Why Mass Shootings Are on the Rise...according to MSNBC

While some see connection to guns, others blame erosion of community.
Why are mass shootings on the rise?
While some see connection to guns, others blame erosion of community
The Associated Press
Updated: 10:02 p.m. ET April 21, 2007
Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox blames guns, at least in part. He notes that seven of the eight deadliest mass public shootings have occurred in the past 25 years.

Yet Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota State Department of Corrections, said the availability of guns was not a factor in his exhaustive statistical study of mass murder during the 20th century.


Criminologist Fox speculates that the increasing popularity of workplace killings, and public shootings generally, may be partly due to decreasing economic security and increasing inequality. America increasingly rewards its winners with a disproportionate share of wealth and adoration, while treating its losers to a heaping helping of public shame.


But there has also been an erosion of community in America over the past half-century, and many scholars believe it has contributed to the rise in mass shootings.


Remarkably, violence in today’s media seems to have little to do with mass public shootings. Only a handful of them have ever cited violent video games or movies as inspiration for their crimes. Often they are so isolated and socially awkward that they are indifferent to popular culture.

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Well that was a convenient conclusion for a mass media company to come to, wasn't it? Steve Sailer writes:

The earliest well-known example of an art work having a disastrous impact is the "Werther Effect" of copycat suicide, named after the great Goethe's 1774 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, which is said to have set off a wave of suicides across Europe. Oliver Stone's 1994 film "Natural Born Killers," with Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as trashy young lovers who set off on a killing spree, was the favorite film of a number of young idiots who committed pointless murders after watching it repeatedly.


I would think it was common sense that art did indeed effect how people behave- the overwelming majority of people who watch violent films will of course not commit similar acts of violence, but I cannot help but think that being constantly inundated by violent media effects behavior, and provides a 'template' or outlet for psycotic behavior. In other words had Cho grown up in a world of Werther type films, he might have just dressed up as the character placed a flower in his hand and taken poision. Of course the 'solution' is another one that's convenient for big companies- get kids hooked on prescription behavior medicine.