Half of all mass shootings are associated with no red flags—no diagnosed mental illness, no substance use, no history of criminality, nothing. They’re generally committed by middle-aged men who are responding to a severe and acute stressor, so they're not planned, which makes them very difficult to prevent.

So they are not necessarily in a good emotional state, but they do not have a mental illness.

[–] TheRtRevKaiser 2 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Thanks, I definitely skimmed the article, so missing that is on me.

It's interesting that the profile they mention doesn't really fit what I have in my mind for mass shooters, which would be younger men, not middle-aged. I guess the ones that really stick out to me, like the Columbine, Christchurch, and Uvalde shooters all fit this stereotype that I have, but apparently that doesn't map to reality.

[–] Vodulas 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

the Columbine, Christchurch, and Uvalde shooters all fit this stereotype that I have, but apparently that doesn’t map to reality.

I think people don't realize how many mass shootings happen in the US. Mostly because they don't typically make the news outside the place they occur.

CW: List of mass shootings in the US for 2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2024

TL;DR: There have been 372 this year alone. That is 372 in 218 days, so more than one a day on average

[–] TheRtRevKaiser 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I addressed that briefly in my first comment. This definition of "mass shooting" is much, much broader and very different from what most people are thinking of when people talk about mass shootings. Like, I'm fully aware of how serious the gun violence problem in the US is, but I'm not thinking of a domestic violence situation where multiple people got injured, or a gang related shooting at a club where some bystanders are killed when I hear the term "mass shooting". Don't get me wrong, those situations are tragic, and the availability of guns in the US makes them so much worse, but I understand the psychology of them pretty well, I think. It's not a mystery to me why they are happening. But the kind of situation where a person goes to a place and just starts indiscriminately shooting people is what I don't understand, and it's what I tend to think of when people talk about "mass shootings". Maybe this is just me being wrong, or maybe it's a problem of imprecise terminology.

[–] Vodulas 4 points 3 months ago

Oh totally. The definition is strictly numbers based. I don't think that is useful when you are trying to dig deep into the cause.

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