Hardly a week goes by before we experience another mass shooting in the U.S.
Today, a gunman killed six people and critically wounded three at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee during Sunday services––before police shot him dead.
It’s difficult to believe that the United States is a less violent country than it was two decades ago. Yet, the homicide rate peaked in the early 1990s at about 10 per 100,000 people. It is now half that, a level not seen since the early 1960s.
But there has been no corresponding decline in mass murder, which doesn’t track with other types of violent crime.
According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders. A mass murder typically occurs in a single location in which an individual kills a number of victims, though mass murder may be committed by an organization, or as the intentional and indiscriminate murder of a large number of people by government agents.
Mass murderers are not the same as spree killers, who kill at two or more locations with almost no time break between murders. Spree killers are not defined by the number of victims like serial killers, who may kill large numbers of people, but, unlike mass murderers and spree killers, they kill over long periods of time.
Contrary to popular stereotype, mass murderers don’t just suddenly snap and go berserk, killing indiscriminately, according to Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox. Typically, the path to mass murder involves years of disappointment and failure, which creates a profound sense of hopelessness and deep-seated resentment. Mass murderers are often socially or psychologically isolated, and lack emotional support and encouragement from friends and family. Usually, they have no one around to help provide a reality check and to counter their twisted sense of victimization. They tend to externalize blame and seek to punish those whom they hold responsible for their miserable life.
Their rage is directed at specific targets such as family members or co-workers, though sometimes it is directed at an entire class of people like feminists, minorities, or immigrants. Occasionally, the entire society is deemed responsible. In those cases, a mass murderer may randomly target strangers in a public place.
The United States experienced 645 mass-murder events — killings with at least four victims — from 1976 to 2010, according to Fox. The total body count: 2,949. The number of mass murders in the U.S. has averaged about two-dozen cases a year since the mid-1970s.
Given the number of recent incidents and the shortened time period between them, one wonders if the “average” is on the upswing.