Research commissioned before the tragic massacre of 19 Texan school children and two teachers at Robb Elementary shows that US President Joe Biden was accurate when he said that shootings like this ‘rarely happen anywhere else in the world.’
The study, published March 21st in the International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, compared mass shootings in the US against developed and developing countries between 1998 to 2019.
Mass shootings were classified as ‘a public incident involving four or more fatalities, with at least some victims chosen indiscriminately,’ and during this time, incidents in the US accounted for 73% of all 139 attacks in developed countries, with 62% of all 1,318 fatalities.
Lead researcher Assistant Professor Jason R Silva, from William Paterson University, said that “mass shootings are a uniquely American problem, particularly in relation to other developed countries.”
Compared to the rest of the world, US mass shootings were more likely to use multiple firearms and be motivated by a range of employment, financial and relationship problems.
“American mass shooters were more likely to attack factories, warehouses, and offices than perpetrators in all other combined countries, and while individuals from all countries suffer from strain, this particular strain is largely a US mass shooting motive,” Dr Silva said.
“Relationship problems present another distinct form of strain contributing to US mass shootings.
“This is not to say that relationship problems do not exist in other countries or that they do not result in violence, in fact, many other countries have much higher rates of intimate partner violence and homicide.
“However, it is uniquely American that relationship problems end in mass shootings: where individuals outside of those contributing to relationship problems were also, or instead, targeted at random.”
Other findings included that 99% of perpetrators were male, 91% were born in the country where the attack took place, 33% had military experience and 64% opened fire in their place of work.
Dr Silva added that it was important to learn lessons from such incidents for future approaches to US mass shooting intervention and prevention, no matter how unlikely any real progress seems.
In the wake of the second worst school massacre US senators are still unwilling to ban the sale of assault weapons or enact a comprehensive background check policy for gun buyers.
When Australia suffered its first mass shooting, the Port Arthur Massacre, the response from John Howard’s government was sure and swift: the buy-back scheme was introduced within 12 days of Martin Bryant pulling the trigger, and more than 650,000 firearms were handed in.
It was a decisive response by the nation to the killing of 35 unarmed people.