Mass Shootings Continue in America

In 2018, there were 307 mass shootings in the United States, so many that most people cannot remember them. Twelve of those mass shootings occurred after one in a Pittsburgh synagogue on October 27, 2018. In less than 3 weeks thereafter, 12 mass shootings left 79 shot of whom 23 were killed. On November 7 at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, 13 were killed.

Most recently, between July 28 and August 4, three mass shootings in the United States left 34 people dead and dozens more wounded in Dayton, Ohio, El Paso, Texas and in Gilroy, California.

For the past two years, two professors of criminal justice have been studying the life histories of mass shooters in the United States for a project funded by the National Institute of Justice. Jillian Peterson is a psychologist and professor of criminology and criminal justice at Hamline University. James Densley is a sociologist and professor of criminal justice at Metropolitan State University.

They built a database dating back to 1966 of every mass shooter who shot and killed four or more people in a public place, and every shooting incident at schools, workplaces, and places of worship since 1999. They interviewed incarcerated perpetrators and their families, shooting survivors and first responders.

They have read media and social media, manifestos, suicide notes, trial transcripts and medical records. Their data revealed four commonalities among the perpetrators of nearly all of the mass shootings that they studied.

First, the vast majority of mass shooters in their study experienced early childhood trauma and exposure to violence at a young age.

Second, practically every mass shooter that they studied had reached an identifiable crisis point in the weeks or months leading up to the shooting. They often had become angry and despondent because of a specific grievance.

Third, most of the shooters had studied the actions of other shooters and sought validation for their motives. 

Fourth, the shooters all had the means to carry out their plans. Once someone decides life is no longer worth living and that murdering others would be a proper revenge, only means and opportunity stand in the way of another mass shooting.

To prevent future shootings they recommend that potential shooting sites be made less accessible with visible security measures; that we change how we consume, produce, and distribute violent content on media and social media; and that proactive violence prevention begin with schools, colleges, churches and employers initiating conversations about mental health and establishing systems for identifying individuals in crisis, reporting concerns and  intervention.
Source:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-08-04/el-paso-dayton-gilroy-mass-shooters-data
 
However, these mass shootings were not merely human criminal events. Many people ask, “Why did these mass killings happen?” They were sins, inspired and directed by Satan, evil personified. Law enforcement authorities revealed that the Parkland, Florida, killer confessed that “demon voices” told him “what he needed to do to launch the deadly assault.”

Evil is not created by God, it is the absence of the good that he has created, inspired by a real evil personality, Satan, with whom the human race has been in conflict since the Garden of Eden when he tempted Adam and Eve into the Original Sin.  

Jesus came to destroy the works of Satan (see 1 John 3:8), so we should not be fixated on the media reports of evils. They should inspire our hearts to open in prayer and fasting for the victims and their families and for the end of all killings of the innocents.

“Without the knowledge Revelation gives of God we cannot recognize sin clearly and are tempted to explain it as merely a developmental flaw, a psychological weakness, a mistake, or the necessary consequence of an inadequate social structure, etc. Only in the knowledge of God’s plan for man can we grasp that sin is an abuse of the freedom that God gives to created persons so that they are capable of loving him and loving one another.” (CCC 387).

On July 7, 2016, in Dallas, Texas, Micah Xavier Johnson ambushed and fired upon a group of police officers. He killed five officers and injured nine others. Ten days later, Jesus said,