Should “Mass Shootings” Exist?

Imagine a world in which there has never been a mass shooting. No one has ever unloaded a gun into a school, mall, or club; the archetype of the isolated goth teenager has never sparked concern in anyone’s mind. This might seem like a far-fetched fantasy, but according to Kurt Blankschaen, this is the type of world we should picture when attempting to develop policies for preventing gun violence. In other words, the social concept of “mass shootings” should not exist.

By invoking such an emotionally charged idea, Blankschaen thinks, we also invoke the idea of a terrifying, abject social class lurking in the dark and waiting to strike. And in doing so, we obscure the reality of gun violence and the policies necessary to prevent it. But if we could manage to shirk the social concept of “mass shootings” and simply address gun violence on a case-by-case basis, perhaps we could have far more productive conversations about the policies required to keep such violence from happening. Returning to our theoretical world without mass shootings, how might gun ownership laws work? How would we structure school protections? Maybe the answers to these questions could inform us about policies that actually prevent violence, rather than useless or actively harmful policies that address only the pervasive bogeyman of “mass shootings.”

But why do “mass shootings” exist as a category at all? One might think that the social concept is a necessary component of responding to gun violence. After all, when we categorize certain things under the umbrella of mass shootings, we can track common data across incidents, which allows us to construct a profile of the mass shooter or understand the typical conditions in which shootings occur. In this way, perhaps maintaining the category is useful as a preventative measure. But Blankschaen argues that this data-tracking is not as effective as it may seem. He claims that profiles of mass shooters tend to fluctuate rapidly and arbitrarily, and function more as a method of casting blame on ostracized social groups than as a real predictive tool. By his lights, the typical “mass shooter” is someone who is already despised socially and culturally, and who can be shunned justifiably by being made into the othered monster that is the mass shooter. And a single high-profile incident is enough to radically alter this cultural profile, according to Blankschaen: after Columbine, for instance, the lonely middle-aged office worker became the depressed goth teen. Because this profile is both uniquely amorphous and uniquely prevalent, the category of “mass shootings” tends to be unhelpful in a way that other categories may not be. Moreover, Blankschaen points out that accepting the social concept of mass shootings in the first place requires us to decide who counts as a mass shooter, which itself prejudices any profile we might create. When we rely on this unpredictable and underdeveloped criminal typology in addressing gun violence, he contends, we simply stop paying attention to what is actually happening in gun violence cases.

Even if we assume that one reliable and stable profile of a mass shooter could someday be developed, Blankschaen notes that it is unclear what this profile would actually get us, preventatively speaking. A profile of this sort would exclude certain shootings that do not cleanly match our expectations, and yet clearly require us to adopt new preventative policies. Someone who shoots up a synagogue, for instance—has he committed a mass shooting, or just a hate crime? What if he has nothing in common with the “typical” mass shooter that we have identified? Should we simply refuse to address the incident, although it involved extensive gun violence? It seems to Blankschaen that we should be focused on creating policies that will impede future gun violence in all cases, rather than merely those cases that fit our narrow profile. Otherwise, we risk developing policies that themselves create unsafe conditions. The common profile of a “school shooter,” Blankschaen notes, might lead us to think that we should place metal detectors in all schools. But as he points out, having metal detectors at exits forces students to crowd into small, packed clusters, which makes them far more vulnerable to being injured or killed in a shooting. Policies like this, he claims, come about when we lean too heavily on some profile instead of thinking through the consequences of a given preventative measure. And these impulsively chosen policies very rarely get rolled back, since lawmakers want to avoid being blamed for any violence that might occur after a policy is struck down.

That the cultural concept of mass shootings tends to oscillate at random and inspire ineffective strategies is not Blankschaen’s only problem with the category. In deciding what can be considered a mass shooting at all, he argues, we reinforce pernicious ideas about where and when violence is “supposed to” happen. For instance, Blankschaen claims that a case of gun violence at a primarily Black school is far less likely to be considered a mass shooting than a similar case at a “good” White school, because of the social presupposition that Black people are naturally prone to violence. When we attempt to pin down the oblique social phenomenon of “mass shootings,” then, perhaps we are simply appealing to a cultural touchstone that is predicated on false or prejudiced ideas. And if race and class determine which sorts of violence we care about anyway, then the “mass shooting” label on its own does little to spark media attention and public concern. As Blankschaen sees it, gun policies that eschew these racist and classist assumptions by operating on a case-by-case basis are likely to be far more effective in preventing violence, no matter where it happens. Additionally, there are practical concerns with our current dependence on the category of mass shootings. For instance, does intent matter in classifying something as a “mass shooting” or not? How can we determine intent in cases of psychosis, or cases in which the shooter dies before we can ask? How many fatalities constitute a mass shooting? How can we account for a case in which only one person dies, but 18 are injured? Blankschaen argues that all of these problems—practical and ideological—make the social concept of mass shootings more trouble than it is worth.

This biased method for evaluating gun violence is also what leads us to think that certain places are more fundamentally violent than others, Blankschaen suggests. For example, the United States is often identified as having particularly high “mass shooting” rates, sometimes used as evidence that Americans are uniquely corrupt or vicious. But this might be a product of the “mass shooting” category itself. Depending on how individual nations define “mass shootings,” the exact same crimes might make the cut in some countries but not others; so, until we can internationally standardize our very slippery definition, we have no way to ensure that such shootings are being neither overreported nor underreported. It may well be the case that the United States simply has looser criteria for what qualifies as a mass shooting. Moreover, Blankschaen argues that isolating “mass shootings” as an especially insidious form of violence means that we neglect to consider the prevalence of non-gun-related incidents in other places. Because of differences in cultural makeup and legal background, certain types of crimes might not translate easily across countries: Americans specifically may be more prone to gun-related violent crimes, but other nations might have much higher rates of mass stabbings or bombings. And when we view mass shooting rates as the only trustworthy indicator of violence levels—as Blankschaen suggests we usually do—we lose sight of these individual differences.

Blankschaen’s preferred approach is ameliorative in nature: it attempts to solve the problem of gun violence, rather than identify what gun violence is. To do this, he suggests, we must turn our attention to specific cases of such violence, and address them as they arise. If a drive-by shooting takes place, we might decide to implement lower speed limits and larger speed bumps; in a domestic shooting incident, we might advise people to keep their weapons in one safe room and their ammunition in another. So, even if both of these shootings qualify as mass shootings under our existing social concept, they require drastically different policy responses—which we may not realize if our goal is merely to eliminate the vague category of “mass shootings.” But by attempting to stop gun violence as it actually happens, we can lower our psychological defenses and ensure that our chosen policies are practical and positive, even if it means we must forgo the comfort of profiles and warning signs.

So, how should we actually deal with gun violence? The easiest solution might be to abolish gun ownership entirely, but Blankschaen is wary of such a simple proposal. Even if we stop selling guns tomorrow, he notes, we will still be dealing with all the guns that are in circulation today. We have no way to realistically prevent guns from reaching the hands of those who would use them for violence. In addition, it seems to Blankschaen that if a person wants badly enough to carry out a certain violent act, the absence of guns will not prevent him from doing so. Even if he cannot access a gun, what prevents him from turning to knives, or to homemade bombs? Getting rid of guns wholesale, Blankschaen claims, punishes innocent gun owners without providing a true long-term solution.

Another potential solution, at least in the case of gun violence at schools, might be to arm educators themselves. And while Blankschaen holds that we should be cautious about arming all teachers indiscriminately—since doing so would likely provide easier gun access to would-be shooters and require impractical mandatory firearm training—he finds a variation of this proposal to be far more promising than abolishing guns entirely. He suggests that “student resource officers,” or specific individuals who are prepared to use firearms for students’ protection, might be a good way to prevent violence in schools while also protecting the privacy of the children within them. Unlike most teachers, these officers could have the appropriate training and resources to respond to crisis situations; unlike randomly stationed police, they could develop a rapport with students, which would help them to assess actual emergencies versus cries for help. And building this rapport would also combat the urge to profile students: we could tell these officers to monitor threats on an individual basis, depending on the particular student and circumstances, rather than advising them to just look for “the goths.”

All of this may remind us of a deeply unpalatable reality: we will never be totally and wholly safe, even if the charged concept of “mass shootings” tricks us into thinking that every harsher, rasher policy will do the trick. But as Blankschaen reminds us, the goal isn’t safe; it’s safer. And if we set aside the “mass shooting” category and the desperation it induces, perhaps we will be able to focus on the policies that will actually work toward this goal. Perhaps we cannot be safer until we live in that fantasy world with no “mass shootings.”