No Easy Answer to Mass Killing Wave

The popular theory is that the nearly sixty persons gunned down in the past month are casualties of hard economic times. At first glance, this seems as good an explanation as any. The mass killers fit the standard prototype of a walking ticking time bomb that can be set off by getting dumped from their job. Then, so it goes, they are so depressed, paranoid, delusional and enraged that they blast away at wife, kids or at a random slew of innocents. Job counselors and psychologists say an antidote to the killings is for friends, family members and employers to be supportive and attentive to someone who's lost or on the verge of losing their job.

The shootings always ignite a loud call for tougher gun restrictions by gun control advocates. But they're in the minority, a dwindled minority. A recent Gallup Poll found that Americans by a big margin oppose tighter gun control restrictions. It's the lowest percentage for restrictions in fifty years.
The spate of mass killings is heart wrenching and deeply worrisome and is a grave warning that more unhinged individuals could be set off by an economic tumble. But hard times aren't the only reason that individuals wipe out families and strangers. Mass killings happen even in the best of economic times. There are cultural and social reasons for the mayhem that are just as compelling and disturbing as a lousy economy.

In the years since Charles Whitman mowed down students from a campus tower at the University of Texas in 1966, a staggering 100 Americans have gone on mass killing sprees. This doesn't count the much publicized latest rampages. In many cases, the rage that made many of them commit mass murder had nothing to do with a job loss. The causes were combustible mixes of social isolation, cultural disconnection, racial resentment, and media saturation. The mass killers in Wisconsin in 2005, at Virginia Tech in 2007 and in Binghamton, were immigrants. They left notes, tapes, or statements in which they told of feeling ridiculed, belittled, persecuted, or simply frustrated by their inability to adapt. They blamed others for that.

Two months before Jiverly Wong's Binghamton murder binge, Antonio Lupoe killed his wife, five children and himself in Wilmington, California. The explanation was that Lupoe, an African-American, was driven over the edge when he and he and his wife were fired from their jobs as lab techs at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Los Angeles. But there were allegations that Lupoe was enraged over a personally insulting remark by a supervisor and charges of racial harassment by management. That could just as easily have been the thing that drove him to his insane act.

Cultural and social isolation are also powerful and deadly motivating factors to kill even when the shooters are white men. The shooters harbor deep resentment at being pushed to the outer margins, and have no social or clinical supports to help them fight through their rage and sense of personal inadequacy.

Then there's the media. The mass killings are spectacular, gory, and sensational and that makes them prime candidates for non stop media saturation coverage. The intense media focus on every detail known about the victims, and especially the killer, stokes the public's fascination with the gore. This stirs even greater media frenzy. This puts a perverse stamp of legitimacy on the killings as macabre drama. That can further unhinge individuals already on the edge.

Suicide prevention and school violence researcher Loren Coleman examined the media saturation coverage of the school shootings in the late 1990s topped by Columbine. He found a direct cause and effect relation between them.
In his book How The Media and Popular Culture Trigger The Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines,

Coleman found that the copycat killings followed a regular temporal pattern that repeated themselves after a primary media event in a day, a week, two weeks, a month, or a year. He further found that the copycat killings imitate the previous violent attacks, oftentimes down to specific details that mirror the previous specifics of the shooter, the victims, and the methods. He dubbed the mass killings "celebrity" events and noted they have a far-reaching impact and modeling effect. In other words, the killers knew they'd get their proverbial fifteen minutes of fame, and killed with impunity.
Days after the Binghamton killings, a gunman shot up the Korean Christian retreat center in Temecula in Orange County, California. Investigators gave no reason for the shooting. However, the proximity in time to the Binghamton shooting made it possible that Binghamton could have been a trigger.
The motive for a mass killing can be economic hardship. Or it can be cultural or perceived racial victimization, social isolation, or a copycat act. In any case, the murders cause colossal pain, suffering and anguish for families, stir fear in society, and pose a severe challenge to policy makers. There are no easy answers to the violence. Yet finding answers is a matter of life and death.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com