Rather than investigate the political motivations and terror groups that have often inspired mass shooters, a freelance writer decided it would be easier to simply blame men for the mass shootings that have plagued America over the last few decades.
In a Wednesday Politico article titled “Don’t Blame Mental Illness for Mass Shootings; Blame Men,” freelance journalist Laura Kiesel claims men are to blame for mass shootings because while most mass shooters in the last 35 years were not found to have some serious mental illness, almost all of them were men.
Kiesel cites the Bureau of Justice Statistics claim that 86 percent of domestic violence perpetrators documented in court are men. She also leans heavily on sociologist Eric Madfis’ work. “The male gender-mass shooter connection may stem from cultural standards of how men are expected to react to stress and perceived victimization as compared to women,” Kiesel wrote of Madfis’ work.
Madfis, an associate professor at the criminal justice department at University of Washington-Tacoma, says women usually internalize frustration, while men tend to externalize their emotions via acts of aggression. Madfis is also author of a 2014 journal article that investigated the identities of American mass murderers.
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Kiesel points to an Oxford University study showing women are roughly 40 percent more likely than men to develop mental health conditions, and almost 75 percent more likely than men to have depression. “Given these numbers, that if the propensity to commit gun violence and mass shootings were based largely on mental health or life events, then you would expect women to commit violent attacks at rates similar to, or higher than, men,” she wrote..
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