Persons who committed public mass shootings in the U.S. over the last half century were commonly troubled by personal trauma before their shooting incidents, 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.
Those are prominent traits of persons who have engaged in public mass shootings – that is, a shooting that kills four or more people – collected in a comprehensive new database of identified U.S. mass shootings from 1966 to 2019. The data on 172 mass public shooters cover more than 150 psychosocial history variables, such as those individuals’ mental health history, past trauma, interest in past shootings, and situational triggers.
With support from the National Institute of Justice, The Violence Project database has drawn data exclusively from open sources such as social media sites and online newspapers. The aim is to build a broader understanding on the part of the public, the justice system, and the research community of who mass shooters are and what motivates their decision to discharge firearms at multiple people.
As part of the project, researchers also separately interviewed persons in prison who had engaged in mass shootings, in part to look for shared traits. READ MORE
Source: National Institute of Justice
