Analysis of the database shows that persons who committed public mass shootings in the U.S. over the last half century were commonly troubled by personal trauma before the shooting, nearly always in a state of crisis at the time and, in most cases, engaged in leaking their plans before opening fire. Most were insiders of a targeted institution, such as an employee or student. Except for young school shooters who stole the guns from family members, most used legally obtained handguns in those shootings.
The study includes a discussion of demographics, motivations, warning signs and other key findings. The article is available at “Public Mass Shootings: Database Amasses Details of a Half Century of U.S. Mass Shootings with Firearms, Generating Psychosocial Histories.” The research described in this article is based on the grantee report, A Multi-Level, Multi-Method Investigation of the Psychosocial Life Histories of Mass Shooters, September 2021, by Co-Principal Investigators Jillian Peterson and James Densley.



Source:
You must be logged in to post a comment.