This weekend, Stephen Paddock opened fire on a country music festival inLas Vegas, Nevada, from an overlooking hotel, killing at least 59people and injuring more than 500 others. Paddock, a 64-year-old formeraccountant with no criminal record, was ultimately found in his hotelroom, dead, with some 23 guns, including more than 10 assault weapons.Police later found an additional 19 firearms, explosives, and severalthousands of rounds of ammunition in Paddock’s home. What theauthorities have not yet found, however, is a motive.More details about Paddock’s mindset and objectives will probably cometo light in the coming days. But so-called “lone wolf” mass shooters –individual perpetrators with no ties to any movement or ideology – arenot a new phenomenon, and these episodes have offered important cluesabout the motivations and thought processes of mass shooters.Most mass shooters do not survive their own attacks; they either killthemselves or let police do the job. But those who have survived haveshown some common features, with narcissistic personality disorder andparanoid schizophrenia being the two most frequent diagnoses. That wasthe case with Anders Breivik, the Norwegian far-right terrorist who, in2011, detonated a van bomb that killed eight people, before shootingdead 69 participants in a youth summer camp. He remains in prison inNorway.A look at behaviour prior to attacks reinforces this view. In The WileyHandbook of the Psychology of Mass Shootings, Grant Duwe, the directorof research and evaluation for the Minnesota Department of Corrections,examined 160 cases of mass shootings in the United States between 1915and 2013.Duwe found that 60% of the perpetrators had either been diagnosed with apsychiatric disorder or exhibited signs of serious mental disturbancebefore the attack. About one third had contact with mental-healthprofessionals, who had diagnosed them, most commonly, with paranoidschizophrenia. The second most common diagnosis was depression.Yet, given that most people who suffer from these disorders are harmlessto the public, these diagnoses do not tell the whole story. Accordingto Duwe, the difference may lie partly in an acute sense of beingpersecuted – and an acute desire for revenge.This view is corroborated by Paul Mullen, an Australian forensicpsychiatrist. Based on a detailed investigation of five mass murdererswhom he personally examined, Mullen concluded that such killers struggleto reconcile their own grandiose ideas of themselves with an inabilityto succeed at work or in relationships. The only explanation, theydecide, is that others are out to sabotage them.In fact, Mullen’s study revealed that the path to mass murder is ratherstereotypical. All of Mullen’s subjects had been bullied or sociallyexcluded as children. They were all suspicious and rigid, qualities thathelped to deepen their isolation. They constantly blamed their problemson others, believing that their community had rejected them; theyfailed to consider that they themselves were too wearisome orself-centred.Mullen’s subjects obsessively held grudges against anyone whom theyviewed as part of the group or community that refused to accept them.They ruminated relentlessly over past humiliations, a habit that fuelledresentment and, eventually, revenge fantasies, leading them to use massmurder to achieve infamy and to hurt those perceived to have hurt them –even if it meant a “welcome death” for themselves.Given this, there is usually a kind of warped logic to mass shooters’choice of victims. In the case of school shootings, such as theColumbine High School massacre of 1999, that logic is clear: to punishthose who have excluded the perpetrators socially. Likewise, workplacerampages are often triggered by a firing or layoff. But even in caseswhere the targets seem random, the logic usually emerges eventually,even if it is a matter of punishing an entire community or society.In Paddock’s case, many questions obviously remain unanswered, beginningwith why he chose that particular concert to attack. But the contoursof his story are beginning to emerge. Reinforcing the loner trope, oneneighbour said that the “weird” Paddock “kept to himself”; living nextto him was “like living next to nothing.” It has also been revealed thatin 2012, Paddock filed a negligence lawsuit against a Las Vegas hotelwhere he had fallen; litigiousness can be a hallmark of the resentfuland paranoid.Duwe argues that, contrary to popular belief, such gunmen do not “justsnap.” Though roughly two-thirds of mass public shooters experience atraumatic event immediately before carrying out the attack – usually theloss of a job or relationship – most spend weeks or even yearsdeliberating and preparing to get their revenge. In Paddock’s case, suchquiet planning may explain the armoury found in his home and hotelroom, which he rented several days prior to the attack.After the massacre, more than half of mass public shooters either commitsuicide directly or provoke the police into killing them. This rate isnearly 10 times higher than for homicide offenders in general. Does thisreveal, Duwe asks, just how mentally plagued these perpetrators are?Perhaps they believe they can no longer bear the agony of life; oncethey have “settled the score” for the perceived slights that haveproduced it, there is no reason left to live.Mullen argues that the script for this particular type of suicide hasbecome entrenched in modern culture, and continues to attract willinglead actors. If we are unable to use the knowledge we have gleaned frompast experience to prevent them from taking the stage, they willcontinue to take aim at audiences. – Project Syndicate *Raj Persaud is a consultant psychiatrist and the co-author of theforthcoming book The Streetwise Person’s Guide to Mental Health Care.Adrian Furnham is Professor of Psychology at University College Londonand the author of the forthcoming book The Psychology of Disenchantment.
October 03, 2017 | 11:43 PM