Mihail Pojarsky/The real reasons for mass shootings

After the Kazan mass shooting, the authorities are throwing out the usual conservative explanations for the tragedy: they say that video games, social networks and a general decline in morals are to blame. It's all nonsense, of course. But on the other hand, theories put forward by the progressive public are no more substantiated. Something like this: school bullying, the authoritarianism of the school system, and "toxic masculinity" are to blame for mass shootings.

This is simply refuted. It is enough to read about the mores of the British boarding schools of the beginning and middle of the last century. Bullying up to sexual violence, tyranny of teachers. Weapons were more accessible than today ... but there were no shooters. Shootings, as a phenomenon, start in the 60s and intensify in the coming decades. Shooting is a product of the era of liberalization of morals, when it was forbidden to beat with rods in schools and allowed to choose gender. When bullying began to be considered a problem, and not a normal form of socialization.

In search of hypotheses about the causes of shootings, I came across an interesting doctoral dissertation in forensic science. The author states that the behavior of a mass shooter should not be seen as that of a killer, but rather that of a suicide. 40% of mass shooters cut themselves, the rest also understand that their life is over. In general, this is "leave slamming the door." The author goes on to recall old Durkheim ("Suicide"), who 100 years ago associated the rising suicide rate in European countries with social disintegration. Suicide, according to Durkheim, can be the result of both excessive social pressure (this is any Asia), and its lack. Being outside the community, a person loses the meaning of life. Therefore, family and religion are the main obstacles to suicide. form strong social ties (and Catholics are better than Protestants because the latter have more individualism).

Further, the author of the dissertation conducts all sorts of dreary calculations in order to find out how it is with social integration in the places of American mass shootings for 40 years. In terms of family, the correlation is reversed, but the author suggests that the matter may be that shootings occur more often in the village/suburb, where, in principle, there are more family values. But with religion, the correlation is the same. That is, the more religion - the less the likelihood of shooting. Moreover, the dependence is very significant.

Thus, the mass shooter is not at all a relic of the archaic era of bullying, hierarchies and masculinity. On the contrary, the mass shooter is a product of modern society with its atomization, alienation, loneliness and other unattractive sides. The concept still, of course, needs to be improved. But it is obvious that not all typical explanations of mass shootings are true - both conservative (video games, social networks, etc.) and progressive (bullying, violence, etc.).

Mihail Pojarsky 2021-05-12