3 Elements Underemphasized In Mass Shootings

Again. Again we have been forced to endure the unthinkable, the senseless massacre of small children in a school meant to be a place of learning that parents trust will also be a safe place for these loved and precious children. We’ve been forced to see images of grief, we’ve been forced to endure our own empathic grief in the face of our powerlessness; the raging of normal citizens as well as celebrities against the apparent power of the firearms industry that contributes millions to senators who will then support this industry to do what it wants to do: sell firearms to anyone over 18 (including those too young to drink), in the interest of making more and more money. Legislation is stalled because of the greed, not only for money but for power, of those who control the fates of the majority and need the money donated to their campaigns by the NRA. ($3,303,355 alone to Marco Rubio! Almost $14,000,000 to Mitt Romney!) And again, our indignation will probably fade until another act of terror shocks us into realizing that we are, indeed, living in a broken society.

I have yet to see emphasized three things about this all-too-common pattern, however.

One: almost all mass shootings have been committed by adolescent males. In her wonderful piece including a full list of school shootings since Columbine, Linda Caroll in the Partnered Pen on Medium presents a list, including the ages of the shooters, since Columbine. With very few exceptions, the shooters have been adolescent males.

What does this tell us? The first thing is that these boys are of an age in which developmental accomplishments that need to be mastered are: impulse control and deferred gratification. I have yet to read anything that emphasizes the importance of stages of human development and related them to these shootings, although I imagine that someone somewhere has written or spoken about them. Adolescence is a crucial and important time for acquiring these accomplishments, particularly impulse control. Where impulse control is lacking, the possibility of lethality increases. Add to the lack of underdeveloped impulse control of an adolescent, testosterone levels are expected to peak around the ages of 18 or 19. Articles have been written about the role of testosterone involved in aggression and the development of the muscular system that enables their realization. I will only briefly mention that these adolescent boys have been honing their target practice skills with video games for most of their childhoods, playing with toy guns that look amazingly real, and watching violence on TV unless there has been parental control.

Second: Adolescence is also a time when many begin their exploration with alcohol and drugs, known to disinhibit actions that most would not engage in because of familial and social inhibitions. Pair the disinhibiting effect of alcohol with a lack of impulse control, peaking testosterone levels, throw in a lack of familial nurturance, limit-setting and loving support as well as the availability to easily purchase firearms of all kinds, and all it would take is a spark of anger to ignite a critical mass within an adolescent boy.

Third: Much has been mentioned about mental health in relation to school shootings. Adolescents are not particularly known for their stability and for being paragons of mental health. True, some are shining examples of these qualities, and behind these teenagers, you will probably find parental and societal involvement, nurturance, interest, and loving support. Many of the school shooters, such as Adam Lanza, Dylan Klebold, and Salvador Ramos have been described as isolated, lonely, angry, and uncommunicative. I think the issue of mental health is particularly valid when it comes to shooters who are older, like Stephen Paddock, the 64-year-old man who opened fire on the crowd attending a music festival in Las Vegas in 2017. And perhaps it is a valid concern among adolescents. But my inclination would be to look at environmental and psychological contributions to violence in adolescents before running to the DSM-5.

In one of the internships, I did while I was training to be a psychotherapist, I worked with adolescent boys in a residential treatment program. This internship had me in tears when I got home more often than not. Many of these boys were from parentless homes; a parent with mental illness that sleeps on the beach, or another parent in jail for drugs. Many were on a first-name basis with police officers. My challenge was to somehow scan a kid, and find a way to reach him where he could feel seen and met. More often than not, my attempts met with failure. And when I could find a way “in,” I would find that there was a being who really didn’t care. Didn’t care about others, the world, or himself. In talking to these boys, many of them expressed a belief that they would not live long enough to grow up.

Addressing this massive problem of school shootings, which necessitates children being trained to duck and cover and prepare for attack (the long-term effects of living with fear is for another time and another article), is an issue that needs several different approaches. Not only gun control — no one needs to have an assault weapon for self-protection — but taking into consideration the developmental stage of most of the perpetrators, family and social support, drugs, and alcohol (an article in The Guardian asks “Eighteen-year-old Americans can’t drink. Why can they buy assault rifles?”). For gun control, in addition to no assault weapons, the outlawing of the sale of firearms to anyone under 21 (although I would prefer 25), and then only handguns for self-protection or rifles for hunting should satisfy the second amendment fanatics.

Never an AR-15. Never an AK-47. Never an M16, or SCAR, or AKM, or Heckler & Koch G36!

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