The United States is experiencing a record year for mass shootings, according to James Alan Foxa Northeastern professor who maintains the longest-running and most extensive data source on mass murder.
The growing number of victims is fueled by tragedies such as recent mass shooting of five people at a Colorado nightclub—an event that also contributed to an increase in hate crimes nationwide, according to Carlos Cuevasco-director of Northeastern's Violence and Justice Research Laboratory.
“I've been studying mass murder for over 40 years, and I'm pretty sure there's never been a year where we've had so many,” says Fox, the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Northeastern.
There were 35 mass shootings in 2022, Fox says. The escalation follows what Fox calls “an unprecedented increase” in 13 mass shootings resulting in four or more deaths since Oct. 3.
“That's an average of about two mass shootings per week,” Fox says, “compared to the usual average of two shootings per month.”
In addition to the recent mass shootings, this month saw two mass killings without a gun, including stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students last week.
US has 39 total mass murders in 2022, Fox says.
The massacre at Club Q in Colorado Springs on Saturday has been ruled a hate crime, according to court records. Anderson Aldrich, 22, is accused of killing five people and injuring 25 others at the LGBTQ nightclub before being confronted by two people.
Hate Crimes in the USA have grown in five of the past six years, according to FBI data. In 2020, the last full year for which records are available, there were 8,263 incidents.
“But this is the very, very tip of a very large iceberg,” says Cuevas, a professor of criminology and criminal justice from Northeast Europe.
More than 60% of incidents reported in 2020 were motivated by race, ethnicity or origin. About 16% relied on sexual orientationwhich appears to have led to the Colorado attack.
“That gives you a sense of the trend,” says Cuevas. “But it's very much an underreported crime.”
The Colorado attack was preceded by an incident in 2021 in which the bomb squad and crisis negotiators convinced Aldrich to surrender after he allegedly threatened his mother with a homemade bomb. But Aldrich's guns were not seized by authorities in an apparent failure to enforce the state's “red flag” law.
Fox says mass killings are hard to avoid.
“It's easier said than done to take dangerous weapons away from dangerous people,” says Fox, who runs the Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Murder Database. “Then, surely, we can all see what should have been done. But these warning signs are only crystal clear with 20-20 hindsight. It is almost impossible with any degree of reliability to identify mass murderers in advance. There are countless angry or hateful people who seem to fit the profile, but will never turn their angst into action.”
Much of the data supporting the effectiveness of red flag laws is based on preventing suicides, Fox adds.
“But suicide and homicide are very different,” says Fox. “Homicidal people react differently to an attempt to remove their weapon than suicidal people.”
Cuevas says the environment for hate crimes has been fueled in part by the escalation of political rhetoric in recent years.
“Unfortunately, some of it comes from the highest levels of leadership in the country,” says Cuevas. “If you look at the policies that have targeted the LGBTQIA community—some of the things we've seen targeting transgender people, education restrictions in Florida, things like that—it sends the message that somehow these people shouldn't be given the same rights like everyone else. And there are people who will then take it and say, “I have to do something about it.”
“Leaders in the community, leaders in politics, have to recognize that there are consequences to what they say,” Cuevas adds.
Cuevas has noticed that people are speaking out on behalf of the affected groups who are the targets of hate crimes.
At the same time, Cuevas has seen pushback against such rhetoric on social media and other forums.
“THE [hate crime] The numbers don't make me optimistic because they've been going up for a while,” says Cuevas. “My hope is that the people who support these communities are pushed back, become as vocal and hopefully as attention-grabbing as the people who stigmatize and promote hate towards these individuals.
“Whether it's the LGBTQIA/gay community, whether it's the immigrant communities, whether it's the African-American community or the Jewish-American community — whoever's accepting that lately — I think the fact that the voices and the support are starting to to be as many and as loud as the voices against is what encourages me,” says Cuevas. “Because for a long time, particularly in the recent past, the voices promoting hate were much louder and got much more attention. And I think that's hopefully starting to change.”
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