What makes a mass shooting stand out to you?

What is it that makes you more interested in a mass shooting over another one? What makes a mass shooting stand out to you, or just a murder in general.

What makes a mass shooting stand out to me is the perpetrator(s).

PotholeAbyss wrote:

What makes a mass shooting stand out to me is the perpetrator(s).

What is it about certain perpetrators that makes them interesting?

I think for me I was a pre-law student in undergrad so if there’s any kind of trial especially if it’s a mass shooting I’m extremely interested in learning about that. I’m watching the James Holmes trial right now on YouTube. And I’m actually really interested in Nikolas Cruz’s trial. I’m really interested in the psychology behind it and hearing from them and people who knew them personally.

OK so my words are going to sound odd, but a compelling perpetrator is interesting. I can’t really stomach learning about Sandy Hook because the kids were so young. However Virginia tech is a shooting i never looked into because Cho holds no interest to me. Elliot Rodgers just annoys the crap out of me. So I don’t really look into that, I just find it really sad tragedy perpetuated by a murderous jerk.....

Now Eric and Dylan have captured my interest for the better part of 19 years. Why? I can only tell you how I about my thought process. First off I was 17 and a senior in high school when it happened. I was an angry kid who was ostracized and bullied. And when I was 17 and I saw their pictures on screen I wondered how these two normal kids who were pretty nice looking could have the same ages me. However I just hurt myself and cried a lot. Kept all my anger in.

The media painted a very compelling narrative. It was also the first time a news story ever interested me . I also met a lot of people who were also interested in the case so I had some sort of social network, people to talk to. Also everyone seemed to have a story, it was a case for you could very well have empathy for the two perpetrators as well as the 13 victims. And the 13 victims all had these amazing interesting stories and they felt like they could be your friends or your teacher. there so much speculation so much we still don’t know.

It always surprises me to hear about Eric and Dylan in school and how 2 guys who just pretty much played Doom all day could capture peoples interest for so long. They’re actually pretty brilliant in that way.


And I promise you guys so much when I say this I am not going into fan girl land. However would you agree that on a whole cases whether it is a male or female perpetrator the better looking ones get more attention and more interest for longer? Do you think if Casey Anthony wasn’t at least a bit cute people would be talking about it nowadays? Anyone still talking about Susan Smith?

For me it is the person's reason for doing it. What their motivations were. What led them to believe murder was the only answer, trying to pinpoint what put them on the path they decided on, etc.

But only a select few have caught my attention in a long term way. Those being Timothy McVeigh and Columbine. I'm vaguely interested in the Nikolas Cruz case, but mostly from a standpoint of "HOW IN THE FUCK WAS THIS KID OVERLOOKED!?" type of way. I want to see how his case unfolds given all the gun control issues that arose following his attack.

What makes a mass shooting stand out to me is also what makes me feel a little guilty sometimes, because it is a lot about the killers themselves, and how "successful" their attack was and so I feel guilty for giving them too much credit whereas I should focus on the victims.

What makes me interested in a mass shooting is usually the number of victims. In fact I am not interested in serial killers, and I agree with Lanza when he wrote "Everyone know that mass murderers are the cool kids." Mass murderders usually want to die, and I am fascinated with the fact that their (intended) last moment is that epic, almost like in a movie, and a huge one finger salute to the society and to the world. Even if I would always condemn mass shooters, I can't help but think some kind of admiration when I imagine them that powerful during the attack (and yet I know without the gun they are nothing) and people running out of fear.

Then I need to feel some kind of sympathy, or at least to be able to understand a little the killer. I need to know how he thought. Thus the amount of information about him, especially things he wrote, or movies/music he liked is very important to me. This is why I am fascinated with Columbine, or Adam Lanza (we don't have a lot but reading his posts on a forum was enough for me to be interested in him). I can even put myself in the shoes of Dylann Roof because he had my age when he did it, but I cannot understand Stephen Paddock at all, so I am a little interested in the Las Vegas shooting because it was a very impressive attack, but I don't really care about the shooter. It is stupid but knowing that the shooter was a movie fan is a bonus to me because I am a film-lover too, and so I love to see what they loved. Dylann Roof listed his favorite movies in prison, and he even remembered many dates. Adam Lanza listed his top 25. Eric and Dylan liked movies too.

And finally, I don't really care about the reasons they did it. I don't need a reason, usually the more political it gets the less I am interested. I am interested in McVeigh and Roof because of them personally, but I would never be interested in islamic terrorists because it is something that scares and horrifies me so much that I cannot feel emotions at all for the terrorists. I don't even see them as people like me.

Columbine stands out because it was two people and two suicides.

A murder-suicide done by a lone male attacker is a relatively common, well known and understood phenomenon (from a psychology point of view), especially in a domestic setting.

To have two people jointly conspire and plan mass-murder-suicide (one without clearly religious or political terrorism background)... that's an entirely different psychological dynamic at work. Not a very well understood one at that.

Other I took note of is the Czech 1973 "spree killing by truck" and the Grover Cleveland Elementary School shooting. Both commited by female assilants with no religious or political motives. Female spree killers are also not very well understood and there's no psychological consensus over the inner mechanism that makes women commit spree killings (unlike with men, these almost never end in suicide).

Population Control wrote:

PotholeAbyss wrote:

What makes a mass shooting stand out to me is the perpetrator(s).

What is it about certain perpetrators that makes them interesting?

How the perpetrator(s) behaved, their memories, how they planned their attacks and their interests.

Derrick Bird's 2010 rampage stands out because it happend in England, a country where mass shootings are very rare, and i remember the day it happend and seeing it on the BBC news. Any shooting in the USA is no suprise at all now.

Sabratha wrote:

Columbine stands out because it was two people and two suicides.

Yeah, I can imagine someone deciding to do a mass shooting. But two people is surprising, how did they first mentioned the plan? Was it one of them saying half joking half seriously "I want to kill them all!"? How do you know if the other won't think you're crazy? I would love to travel in the past and hear Eric and Dylan's first discussion about NBK.

And for the suicide, I don't think I would be able to shoot myself up once I saw the head of my friend exploding with all the blood and brain everywhere. But when you killed so many people and your best friend killed himself you probably cannot go back. Dylan's last moments must have been awful.

Ziamber II wrote:

Derrick Bird's 2010 rampage stands out because it happend in England, a country where mass shootings are very rare, and i remember the day it happend and seeing it on the BBC news. Any shooting in the USA is no suprise at all now.

Do you count terrorist attacks as the kind of mass shooting you are interested in? Because I think in Europe we have mass shootings due to ISIS, almost never due to troubled individuals like in the US. I guess it is due to gun control. Weirdly, terrorist attacks don't fascinate me at all, it scares me a lot. I saw on this forum a poll about the most famous mass shooters outside the US, and there were those in the Paris attack. I never thought of them as mass shooters (although they obviously are). In Britain terrorist mass murderers seem to use bombs, not really firearms. Maybe it is because it is harder to get illegal weapons?

To me it's the reason and psychology behind the attack. It is interesting to understand how they attempt to justify it to themselves... if they do it very poorly I lose interest in the case.

munchkinphone wrote:

To me it's the reason and psychology behind the attack. It is interesting to understand how they attempt to justify it to themselves... if they do it very poorly I lose interest in the case.

I see you have a lot of demands! Potential future mass shooters, you know how to satisfy us!

I think the perpetrators themselves is what makes a mass shooting stands out to me, particularly school shooters

I've thought about this question a lot, and I have to answer that I'm not really sure. The shootings I hold the most interest in are (in no particular order) Columbine, Parkland, Aztec High, Sandy Hook, and to a much lesser extant Virginia Tech, Isla Vista, and the University of Texas tower shooting. Aztec High I can explain, since that was committed by William, a person who I felt was very similar to myself, but the rest, I'm not sure where my interest stems from.

The reliability of the perpetrator and the specific details of the shooting.