How to Prevent Mass Shootings, Step One

I can see why President Obama is angry about the lack of action in the wake of school shootings. As a country, we haven't done almost anything legislatively. But while his anger is real, the president (and everyone else) is jumping to conclusions. we can't argue about the merits of a particular solutions until we agree on the nature of the problem.  We are skipping a step in good social research. We don't know if the problem is increased access to guns, or mental illness, or the media, or bad families, or how society treats men, or video games, or a critical combination of these, or something entirely different. Instead of jumping to conclusions ("gun control!") or shrugging our shoulders ("we can't predict it-- gee I guess we can't do anything"), let's use good science!

The terrible silver lining of increased school/public shootings is that they continue to provide us with additional case studies. We may never agree on gun control, but what I think everyone could agree on is this: let's encourage Congress to fund the most comprehensive research study in history to identify and study every imaginable factor that may be contributing to mass shootings.

Many studies of school violence have focused on one or two potential factors, but clearly that's not enough. Here are a couple of things we have learned: First of all, while mass shootings continue to increase, individual shootings in schools are the lowest in 23 years. It just seems like they're increasing because of the clustered nature of the killings, and the media coverage. As one researcher commented, "I sit here in Philadelphia with 400 homicides a year. It's not just mass murders. It's just everyday slaughter." Maybe the studies need to start by identifying whether the problem is more about violence or notoriety. Second, there are several "profiles" of school shooters - some come from typical traumatized homes, others suffer from mental illness, but some shooters have no history of either. Clearly there are factors here we haven't explored. Third, while there are a few simple factors that shooters virtually all have in common - current or former students, 18-30 years old, male, carrying multiple weapons - other factors are not universal, and certainly not predictive. In a 2001 study of 34 mass killers, 70% were described as "a loner", 61.5% had issues with substance abuse, 48% had preoccupations with weapons, 43.5% had been victims of bullying. Only 23% percent had a documented psychiatric history of any kind―which means three out of four did not. About half have a history of animal cruelty. School shooters have been mostly white but not all. As most scientists wisely point out, since the overwhelming majority of young male loners  are NOT shooting anyone, even if these characteristics were 100% correlated, they would still give us a pattern but not a prediction.

Here's one obvious problem - all of these studies are done independently, piecemeal. Most of them are looking at fairly obvious factors. Where is the push from politicians for us to be smart, and multi-disciplinary, in identifying more predictive factors or combinations of factors that contribute to mass shootings? Has anyone bothered to consider whether it's relevant that all of these guys were single? That all of these schools have been coed? Is there a correlation between gun laws and shootings in individual states? Were these shooters rejected from sports teams in middle school? Did they have positive male role models? Did they eat their vegetables as kids? Is any of that important? I don't know... but more information gives us a greater chance of identifying factors that are truly relevant and can be changed.

Unless we expand and correlate our search for related factors in mass shootings, we are stuck with the same old theories and may overlook data that doesn't seem relevant. It is like trying to predict which national anthem will be played by studying the heights of the athletes standing on the Olympic podium. We may find a correlation, and we may even publish a paper about it, but we don't actually get any closer to understanding the real issue. It's the nationality, not the height, that really matters. Could the same phenomenon be occurring with school shootings? We need to ask the right questions. As we all learned in 8th grade science, before you can form a theory and then a hypothesis about why something is happening, you have to begin with good observation, and in this case, good observation means gathering EXTENSIVE data about school shootings in MANY disciplines, and not settling for a handful of studies that "prove" that we're "right" about guns and mental illness.

Perhaps the national dialogue keeps coming back to the same small list of explanations because they are easy and familiar targets to blame. Sometimes we look for solutions in the wrong places, or we fail to look for solutions in the right places, because they're counterintuitive and even offensive to suggest. Two classic examples:

1. In 1822, obstetrician William Campbell, and later, Ignatz Semmelweiss, identified correctly that the horrifically high death toll of childbed fever in maternity wards was not due to the hospitals or the method of care - it was the doctors themselves who were carrying "disease particles" on their unwashed hands. The suggestion was immediately rejected because, as one Philadelphia practitioner said, "Doctors are gentlemen...and gentlemen's hands are clean." The theory was rejected because it offended practitioners and Campbell could offer no scientific explanation because germs hadn't been discovered.

2. Suicide clusters have similarly puzzled the public for decades, until researchers in the early 1990's identified the media as a key factor. It turns out that media coverage or publicity over one death serves to presents suicide as an option to other vulnerable people and encourages suicide in the same way - called copycat suicides. Two Viennese studies showed that less dramatic and extensive media coverage of subway-related suicides led to fewer suicide deaths in the following months. After introducing a campaign to encourage safe media reporting, suicides and attempted suicides in the subway actually dropped by 80%.

Intuitively, it makes no sense that a newspaper article should influence whether a 16 year old boy chooses to end his life, but it doesn't matter - when we notice a connection, we should pay attention. And as with the lack of understanding around germ theory, we may not be able to immediately identify WHY a factor is related, but if changing it helps, it doesn't really matter if we understand it.

I don't know why school shootings seem to be so common. I don't know why mass shootings in schools increase while individual homicides decrease. I don't know if or how shootings could be related to gender, policy, religiosity, biochemistry or Pokemon, but I hope that in our desperation we will stop squabbling and work together to find out.


As a final note, I recognize that with all the data we collect, we may still fail to identify the true causes of mass shootings. We will continue to invent and test various theories, and hopefully those theories will become more sophisticated and helpful - but if we put our trust in science alone, our survival relies on the skills and creativity of our PhDs, none of whom can see into the future. A situation like school shootings puts into perspective how limited we are as mortals in this respect. That is why we inscribe on every dime: "In God We Trust". God is not just for Sunday or to make us feel good - He can also help us survive: Heavenly Father has promised us that if we obey the commandments, we will prosper in the land, and if we don't, we will suffer (this promise is repeated at least 14 times in the Book of Mormon). Following the discussion above - if more information is critical to better decision making, then God is the ultimate decider. His recommendations should hold far more weight than any scientist or politician. What has He asked us to do? Love each other, be honest, keep the Sabbath day holy, honor our mothers and fathers, be sexually clean. In the Proclamation on the Family we're commanded to strengthen our families with a warning that a failure to do so will result in individual and national calamities. Am I saying that failing to love each other and strengthen families is contributing to school shootings? I don't know, but in our quest to understand and solve "calamities" like these, let's start here.