As someone who is on the spectrum, I find that kind of disturbing. But hey, I’m not dismissing the possibility some shooters could be on the spectrum.
Autism is more common in men, and tends to be more severe in men, so it could be that some shooters are autistic rather than narcissistic or psychopathic. Autistic people are often very lonely and if they’re more aware of their limitations this can lead to anger.
I find the idea of crying when you’re angry sort of foreign as a man. I think I’ve only “rage-cried” once in my life, and that was when I realized my roommate was a huge asshole and I didn’t feel safe living with him anymore.
The idea that white men are more likely to be shooters than men of color is a myth. It fits well with the idea that shootings are caused by entitlement and privilege, but it’s not true. White men do make up more than half of shootings in America, but that’s only because more than half of men are white. Other races are equally or more represented among the shooters.
I notice too when there’s a shooter who’s mixed race the media wants to say they’re white - Elliot Rodger was half Chinese, but was often referred to as white (even though in America he would be considered Asian by most people), and although he wasn’t a mass shooter George Zimmerman was also considered white even though he’s half Hispanic.
To follow up on your point - my analysis dealt more with socio-economic circumstances that attribution by race. I’m sure there are plenty of Asians, Hispanics, and African-Americans (and mixed) who can stew in their parents’ basement, especially today. There are plenty of white people who are forced by economic circumstances or family/social life to be regular active social participants. But in general, to make my point, modern non-ethnic family life seems to less centered around socialization. So it’s not entitlement so much as the ability to live isolated (and the enabling) that causes the problem.
(Recall some émigré to Mexico remarking how Mexicans think Americans typically ignore family ties more and are “cold fish” compared to Mexican family ties; not to mention social participation with neighbours. The “I don’t know my neighbours” thing more applies to North America.)
Unfortunately, unless the media dwells on a particular topic (Sandy Hook?) it’s hard to gauge how often these looney “something snapped” mass shootings fit the “basement loner” stereotype.
Neither of those is a valid experimental comparison of “nature” and “nurture”, of course. Children are constantly being subjected to gendered expectations about their behavior, and even parents who think they’re giving their kids a truly “gender neutral” environment are affected by unconscious gender bias. And it goes without saying that the world in general is absolutely saturated in gender bias, and kids inevitably perceive it.
As for the OP’s question, yeah, there are a lot of different factors involved, from hormonal differences to socialization about violence to the fact that boys are more likely than girls to be taught firearms use. I’m not sure it can be boiled down to a simple answer.
I have heard (but don’t really know) that most shooters are male, but most poisoners are female. Female serial killers tend to be “black widows” who do it for monetary gain, whereas male serial killers don’t. (There’s a different term for male multiple murderers who do it for profit, but they’re lumped in more with Pretty Boy Floyd than with Jeffrey Dahmer.) Killer nurses are a whole separate breed of female killers, and I think they are true serial killers whereas “black widows” really just want the money.
Also, identical actions are attributed to different motivations for different demographics, for reasons I don’t understand, maybe because they are easier to sell to a jury: White male mass shooter=spree killer or serial killer, muslim mass shooter=political terrorist, black or Hispanic mass shooter=drug or gang related. Wayne Williams and John Muhammad/Lee Boyd Malvo escaped this classification, mainly because their crimes were well known before they were.
I wonder about this. These statements have been accepted as fact in this thread without any cite, and I probably would have accepted them myself were I not reading *Columbine *right now. The book talks about how the shooters at Columbine were described as loners and victims of bullying, but if you took a closer look at their personal lives, it actually wasn’t true. And I wonder to what extent (a) we’re assuming that shooters cannot develop or sustain friendships when it’s simply not true, and (b) to what extent those who know the shooter are looking for confirming evidence after the fact. In other words, if they know that shooters are isolated, then finding out a guy went haywire triggers a memory they had of the guy sitting alone at a lunch table one time, but does not trigger any memories of the guy having a good time with a group of people, even if both things happened.
I will also say that if you were to ask me to name specific killers who were known to be isolated loners, I could not name a single one for you. I can certainly remember some famous mass shootings (perhaps not the name of the shooter, but at least the location of the shooting), but I really couldn’t tell you any details about the personal lives of the guy who did the shooting.
(Apropos of nothing, just because I feel compelled to say it: The single most memorable thing I remember from any mass shooting is that the shooter in the Aurora movie theater shootings did not kill himself. That was such a break from the “mass shooting template” that it stuck in my memory.)
Off the top of my head, the Columbine pair were social outcasts. The Sandy Hook guy, ditto.
Remember, we’re talking about mass shooters (or killers) people who snap and suddenly commit a large massacre, not stealthy serial killers.
The Texas Tower killer, the oldest that came to mind, apparently had mental problems and speculation is that a brain tumor was the cause.
The San Ysidro McDonalds massacre, the perp also had problems:
The Luby’s shooting:
The most memorable mass shooting in Canada, the Montreal Polytechnic massacre, was again against women:
Same with most others I google.
So most shooters (oddly enough) have serious mental problems. This contributes to a difficulty being part of the social community. No surprise that odd or insulting behaviour turns off people they meet.
The joke about “going postal” was based on the fact that it seemed more postal workers than others would also snap and seek out their co-workers or boss for revenge.
But again, human behaviour can be varied. Who knows?
Wasn’t the song “I Don’t Like Mondays” based on some girl who also at one point snapped and started shooting up her school?
Brenda Spencer’s history included suicidal ideation and depression. She also had TBI (traumatic brain injury):
“…during tests while she was in custody, it was discovered Spencer had an injury to the temporal lobe of her brain. It was attributed to an accident on her bicycle.”
TBI probably happens to men more often than women (contact sports, fighting, reckless driving).
Charles Whitman is also known to have had organic brain damage: “It has been suggested that Whitman’s violent impulses, with which he had been struggling for several years, were caused by a tumor found in the white matter above his amygdala upon autopsy.”
I also wonder if the proportion of women who commit attempted, unsuccessful murders is higher than the portion of women who complete a murder. In America about 12% of murders are committed by women, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the proportion of attempted murders by women is considerably higher. Maybe men are “better” at murder?