions, but before we arrive there we must detail another thing they feel they lack and need to regain: power.
Surely throughout the annals of history and fiction there has been no great villain who did not desire to have more power than his fellow man. But surely throughout history there has also been no human who did not possess this appetite. The desire for power can give motive for everything from rape to theft to sports competitions. Mass shooters possess this instinct, just as you and I do.
This is perhaps an obvious observation. What is not obvious is that the desire for power is not inherently evil, nor is it uncommon. Wanting to have control over your own life, rather than being controlled by another person or some other outside force, is a common desire. If you will recall your teenage days, you will surely recognize and identify with such a sentiment. But surely, you protest, this is an unfair comparison; there has to be only a tiny percentage of people who actually want to kill, right? Before you close the case on that one, please consider the research of David Buss, an evolutionary psychologist at The University of Texas at Austin. According to the University’s journal, “Buss led the largest homicidal fantasy study ever conducted, using 5,000 people, 375 who were actual murderers.” His massive study yielded surprising results:
Homicidal adaptations are so ingrained that 91 percent of men and 84 percent of women have had at least one fantasy of committing murder—often intense and astonishingly detailed. These fantasies were similar to those reported by actual murderers. (“Human Nature”)
What does this tell us about mass shooters? They possess very similar desires to the rest of us. They want to be in power, in control, but they feel that they can’t. Their final act of mass shooting can act as an equalizer, filling them with the control and power that they lack.
Take for an example Adam Lanza, who carried out the Sandy Hook shooting. The New Yorker’s Andrew Solomon sat down with Lanza’s father and found that Adam had led a life of stress. As a child he had problems dealing with seemingly insignificant things, like his mother’s high heels being too loud or his textbook covers being too colorful. He would insist that these things be made right; i.e., he would wash his hands excessively, his mother would Xerox his book covers in black and white, etcetera etcetera. Adam wanted to control his environment. Not only that, but he also felt a lack of power over his schoolwork, on several occasions breaking down in tears and “wondering why he [was] such ‘a loser’” (Solomon).
Adam felt powerless and closed in, and his stress and despair increased until his final attempt to show power by mass murder. But hold on. What happened in between? What’s the missing element? If we all desire fame, and we all desire power, what is it that drives these men to the point of opening fire in a public place? The answer, in my research, is social strain and a big ego; in other words, the feeling that they are unjustly cast out by society.
When we read or watch news stories about the perpetrators of mass shootings, the phrase “he was a loner” has become expected. However, the complexities and implications of this personality description are seldom plumbed. After all, what we must realize is that billions and billions of ‘loners’ exist and have existed, and only an infinitesimally small percentage of them have chosen to commit acts of mass violence. Katherine Newman, author of Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, said in a 2007 CBS interview that the idea of school shooters simply being loners is “in the research I’ve done, rarely actually the case.” She described them, rather, as “usually failed joiners, people who have continually tried to join social groups and are rebuffed, and their daily experience is one of rejection and friction” (Newman). In the world of sociology and psychology, this friction is referred to as “strain.” And there’s one key psychological element that reacts quite badly to social strain: a big ego. Blum and Jaworski, in their article “From Suicide and Strain to Mass Murder,” explain that “uncontrolled strain and chronic strain are closely related to egoism and anomie, given the lack of positive relationships” (2). When a man who thinks he deserves everything gets rejected by friends, women, or society, he becomes internally enraged and starts to feel like the world is out to get him.
We shall take another example. Elliot Rodger, the twenty-two year old son of a wealthy Hollywood filmmaker, planned and executed a shooting spree around the campus of his college in Isla Vista, CA. Unlike most mass shooters, Elliot actually wrote a one-hundred and forty page autobiography. Entitled My Twisted World, it details the increasing hatred that he garnered for women because they were not attracted to him, and the envy and hatred he had for other men because they won women’s attention. In the final pages, he reaches this conclusion:
I am not part of the human race. Humanity has rejected me. The females of the human species have never wanted to mate with me, so how could I possibly consider myself part of humanity? Humanity has never accepted me among them, and now I know why. I am more than human. I am superior to them all.” (Rodger 135)
Mass shooters tend to have a very high view of themselves, and believe that they are not being treated how they ought to be treated. This causes them to become more and more disillusioned with society. This idea is confirmed in the work of psychiatric professor Paul E. Mullen. He conducted his seminal study “The Autogenic (Self-Generated) Massacre” by personally interviewing five men who committed mass shootings in Australia but were apprehended by police before they could kill themselves. He said this in review of his results:
The massacre is for these men an overcoming of social exclusion by forcing themselves and their actions onto the attention, and into the fears, of the whole society. Like so many suicides in young people, they are eased towards their self-destruction by fantasies of how others will react and by the effects they believe their deaths will produce, effects they do not expect to live to enjoy. (Mullen 11)
This is why the desire for fame and the desire for power are exacerbated; these men feel unpopular and rejected, powerless and oppressed. Their acts of violence are a final solution which give them the power they desire and the recognition they hunger for.
Understanding the thoughts and emotions of men like Adam Lanza and Seung-Hui Cho should be the first step in the pursuit of preventing more atrocities. These men simply desire to be understood. When no one does, they retreat farther into themselves. This only causes others to be less likely to accept and engage with them, which in turn exacerbates the strain. It is not enough to simply dismiss these individuals as “psychos,” or “off the deep end.” In our lives we will meet and observe countless people who might seem a little “off the deep end.” If we truly desire to reach these men, we must forge relationships. Of course, those who theorize that mass shootings are a problem of mental health may see no use in befriending men with broken minds. But a friendship could actually be what a mentally ill person desperately needs. The Mental Health Foundation reports that “friendship can play a key role in helping someone live with or recover from a mental health problem and overcome the isolation that often comes with it”. A mental illness should not be the barrier between social isolation and recovery. I hold that with very few exceptions, reaching out to someone who seems troubled and distant is an overwhelmingly positive action.
The problem of how to respond to mass shootings and what we can do to prevent them is maddeningly complex, and this paper has merely scratched the surface. There are many areas which I have barely mentioned, including the prevalence of a broken parental relationship in mass shooters, or the possible effect of prescription medication on their mental conditions. However, I truly hope that this paper has given you a new perspective on mass shooters. I hope you have seen them from a different perspective, or at a closer magnification, then what you have previously seen or heard before. It is my sincere belief that such closer understanding of troubled men can save lives.
Works Cited
Bjelopera, Jerome, and Erin Bagalman, Sarah Caldwell, Kristea Finklea, Gail McCallion. “Public Mass Shootings in the United States: Selected Implications for Federal Public Health and Safety Policy”. Congressional Research Service Report for Congress. March 2013. <https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43004.pdf>
Cho, Seung-Hoi. “Killer’s Manifesto: You Forced Me Into A Corner”. CNN. April 2007. <http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/18/vtech.shooting/index.html?_s=PM:US>
Dinur, Blum. Jaworski, Christian Gonzalez. “From Suicide and Strain to Mass Murder.” Social Science and Public Policy. June 2016.
Follman, Mark, Gavin Aronsen, and Deanna Pan. “A Guide To Mass Shootings In America.” Mother Jones. 24 Sep. 2016. <http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map?page=2>
Harris, Eric; Klebold, Dylan. Reporting by Gibbs, Nancy; Roche, Timothy. “The Columbine Tapes”. TIME. December 1999. <http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,992873-2,00.html>
Harris, Eric. “Personal Journal”. April 1999. N.p. Available at: <http://www.acolumbinesite.com/eric/writing/journal/journal.html>
Henderlong, Jennifer, and Mark R. Lepper. "The Effects Of Praise On Children's Intrinsic Motivation: A Review And Synthesis." Psychological Bulletin 128.5 (2002): 774. Academic Search Complete.
“Human nature, mating motives may lead to murder, book theorizes.” UT News. May 23, 2005. <http://news.utexas.edu/2005/05/23/psychology>
Kleinfield, N.R. “Before Deadly Rage, a Life Consumed By a Troubling Silence.” New York Times. 22 April 2007. <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/us/22vatech.html>
Mental Health Foundation. “Friendship and Mental Health.” N.d. N.p. https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/f/friendship-and-mental-health
Mullen, Paul E. "The Autogenic (Self-Generated) Massacre." Behavioral Sciences & The Law 22.3 (2004): 311-323. Academic Search Complete.
Newman, Katherine. Interview. CBS News. April 2007.
Noser, Amy, and Virgil Zeigler-Hill. "Self-Esteem Instability And The Desire For Fame." Self & Identity 13.6 (2014): 701-713. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection.
Rodger, Elliot. “My Twisted World (The Story of Elliot Rodger)”. New York Times. May 2014. Document Cloud. <https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/1173619/rodger-manifesto.pdf>
Solomon, Andrew. “The Reckoning: The Father of The Sandy Hook Killer Searches for Answers.” The New Yorker. 17 March 2014. <http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/17/the-reckoning>
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