Ira Silver



CHAPTER 8

Living in Infamy: Mass Shootings as Enduring Expressions of Masculinity

Think of individuals who’ve committed atrocities so large that they will never be forgotten. One of these names probably comes to mind: Adolf Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Jeffrey Dahmer. Adam Lanza also belongs on this list. On December 14, 2012 the 20-year old shot and killed his mother at home and then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut where he murdered 20 children and six staff members before turning the gun on himself.

As a result of committing this heinous act, Lanza got instant notoriety. The same has happened to the perpetrators of other rampages in recent years – a burgeoning list that includes the killing of 49 people in Orlando in 2016, 58 people in Las Vegas in 2017, and 17 people in Parkland, Florida in 2018. Often for many days following these massacres, there’s media coverage of just about every conceivable story angle – including the minute-by-minute unfolding of horror, the body count, and the shooter’s personal life. Because of this coverage, the shooters – who typically end their rampage by turning the gun on themselves – live on in infamy.

Figure 1: Mourners at a vigil for victims of the 2012 mass shooting in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

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Questions

1. What do you believe are the reasons a person would initiate a mass shooting?

2. Why do you think mass shootings receive so much media attention?

3. Why is committing atrocities a pathway toward forever being remembered?

The FBI defines a mass shooting as the murder of four or more people in succession with a firearm. A mass shooting occurs in the United States about every two weeks. Whereas our nation has five percent of the world’s population, 31 percent of all such shootings happen here. This chapter focuses on public mass shootings – the ones often in the news because they occur in places where anyone may happen to be at a given moment. The most common location is schools. Others include malls, workplaces, restaurants, airports, theaters, and churches. [i]

Because of how often public mass shootings occur, references to particular events can quickly seem old. Although it’s hard to keep up to date with the data, a glimpse at the period from 1982-2016 offers a useful snapshot of this social problem. During this period, there were 85 public mass shootings in the United States, with well over half (48) occurring since 2006. In all but three of the 85 incidents, the perpetrators were males. Throughout this chapter, I will interchangeably use the terms mass shooting, rampage, and massacre to refer specifically to these public tragedies. [ii]

Figure 2: On 16 occasions during his presidency, Barack Obama consoled families and friends of mass shooting victims. Here, he is pictured singing “Amazing Grace” during his eulogy for South Carolina State Senator Clementa Pinckney, who was killed during a 2015 church rampage in Charleston.

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Media coverage of mass shootings presents an individual perspective toward the assailants – characterizing them as males who had mental illness, played violent video games, and were easily able to obtain firearms. You may know males who fit this description; millions of boys and men in the United States do. Because very few of them go on rampages, the individual perspective offers a narrow portrait of the males who commit these heinous crimes. Indeed, a study of 37 mass shootings over a 26-year period found that the perpetrators did not fit a single profile. Fewer than five percent of the males who initiate gun violence suffer from mental illness. In most cases, the assailants have also had little exposure to violent media. And while the availability of assault-style firearms obviously magnifies the destruction, we still need to understand what propels only certain boys and men to use these weapons to inflict mass destruction. To gain this understanding, we need to look beyond the media coverage. [iii]

Figure 3: A look at some of the deadliest rampages since 1991.

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While there’s value in viewing mass shootings through an individual perspective, believing mental illness is the main cause stands in the way of fully recognizing what motivates the perpetrators. Certainly, gunmen’s actions lead reasonable people to see them as deranged and beyond the pale of humanity. But what if mass shooters aren’t simply madmen driven by the desire to kill as many people as possible? In what sense might their indiscriminate violence reinforce, rather than deviate from, social norms?

To explore these questions, we’ll use the sociological perspective in analyzing the most significant shared characteristic of the males who perpetrate rampages: their gender. This perspective reveals how these heinous acts reflect traditional expectations our society places on males about what it means to be masculine. My aim isn’t to downplay the horror of these tragedies, but to highlight that they reflect messages our society gives boys and men about how to be “real men.” These gunmen’s fantasy to live in infamy is a crucial reason driving them to inflict widespread destruction. Doing so ensures that their final act in this world is so egregious that their power to carry it out will never be forgotten. In reading this chapter, you will recognize that, incredibly, there is something conventional about the males who perpetrate mass shootings.

GETTING REVENGE

“People constantly make fun of my face, my hair, my shirts. I’m going to kill you all. You’ve been giving us shit for years.” Dylan Klebold uttered these chilling words in a video made the night before he and fellow Columbine High School senior Eric Harris massacred 15 people at the school in 1999, including themselves. Popular kids had often bullied the two boys. When Klebold undressed in the locker room for gym class, these kids teased him for having a deformity on his chest. In a book published a few years after the massacre his friend, Brooks Brown, wrote:

At lunchtime, the jocks would kick our chairs, or push us down onto the table from behind. They would knock our food trays onto the floor, trip us, or throw food as we were walking by. When we sat down, they would pelt us with candy from another table. In the hallways, they would push kids into lockers and call them names while their friends stood by and laughed.

A member of the football team acknowledged bullying Harris and Klebold: “But what do you expect with kids who come to school with weird hairdos and horns on their hats? It’s not just the jocks; the whole school’s disgusted with them…If you want to get rid of someone, usually you tease ‘em. So the whole school would call them homos.” Using homophobic slurs was a clear and intentional way of emasculating Harris and Klebold. [iv]

Fifteen years after the Columbine shooting, 22-year old Elliott Rodger killed six people in Isla Vista, near the campus of the University of California-Santa Barbara, and then fatally shot himself. In a video he uploaded to YouTube the day before, Rodger detailed his plans for the attack and why he was doing it.

Well, this is my last video, it all has to come to this. Tomorrow is the day of retribution, the day in which I will have my revenge against humanity, against all of you. For the last eight years of my life, ever since I hit puberty, I've been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires all because girls have never been attracted to me. Girls gave their affection, and sex and love to other men but never to me.

These words attest to Rodger’s identification as an Incel, an online subculture of heterosexual males who see themselves as victims because of their involuntary celibacy. They believe that since they deserve unlimited access to female bodies, violence toward girls and women is legitimate revenge for having been denied their entitlement to sexual pleasure. For this reason, as part of his rampage Rodger targeted members of a sorority. [v]

As with the Columbine and Isla Vista rampages, many other massacres have been in response to bullying or feelings of rejection. Killing innocent people is, of course, never justified. Still, you may be able to imagine the level of pain and isolation these males felt in the days and weeks before they acted out in rage. Because most people who feel marginalized don’t go on rampages, it makes sense to believe those who do are psychologically troubled. Even though some indeed are, there’s more to their motivations than meets the eye.

Note that while girls and women also experience exclusion and/or suffer from mental illness, they rarely respond to their pain through violence (see Table 1). Instead, they value talking about their emotions as a way to understand them and feel better. On the other hand, many boys learn to see discussions of feelings as a sign of weakness and view violence, alternatively, as how “real men” address pain. The people who’ve committed history’s worst atrocities – some of whom are mentioned at the beginning of this chapter – have all been men. “Gunman” is a common word; “gunwoman” isn’t. [vi]

Table 1: Boys and men commit most violent crimes in the United States.

|Type of violent crime |Percent committed by males |

|Rape |99% |

|Mass shootings |98% |

|Murder |90% |

|Stalking |87% |

|Domestic violence |86% |

|Armed robbery |86% |

|Aggravated assault |77% |

(Source: Media Education Foundation 2013) [vii]

To explain why the perpetrators of most violent crimes are males, let’s momentarily turn the focus away from these crimes and consider what it means to be “masculine” and “feminine” in American society. These words don’t simply refer to a person’s biology, but encompasses expectations about how people are supposed to behave in order to fit in with others of their gender.

• “Feminine” – submissiveness, dependence, passivity, sensitivity and nurturance.

• “Masculine” – strength, independence, assertiveness, dominance, and aggressiveness.

What are some of the many places in American society where people reinforce these ideas about gender?

Boys and men who believe being a “real man” means they must fully embrace masculine social expectations live within The Man Box (see Figure 5). This idea points both to the rigid behaviors they demand of themselves and to the social status these behaviors carry among a particular segment of males. Since exhibiting all of these characteristics requires that males act destructively toward others as well as toward themselves, toxic masculinity is a term that fittingly characterizes their gender identity.

Figure 4: Males consumed with being “real men” must constantly and carefully make sure their behavior conforms to narrow ideas about masculinity.

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Here’s a jarring idea: initiating a rampage is a way for males who feel emasculated to assert that they fit within The Man Box and prove that they are normal men. For boys and men who identify with toxic masculinity, being presumed gay and then bullied is a piercing source of disrespect that deserves revenge. Research indicates that, like the Columbine gunmen Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, many perpetrators of mass shootings had been ridiculed with homophobic comments prior to initiating the massacre. The same is true for some males who experience sexual rejection by females. A study of mass shootings over a 30-year period found 23 cases resembling the Isla Vista rampage where the perpetrator specifically targeted girls and women as retribution. Therefore, it’s crucial to see mass shootings as efforts by certain boys and men to get even with those who have assaulted their masculinity. These massacres highlight the entitlement built into some heterosexual males’ expectations about what it means to “be a man.” This entitlement lies at the root of all gender violence (see Chapter 9). [viii]

It’s revealing that news coverage rarely explores the role of gender in these atrocities. Since males are expected to be aggressive, seemingly there’s no reason to analyze why the perpetrators are typically boys and men. Yet, we’re seeing that these rampages actually have everything to do with gender. The heterosexual males who are the likeliest to feel disrespected for having been bullied as gay or rejected by girls are the most inclined to see violence as a justifiable response. One manifestation of males’ superiority is their power to divert public attention from the gendered roots of violent crime. Because the alarming statistics in Table 1 rarely receive media coverage, most people come to expect and often condone violent behavior in boys and men. [ix]

Figure 5: Media images typically portray violent males who are members of minority groups. These images highlight White males’ power to divert attention from the fact that males of all races commit violent crime.

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There are many places where boys and men get affirmation for toxic masculinity. Think about the hockey player who’s cheered for starting a fight, the movie hero who kills, and the video gamer who hurls homophobic epithets at his competitors as he shoots them. When I was growing up, Sylvester Stallone was perhaps the most visible icon of toxic masculinity. He played Rocky, a champion boxer, and in another popular role was Rambo, a former POW who turned violent as a civilian. Nowadays, a more familiar icon is Grand Theft Auto, which encourages players to virtually commit acts of gender violence. They can fondle strippers, kill a prostitute after sleeping with her, and rape other players (see Figure 7). [x]

Figure 6: There is lots of validation given to male violence in American culture. On the left is a scene from Rambo; on the right is one option for how to play Grand Theft Auto.

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What are other examples of how American culture validates toxic masculinity? These examples reveal that when we focus on the males who perpetrate rampages, it’s easy to see where they got support for their perceptions about what they’re entitled to do to respond to feelings of emasculation and assert themselves as “real men.” Mass shooters do not deviate from societal norms but, to the contrary, rigidly embrace the characteristics our culture values as masculine. In their study of mass shootings, sociologists Rachel Kalish and Michael Kimmel write: “If young men are surrounded by messages telling them that real men are strong, tough, and violent, and that they do not back down to threats, then using lethal violence to prove one’s masculinity is not only expected, it supports those very values.” [xi]

Therefore, these massacres should sound an alarm in all of us – and not just because they cause so much destruction and tragedy. We must also recognize how this violence is symptomatic of an even larger, yet rarely acknowledge social problem: the violent expectations our society places on boys and men and how these expectations affect those around them. Some males embrace toxic masculinity because they desperately want to fit within The Man Box. While most of the boys and men who become pained for failing to live within this boxed set of masculine expectations suffer quietly and anonymously, some are prone to wreak havoc in order to make a powerful and enduring statement that they are “real men.”

Figure 7: In U.S., fathers or uncles often take boys to buy firearms. Girls are more likely to be introduced to something serene and tranquil like ballet.

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MAKING THE NEXT SHOOTING MORE THINKABLE

Of all the mass shootings that have occurred in the United States over the past 30 years, the 1999 Columbine massacre stands out because it was the first to go viral. It received significant media coverage and also became inscribed online in a way no prior rampage had. This was partially a matter of timing, as internet use was just starting to grow significantly. The perpetrators, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were also tech-savvy. They created a website where they posted videos of themselves testing their weapons and explained how the massacre would avenge the pain that popular kids at their high school had inflicted on them.

News coverage drew attention to the immortal online presence Harris and Klebold had cultivated for themselves. This reporting fueled constructive public discussion about the boys’ motives, which law enforcement agencies used in trying to thwart future rampages. But because the reporting also attracted other aggrieved boys and men to the website, the Columbine massacre gradually created a blueprint for future rampages. In eight of the 12 mass shootings which took place from 1999-2007, there was evidence of what has come to be known as The Columbine Effect – assailants left evidence that they had been motivated by Harris and Klebold or had closely studied and imitated their tactics. [xii]

Figure 8: In the years since the Columbine shooting, a burgeoning network of online fans has come to see Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as martyrs whose carnage posed a dare for others to outdo.

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There are now innumerable places online where people can share ideas about how to plan and carry out a mass shooting. On YouTube alone, there’s a large network of people who produce and watch rampage videos. We can only hope their enthusiasm for this subject is no more predictive of one of them initiating the next massacre than is playing violent video games – which have been proven not to trigger mass shootings. Maybe being part of this network is merely a hobby – one that’s really no different than connecting with others online about how best to display and preserve mementoes in a scrapbook. Of course, that’s wishful thinking. As of 2015, Harris and Klebold’s blueprint had directly played a role in 21 subsequent mass shootings that caused 89 deaths, as well as another 53 plots that law enforcement thwarted. In 13 of these cases, the people planning the attacks had an explicit goal to exceed the Columbine body count. [xiii]

Elliott Rodger, the perpetrator of the 2014 rampage in Isla Vista, California, was part of this network. He left detailed descriptions of his motives and tactics in a video he posted on YouTube and in a lengthy written manifesto. When I combed through media coverage of the shooting, I found no indication that Rodger explicitly modeled his tactics on the Columbine massacre. That’s revealing, given that he carried out his attack 15 years afterwards and the two shootings had many details in common. By the time Rodger went on his rampage, the specifics of Harris and Klebold’s massacre had been so widely shared online and replicated in subsequent massacres that these details had become a familiar battlefield script. Rodger didn’t have to reference Columbine directly in order to have been significantly influenced by it.

This is the power of viewing mass shootings through a sociological perspective. Over time, the impetus to initiate a rampage has been increasingly predicated on how an online community embracing widely accepted masculine expectations has validated this destructive behavior as an immortalizing way to prove one’s masculinity. This perspective enables us to recognize why we can’t fully understand these seemingly senseless tragedies just by focusing on assailants’ individual characteristics – their troubled mental health, fascination with violent media, and desire to possess deadly weapons. We must also recognize how, in the years since the Columbine massacre, so many males who may not share these characteristics have become connected to one another. [xiv]

This online network validates a rampage script that any potential shooter may borrow. Data indicate that mass shootings often occur in clusters. There’s a copycat effect, which is most pronounced during roughly the 13 days following a massacre. In the weeks after Columbine, the National School Safety Center tracked at least 3000 similar threats. It’s not surprising that these events are contagious, given that they often end in suicide. Research substantiates that after a heavily publicized suicide, there’s a spike in other people taking their own lives. [xv]

Figure 9: An aerial view of the massive media presence following the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School. News coverage of rampages contributes to future shooters’ sense that carrying out a rampage will immortalize them.

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For someone who’s an active participant in the online mass shooter network, media coverage of a massacre may be the critical factor tipping them from thinking about following suit to actually plotting an attack. While the blueprint for doing so has existed online for many years, news reporting provides an impetus to formulate actual plans. That’s because the reporting typically highlights the latest shooter’s expertise in carrying out a rampage. Research indicates that when a person aspires to learn a skill, they mimic others who’ve succeeded in accomplishing the goal they want to achieve. This research highlights that there’s something oddly “normal” about mass shooters, in that they take cues about how to inflict destruction from the experts in their community. In this sense, their motives are no different than were mine several years ago when I became interested in learning how to play the guitar. [xvi]

AN EPIDEMIC OF CARNAGE

Sometime before the end of the school year in 2014, John LaDue was planning a massacre at his Waseka, Minnesota high school. Fortunately, a woman tipped law enforcement about his suspicious behavior after she saw him trespassing through her backyard wearing a backpack. During the ensuing three-hour interrogation, LaDue told police officers that he was making bombs at a local storage facility and had purchased several firearms. Under his bed, he kept a notebook where he detailed his plans. He would first shoot his parents and sister. Then, he’d detonate a pressure cooker between periods at school. As people were fleeing, he would throw pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails. Finally, he’d kill himself.

In reporting about LaDue, journalist Malcolm Gladwell noted that the 17-year old defied the conventional wisdom about mass shooters. He wasn’t mentally ill, didn’t play video games or listen to violent music, and hadn’t been bullied. The fact that LaDue liked his family made his intention to murder them the most puzzling detail of all. He wrote in his notebook that he simply had to do it to prove his mettle as the next villain to live in infamy. This would demonstrate to others that he was following the protocol many gunmen had adopted in the years since Columbine. [xvii]

LaDue’s story is so chilling because it reveals that a male no longer has to feel disrespected or vindictive to plan a rampage. All he needs is a well-defined, socially validated script he’s seen others put into action. We’d be overlooking this crucial point if we were to focus solely on the details of LaDue’s plot, which closely resembled the many other mass shootings that have occurred over the past several decades. The truth is that he differed in a crucial way from the other gunmen we’ve been focusing on in this chapter. Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and Elliott Rodger were all sufficiently aggrieved that their pain motivated them to exact revenge on the people who’d bullied or rejected them. LaDue had no such motive. And yet, he was planning a significantly more destructive rampage than these others had succeeded in carrying out.

Gladwell explains this contradiction by drawing a parallel between mass shootings and riots. To illustrate his argument, let’s consider the significance of an amateur video that became national news in 1991 a couple of months before I graduated from college. Shortly after midnight on March 3rd, a plumbing parts salesman awoke to police sirens outside his Los Angeles apartment and started recording the scene. His eight-minute clip showed four White police officers relentlessly beating a Black man named Rodney King after they’d stopped him for a traffic violation. A year later after an all-White jury exonerated the officers on all criminal charges, the most destructive riot in the U.S. since the Civil War broke out on the streets of South-Central LA. Fifty-eight people died and another 2,383 were injured. There was damage to 1,100 buildings, totaling $785 million. [xviii]

Figure 10: The officers claimed they were justified in beating Rodney King because he was resisting arrest. Their acquittal led to three days of arson, vandalism, and looting.

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If in 1992 you’d been a young adult living in this neighborhood, would you have hurled a brick through a store window? Thousands of individuals took part in the mayhem, most of whom were otherwise law-abiding citizens. It wasn’t that their views suddenly changed and that they now saw violence as acceptable. Rather, they participated in the riot because others’ actions gave them license to join in regardless of how they felt about what they were doing.

We can think of those who were the first to break windows, set fires, and loot property as “low threshold” rioters. These people believed that the acquittal of the four police officers was so unjust that it warranted a violent response. I did not hold this belief. Then, there were those for whom it took this first group to act lawlessly for them to follow suit. I’m pretty sure that if I’d been there, this still would not have been me. What’s significant about this secondary wave of rioters is that they made it more thinkable for an even wider group of bystanders to join the riot. This process continued, as higher and higher threshold people momentarily lost their moral inhibitions and started acting violently. If I’d been there, at this point I too probably would have participated in the mayhem. [xix]

Figure 11: A person didn’t have to believe the rioting in LA was justified in order to take part in it.

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John LaDue, the 17-year old Minnesotan who planned to blow up his high school, wasn’t the sort of person who would have plotted a mass shooting unless many others had created a pathway for him to do so. He was like the fourth or fifth wave of participants in the LA riot. Dozens of prior gunmen – including Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and Elliott Rodger – had paved the way and fueled his motivation to inflict even more destruction than they had. He didn’t have to feel vindictive to want to outdo them; all he needed was for them to give him the license to try. Malcolm Gladwell writes that the impetus for mass shootings changed because of the Columbine massacre. “The problem is not that there is an endless supply of deeply disturbed young men who are willing to contemplate horrific acts. It’s worse. It’s that young men no longer need to be deeply disturbed to contemplate horrific acts.” [xx]

Riots and mass shootings, of course, differ in significant ways. Millions of people believed that the acquittal of the four police officers who beat Rodney King was a social injustice and could understand why the LA riot subsequently erupted. There is no similar justification for initiating a mass shooting. Moreover, whereas the LA riot reflected powerless people trying to right the abuses of those in power (police), mass shooters are powerful people (heterosexual males) who believe they’re entitled to more power. Despite these differences, the comparison between mass shootings and riots is useful. It reveals that people who don’t feel aggrieved may still act violently because others in their network have given them the license to do so.

Had the police not foiled John LaDue’s plot to wreak havoc at his high school, the rampage would have occurred just a few weeks after Elliott Rodger’s in California. Undoubtedly, journalists would have been talking about the copycat effect. But, the fact that LaDue may have been imitating prior gunmen is only the tip of the iceberg. For sure, he was following a script which, by this point, had been circulating online for 15 years. However, just as viruses often mutate as they spread, the same is true of the epidemic of mass shootings. It’s clear from watching Rodger’s YouTube video and reading his manifesto that he felt pained and vindictive. Like Harris and Klebold, he had a low threshold for violence and saw initiating a rampage as a way to inscribe his manly heroism in people’s minds. LaDue, on the other hand, had a much higher threshold. He plotted a rampage not because he felt disrespected, but because the online mass shooter network had given him the idea that he could gain notoriety by following a tradition forged by so many gunmen before him.

BECOMING A FOREVER MAN

When mass shooters carry out their carnage – which often ends in suicide – they ensure that in their final moments of life they will have once and for all proven that they are “real men.” They guarantee, moreover, that their names and heinous acts will live on forever. Achieving infamy is perhaps the surest path toward remembrance.

Infamy seemingly isn’t something one works hard to attain, but is an indicator that a person has failed to obtain conventional success. For you, achievements entail things like doing well in school or receiving positive reviews from your supervisor at work. Yet, while getting an A in your Social Problems class is something to feel good about, it’s not going to get you on TV. But, opening fire in a classroom will. Our media system bestows significantly greater attention on people who are destructive than on those who are productive. Why do you think this is so? [xxi]

Some of the mass murderers mentioned in this chapter may have already familiar to you. Yet, how many recent Nobel Prize winners can you name? If you can’t think of any, that’s a commonality you and I share. This lack of knowledge isn’t a personal shortcoming, but reflects our society’s value system. Try to imagine the terror victims of mass shootings experience. These are innocent people who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the wake of such tragedies, people often tell themselves they’ll never forget these victims and what they endured. I certainly hope not. Yet, we’re likelier to remember the shooters, since news sources report more about them. Are there any mass shooting victims whose names are familiar to you? [xxii]

To underscore the higher value our society places on disgrace over accomplishment, I’ve deliberately not included within this chapter any photos of mass shooters. Showing you their faces would further imprint into your memory the heinous acts they committed. Not featuring these photos is a way to highlight that our cultural validation of infamy is a significant social problem in its own right. It’s one you may never have thought about before, because of how the news media report about rampages. Journalists focus on the carnage, not on the role they play in ensuring that mass murderers will live in infamy.

These gunmen are culturally astute. They know that by committing spectacular acts of violence, they’ll forever remain in our minds. They’re keenly aware that news sources will sensationalize their carnage, providing repeated play-by-play accounts of it. The shooters gain further affirmation within the online mass shooter network. Having the opportunity to get all this attention feeds their sense that the destruction they inflict will go down in history as an enduring sign that they were “real men.” [xxiii]

Figure 12: After the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, several students at the school mobilized a national movement for gun contro and thousands attended “March for Our Lives” demonstrations

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Questions

1. Based on your life experience, how accurately do you believe the Man Box captures societal expectations of what it means to be a “real man?” Discuss the sources of pressure that you believe are most influential on giving boys and men the feeling that they must try to fit within this box.

2. In what sense do mass shootings reflect conformity to masculine expectations that each of us condones, if not affirms outright?

3. Why is the Columbine Effect significant? How is John LaDue's foiled 2014 plot to blow up his high school an illustration of this effect?

4. What do mass shooters understand about our value system -- and particularly how the news media uphold it -- that enables them to inscribe their names in our minds forever, while the people they victimize often become forgettable?

5. This chapter deliberately did not get into the thorny debate about guns. Do you think embracing a sociological perspective toward mass shootings gives greater support to one side or the other in this debate? Why?

6. Given the news media’s likelihood of enabling mass shooters to live in infamy, do you think reporters restricting how they cover rampages could diminish this likelihood? Why or why not?

Notes

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[i] The FBI defines “mass shooting” interchangeably with “mass murder” and “serial murder.” See Serial Murder: Multi-disciplinary Perspectives for Investigators. Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Investigations, 2008. Data about the frequency of mass shootings in the United States relative to other countries come from James N. Meindl and Jonathan W. Ivy, “Mass Shootings: The Role of the Media in Promoting Generalized Imitation.” American Journal of Public Health 2017 107(3): 368-70. For data about the frequency of mass shootings, see Media Education Foundation 2013, .

[ii] Data about the frequency of public mass shootings are from an ongoing study by Mother Jones magazine that has tracked all such events since 1982. See Mark Follman, Gavin Aronsen, and Deanna Pan, “US Mass Shootings: Data from Mother Jones’ Investigation.” .

[iii] The U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education jointly conducted this study. See “The Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative: Implications for the Prevention of School Attacks in the United States.” United States Secret Service and United States Department of Education, Washington, DC, 2004, . Evidence about the rarity of mental illness among gunmen comes from Tage Rai, “The Myth that Mental Illness Causes Mass Shootings.” Behavioral Scientist, October 13, 2017, . For an elaboration of how often mass shooters deviate from this individual profile, see Alex Mesoudi, “Mass Shooting and Mass Media: Does Media Coverage of Mass Shootings Inspire Copycat Crimes?” International Human Press, 2013, .

[iv] These words that Dylan Klebold uttered the night before the massacre are quoted in Rachel Kalish and Michael Kimmel, “Suicide by Mass Murder: Masculinity, Aggrieved Entitlement, and Rampage School Shootings.” Health Sociology Review 2010 19(4): 451-64, 452-53. The quote from Klebold’s friend, Brooks Brown, comes from the book he co-wrote with Rob Merritt: No Easy Answers: The Truth behind Death at Columbine. Herdon, VA: Lantern Books, 50. The Columbine High School football player is quoted in Elliott Aronson, Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion after Columbine. New York: Henry Holt, 2001, 71-72.

[v] The transcript of Elliott Rodger’s video is from CNN, May 28, 2014, . He also wrote a 107,000-word manifesto that got widely circulated online, . Jia Tolentino, “The Race of the Incels.” New Yorker, May 15, 2018, .

[vi] For discussion of why many men regard conversation about feelings as unmasculine, see Terrence Real, I Don’t Want to Talk about It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression. New York: Scribner, 1997, 113-36.

[vii] The Media Education Foundation compiled these data and included them as part of its documentary Tough Guise 2: Violence, Manhood, and American Culture, .

[viii] For discussion of the link between anti-gay bullying and mass shootings, see Michael S. Kimmel and Matthew Mahler, “Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence: Random School Shootings, 1982-2001.” American Behavioral Scientist 2003 46(10): 1439-58. For discussion of mass shootings as a response to sexual rejection by females, see Jessie Klein, The Bully Society: School Shootings and the Crisis of Bullying in America’s Schools. New York: NYU Press, 2012, 58-65.

[ix] Jessie Klein, “Teaching Her a Lesson: Media Misses Boys’ Rage Relating to Girls in School Shootings.” Crime, Media, Culture 2005 1(1): 90-97.

[x] Abby Johnston, “The Grand Theft Auto Rape Modification is Disgusting.” Bustle, August 22, 2014, .

[xi] Quoted in Kalish and Kimmel 2010, 458.

[xii] Ralph W. Larkin, “The Columbine Legacy: Rampage Shootings as Political Acts.” American Behavioral Scientist 2009 52(9): 1309-26.

[xiii] For discussions of the online mass shooter fan network, see Nathalie E. Paton, “Media Participation of School Shooters and Their Fans: Navigating between Self-Distinction and Imitation to Achieve Individuation.” Pp. 203-29 in School Shootings: Mediatized Violence in a Global Age. Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2012; Atte Oksanen, James Hawdon, Pekka Räsänen, “Glamorizing Rampage Online: School Shooting Fan Communities on YouTube.” Technology in Society 2014 39: 55-67. For discussion of the unproven link between playing violent video games and initiating mass shootings, see Christopher, J. Ferguson, "Don't Blame Video Games for Real World Violence." Chronicle of Higher Education, January 10, 2013. Data about the Columbine Effect through 2015 come from the ongoing Mother Jones study conducted by Follman, Aronsen, and Pan.

[xiv] Selina E.M. Doran, “’You Made Me What I Am. You Added to the Rage’”: School Shooters in the United States and the Cultural Script of Vengeance.” Unpublished manuscript, , 4-5.

[xv] For discussion of the copycat effect after the Columbine massacre, see Jennifer L. Murray, “Mass Media Reporting and Enabling of Mass Shootings.” Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies 2017 17(2): 114-24, 120. For research on the contagiousness of high-profile suicides, see Margot Sanger-Katz, “The Science behind Suicide Contagion.” New York Times, August 13, 2014.

[xvi] For an analysis of people’s psychological tendency to mimic others who have the knowledge they seek, see Alex Mesoudi, “Mass Shooting and Mass Media: Does Media Coverage of Mass Shootings Inspire Copycat Crimes?” International Human Press, February 11, 2013, .

[xvii] Malcolm Gladwell, “Thresholds of Violence: How School Shootings Catch On.” New Yorker, October 19, 2015, .

[xviii] Richard I. Kirkland, "What Can We Do Now?" Fortune, June 1, 1992:41-48.

[xix] Mark Granovetter, “Threshold Models of Collective Behavior.” American Journal of Sociology 1978 83(6): 1420-43.

[xx] Quoted in Gladwell 2015.

[xxi] Jennifer Lynn Murray, “The Mass Killer’s Search for Validation through Infamy, Media Attention and Transcendence.” Pp. 235-51 in The Death and Resurrection of Deviance: Current Ideas and Research. Edited by Michael Dellwing, Joseph A. Kotarba, and Nathan W. Pino. New York: Palgrave, 2014, 238.

[xxii] Lionel Shriver, “Dying to be Famous.” New York Times, March 27, 2005.

[xxiii] Murray 2014, 245.

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