‘Shooter not mentally ill, just hateful’

CHICAGO --- After the mass shooting at a Texas elementary school yesterday, a Northwestern Medicine expert on mass shootings discusses why the shooter was likely not mentally ill and why more guns in schools are not the answer.

Lori Post is the director of the Buehler Center for Health Policy and Economics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She researches mass shootings. Post  can be reached at lori.post@northwestern.edu.

“There is no evidence the shooter is mentally ill, just angry and hateful. While it is understandable that most people cannot fathom slaughtering small children and want to attribute it to mental health, it is very rare for a mass shooter to have a diagnosed mental health condition. 

“Moreover, people who have mental health disorders, have a difficult time taking care of simple day to day tasks, much less planning a high lethality mass shooting. Equating mass shooters to persons with mental health disabilities stigmatizes people who are truly suffering from mental health. Instead, this killer used forethought and carefully planned these shootings. He had no guilt, conscious or empathy for those he murdered.”

More guns is not the answer 

“Texas has more guns per capital than any other state. After the tragic 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, the governor signed several bills to curb mass shootings; unfortunately, most of those bills involved arming the public to stop mass shooters. Yesterday, during the tragic mass shooting in Texas, police officers trained in active shootings were injured. Placing the onus on teachers or other citizens to shoot mass shooters is a horrible responsibility and flawed. Adding more guns to the population or bringing guns into your home increases the likelihood of homicides and suicides — not protecting your family or property.”

The answer to “Why?”

“Many people wonder after each mass shooting, ‘Why?’ The answer is very simple. It is to kill as many people as possible. It is an act of hatred. It is a way for men to feel masculine by killing helpless individuals. It is part of the fantasy of would-be mass shooters to go down in history with a large kill count and excessive media coverage.

“Mass shooters crave attention. We see a strong uptick in mass shootings since we began tracking them in 1966 that correlates with the web-based media and social media. 

“Over the past handful of years, I have noticed a pattern whereby the last act in the planning of a massacre is the purchase of the weapons used in a mass shooting. Again, we see this play out. The mass shooter waited for his 18^th birthday and purchased the weapons he needed to execute a careful thoughtful plan to kill humans.”