Mass shooting epidemic: Does it reflect a ‘social breakdown’ in America?

On a warm Saturday afternoon in early May, a man with a Nazi tattoo stepped out of a silver sedan and sprayed bullets from an automatic rifle on shoppers at a Texas mall, leaving eight people dead and seven others wounded.

The assailant – identified as Mauricio Garcia, 33 – was shot dead by police within minutes, probably saving many other lives but leaving the country asking more questions about the rising body counts in a chilling rise in mass shootings.

Since the killings, the media has drawn attention to the gunman’s toxic political ideology, his being an “incel” and on the “memory card” on which he left a dark and menacing note. Some others, reminiscent of public response to mass shootings generally, point to his “mental health” issues.

This is all important to look at. No mass shooting is driven solely by one factor. Yet, mass shootings are now common in America; already there have been over 200 this year. What is it about American society that accounts for the high number, not seen anywhere else in the world?

While the public debate over mass shootings revolves around important questions of how dark corners of the internet promote misogyny and white supremacy or about young people unwilling to conform to “family values”, the conversation seldom interrogates American society itself.

Therapist, feminist scholar and activist Harriet Fraad is one among them.

Capitalism for Fraad, or more specifically the kind of society it has produced in the US, is the ultimate cause for the uptick in violence.

Since the 1970s, says Fraad, capitalism has effectively emasculated men–overwhelmingly the main culprits of mass shootings–by denying them the opportunity to be providers for their families. The jobs they used to have, such as factory labour, and which offered this opportunity have been outsourced—to countries where labour is significantly cheaper.

This has led men to feel disposable, helpless, lonely—as if they have no socially meaningful connection to the world, she adds. For men with patriarchal views, This is compounded by the fact that women, also since the ’70s, have increasingly become economically independent. They hold jobs that do not require them to stay with a man who, in more patriarchal times, was the sole earner within a marriage or other intimate relationships.

“When they [men in America] feel disempowered…because their girlfriend left them or if they don’t have one…they can take their power back with a gun,” Fraad tells TRT World.

It’s a toxic view that has been sold to men through countless gun ads such as for the Bushmaster rifle, she says. One of the biggest proponents of even more easier, and legal, access to firearms is the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) and its influential supporters despite the high number of mass shootings.

Even if unfamiliar with such ads, mass shootings in the United States are so often in the news that still one might make the inference that gun violence, among all countries in the world, is highest there. The inference is arguably all the more likely where one considers the relatively easy (and legal) access to firearms in the United States, something the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its influential supporters continue to fight—tooth and nail—to ensure, despite the pronounced number of mass shootings the country sees.

But if we’re talking about per capita gun violence that, specifically, ends with fatalities the United States is not in the lead. According to a recent study it ranks 32nd, among other nations experiencing such violence. Moreover, the United States sees 4.12 gun deaths for every 100,000 people. Far outstripping it is El Salvador, Venezuela and Guatemala—where the rate of gun violence is highest in the world—with 35.5, 32.75 and 28.3 gun deaths, respectively, for every 100,000 people. Neither of the three countries, however, have a mass shooting epidemic.

Does entitlement among white men, the main beneficiaries of America’s longstanding legacy of racism, slavery and colonialism, have anything to do with it?

“The liberal U.S. media,” writes Fraad in a 2017 article on mass shootings, “often blame angry, disempowered white men and their spokespersons for being politically incorrect and boorish. Those media rarely if ever analyse the role of capitalism in denying white men their family wages and the American dream. Capitalism—the profit system—is thereby rendered innocent while angry white workers are deplorably prejudiced.

No doubt it’s important that this not be used to vindicate white men, as the main perpetrators of American mass shootings who—like anyone else responsible for such horrific acts—must be held both morally and legally accountable. Moreover, Fraad’s insight must not be used to downplay what white men from what they too often engage in, namely racist violence that reflects America’s ongoing prejudice and hatred towards non-white people (think Derek Chauvin, the white police officer who murdered George Floyd). That would be to keep such intolerance alive when, in order to achieve a just and compassionate society, it—through activism, policy changes, etc.—must disappear.

If we’re serious about ending mass shooting in America, however, we should be mindful of what Fraad is essentially pointing out: American society, shaped and definite by the “profit system” she identifies, dehumanises people. Within that system people become machines, serving—largely through repetitive and meaningless work—employers who in turn pay them hardly enough to survive. This undermines the possibility of them, for any substantive period of time, undertaking fulfilling work that is self-directed. In the process individuals are not only able to draw from and affirm their distinctive talents, skills and strengths. They are able to collaborate with one another as equals—where none is regarded as “superior” to the other. This is the basis of healthy community, where people can be appreciated and received simply as they are. Outside such community they, as Fraad alludes, feel like nobody.

Sad as this may sound it is also dangerous. For when people feel like nobody they (especially men) are inclined to turn to violence—a destructive means to feel like “somebody”.

By the same token, restricting gun access in America, though key to public safety, shouldn’t provide us much consolation. When people feel worthless long enough they will find, with or without firearms, ways to ruin lives. Mass shootings are but one and their frequency in America has much to do with the shooters being emboldened by many others before them–a view that parallels Malcolm Gladwell’s framing of mass shootings as “scripts”.

Moreover, America will not overcome its mass shooting epidemic until it gets serious about community–where people mutually support and validate one another. Instead of promoting this undermines violence, via mass shootings or otherwise. But under capitalism, where people are constantly dehumanised, community can’t happen. They are likelier to be anxious about their own survival than empathise with their neighbour.

If that sounds like an unhealthy society it’s because it is.

“Social connection,” Fraad told TRT World, “is the basis of all mental health—intimately, connection with friends and relatives, connections with groups, connection with the wider world.”

An important implication, both moral and psychological in character, can be drawn from this: American society needs to become more caring, where people are no longer objects of capitalist exploitation. That’s when mass shootings, along with other forms of unnecessary violence and harm, are likely to disappear.

“All the men,” points outs Fraad, “who shot people up [in American mass shootings] are loners. They don’t have connection.”

On the other hand people, meaningfully integrated and part of community, feel appreciated. They are not inclined to kill—however many guns are around.