It’s rarely out of the news headlines, State-side. Mass shootings have become a regular feature of the American news cycle. We have become accustomed to random acts of violence, where usually disturbed young men embark on a shooting spree and slaughter innocent people going about their daily business. We have become equally accustomed to passionate outcries.
Glib explanations
The explanations offered are always the same. The Left blames online radicalisation, video games, white supremacy, misogyny, loneliness, fatherlessness, lack of sex, lack of intimacy, lack of community. Their solution is to demand stricter gun controls.
The Right insists that the real issue is America’s mental health epidemic, the result, supposedly of all the antidepressants and antipsychotics being prescribed to fatherless young men. Their solution is to arm teachers. And that is generally as far as it goes; a cycle of continuing violence with passionate responses in a dialogue of the deaf, resulting in nothing happening to break out of the savage spiral.
Gun violence has simply become a continuing part of the American way of life, embedded in the culture, and it appears no one can do anything about it.
Although this article focusses on mass shootings, there is also the appalling everyday toll. Over the 2022 Independence Day weekend, more than 220 Americans died of gunshot wounds. There was hardly a state in the Union which did not suffer gunshot casualties. Gun violence has simply become a continuing part of the American way of life, embedded in the culture, and it appears no one can do anything about it.
Disturbing trend
The question which must be answered is Why? The availability of weapons provides the means, with 120.5 civilian-owned firearms per 100 people. Indeed, the United States has the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world, nearly double that of the second-place country (The Falkland Islands, oddly, with Yemen coming a close third). But why are Americans so increasingly ready to use them on each other, particularly in seemingly random mass shootings? The USA has only 5% of the world’s population, but 31% of the world’s mass shooters.
Despite levels of gun ownership remaining fairly constant since the 1970s, there is an alarming upward trend in mass shootings in the USA. A study by the National Institute of Justice found that in the 1970s, mass shootings claimed an average of eight lives per year. From 2010 to 2019 the average was up to 51 deaths per year. In the 50 years covered by the project, 20% of the 167 mass shootings occurred in the last five years of the study period. More than half occurred after 2000, of which 33% occurred after 2010. It appears that Canadian journalist, Malcolm Gladwell’s gloomy argument holds water: every mass shooting lowers the threshold for the next.
It appears that Malcolm Gladwell’s gloomy argument holds water: every mass shooting lowers the threshold for the next.
In the 20th century, every decade before the 1970s had fewer than ten mass public shootings. In the 1950s there was one mass shooting. Then an alarming rise began. In the 1960s, there were six. In the 1970s, the number was 13. In the 1980s, this increased two and a half times, to 32. A study from Harvard University found that the rate of mass shootings in the USA has tripled since 2011. The study concluded that “the reason for the accelerating rate of mass shootings has not yet been identified”. Shockingly, there were over 300 mass shootings in the first six months of 2022 alone.
Individualism – a root cause
America in the early 21st century has many social fault lines, decaying institutions, breakdown of the family, increasing political and social polarisation and the omnipresence of digital screens, all of which play a part in creating a culture in which mass shootings proliferate.
But there is something else, something more abstract. America has changed from a society of moral absolutes which engendered broad social and communal forces and has succumbed to an all-consuming culture of narcissism where ‘self’ is paramount. Americans seem to live in a world where everything revolves around the individual.
Shockingly, there were over 300 mass shootings in the first six months of 2022 alone.
This narcissism is apparent in the perpetual identity crises afflicting the nation. Rootless individuals chasing after what they see as their ‘true reality’ are indifferent to life around them and reject interpersonal responsibility. Their communities are digital, ever present in their lives but removed from reality.
There is a growing inability to commit to the things which make life meaningful, such as spouse and children or putting down roots. We have fatherless boys finding their role models on the screen or the street. Increasing fatherlessness and poor mental health provision are often given as reasons for the increase in mass shootings. There is some truth in this, but these are only the symptoms, not the disease.
Fruits of liberalism
Modern liberalism, which has been steadily growing in influence since the sixties, took for its goal the realisation of the autonomy of the individual. To realise this, Christianity – with its emphasis on the ultimate value of every life and not just one’s own, and personal responsibility married to care for others – had to be side-lined and eventually crushed.
In its place, liberalism is advancing. Scorn in the media and academy has had an effect, for the influence of Christianity in the USA is rapidly diminishing. Church decline in the USA, even amongst evangelicals, is continuing at a rapid rate. We must factor in that many Americans who claim the name of Christ belong to mainstream denominations or ‘progressive’ churches with little connection to vital Scripture-based Christianity.
This angst ridden world fashioned by modern liberalism breeds the nihilism and despair which brings the mass shooter to the point of decision.
The stable American society built on respect, by believer and unbeliever alike, for the values of the Bible has been disappearing at an increasing rate since the sixties. In its place liberalism is creating a society where alienation is the norm. This angst ridden world fashioned by modern liberalism breeds the nihilism and despair which brings the mass shooter to the point of decision.
Most of us manage to cope from day to day with the increasing alienation within society which is the promise and result of liberalism. In distinction, ultimately, these mass killers, estranged from the world around them, were not able to cope, and so lashed out.
Liberalism’s chickens are coming home to roost.
The Rev. Dr. Campbell Campbell-Jack is a retired Church of Scotland minister and regular contributor to TCW (The Conservative Woman)