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Mass Shootings Are Increasing, Becoming Deadlier, and 13% Are Targeting Minorities

May 16, 2022 | FlaglerLive | 8 Comments

Racial hatred is a factor in 13% of mass shootings at grocery stores. John
Racial hatred is a factor in 13% of mass shootings at grocery stores. (John Normile/Getty Images)

By Jillian Peterson and James Densley

An apparently racially motivated attack at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, resulted in 10 deaths on May 14, 2022, with the teenage suspect allegedly targeting Black shoppers in a prominently African American neighborhood.




Mass public shootings in which four or more people are killed have become more frequent, and deadly, in the last decade. And the tragedy in Buffalo is the latest in a recent trend of mass public shootings taking place in retail establishments.

We are criminologists who study the life histories of public mass shooters in the United States. Since 2017, we have conducted dozens of interviews with incarcerated perpetrators and people who knew them. We also built a comprehensive database of mass public shootings using public data, with the shooters coded on over 200 different variables, including location and racial profile.

What do we know about supermarket mass shootings?

Only one shooting in our database prior to 2019 took place at a supermarket. In 1999, a 23-year-old white male with a history of criminal violence killed four people at a supermarket in Las Vegas. However, there has been a raft of mass shootings at American supermarkets since.
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The Buffalo shooting on May 14, 2022, is similar to an August 2019 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. On that occasion, the 21-year-old white suspect posted a racist rant on social media before allegedly driving some distance to intentionally target racial and ethnic minority shoppers. He has been charged with killing 23 people.

Another shooting in 2019 took place at a Kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey. Two perpetrators, a man and woman, both Black and around the age of 50 with a criminal and violent history, murdered four people before being killed in a shootout with police. Social media posts and a note left behind indicated an antisemitic motive.

Then in March 2021, a 21-year-old man of Middle Eastern descent with a history of paranoid and anti-social behavior entered a King Soopers in Boulder, Colorado, and shot dead 10 people. Six months later, in September 2021, a 29-year-old Asian man killed one person and injured 13 others at a Kroger supermarket in Tennessee. The perpetrator, who worked at the store, was asked to leave his job that morning. He died by suicide before the police arrived on the scene.

No one profile of a retail shooter

Mass shootings are socially contagious. Perpetrators study other perpetrators and learn from each other, which may explain the rise in supermarket shootings in the past few years. However, the data shows there is no one profile of a supermarket mass shooter.

Racial hatred is a feature of about 10% of all mass public shootings in our database. Our analysis suggests that when it comes to retail shooters, around 13% are driven by racism – so slightly above the average for all mass shooting events.

Some grocery stores by their nature may be frequented predominantly by one racial group – for example, Asian markets that cater to local Asian communities.

But racial hatred appears to be just one of many motivations cited by retail shooters. Our data points to a range of factors, including the suspect’s own economic issues (16%), confrontation with employees or shoppers (22%), or psychosis (31%). But the most common motivation among retail shooters is unknown (34%).




Like the Buffalo shooter, 22% of perpetrators of retail mass shootings left behind something to be found, a “manifesto” or video to share their grievances with the world. And nearly half of them leaked their plans ahead of time, typically on social media.

The lack of a consistent profile doesn’t leave us helpless. Our research suggests many strategies to prevent mass shootings – from behavioral threat assessment to restricting access to firearms for high-risk people. And the way to stop the social contagion of mass shootings is to stop providing perpetrators with the fame and notoriety they seek.

Jillian Peterson is Professor of Criminal Justice at Hamline University. James Densley is Professor of Criminal Justice at Metropolitan State University


The Conversation arose out of deep-seated concerns for the fading quality of our public discourse and recognition of the vital role that academic experts could play in the public arena. Information has always been essential to democracy. It’s a societal good, like clean water. But many now find it difficult to put their trust in the media and experts who have spent years researching a topic. Instead, they listen to those who have the loudest voices. Those uninformed views are amplified by social media networks that reward those who spark outrage instead of insight or thoughtful discussion. The Conversation seeks to be part of the solution to this problem, to raise up the voices of true experts and to make their knowledge available to everyone. The Conversation publishes nightly at 9 p.m. on FlaglerLive.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jimbo99 says

    May 17, 2022 at 1:09 am

    Biden’s America ? Building Back Better in action.

    Reply
    • Southern man says

      May 17, 2022 at 8:53 pm

      You can’t fix stupid.

      Reply
    • The dude says

      May 18, 2022 at 8:54 am

      Yes Jimbo,
      It was President Biden that fostered and cultivated a culture of gun loving, brown skin hating, right wing virtue-signaling culture warriors.

      You’re on to us.

      Reply
    • joe says

      May 18, 2022 at 3:15 pm

      No – your simplistic ignorance is evident.

      Reply
  2. Dennis C Rathsam says

    May 17, 2022 at 6:59 am

    Its time we focused on mentality, and the lack of treatment for all this sick people. New York has the strickest gun laws,of any state. How did he pass a background check? Where were the police? They knew all about this boy & his troubled past. The pandemic has made many folks think differently, and act crazy. The internet was this boys only salvation…The darkside, on line preditors, They controled this boy, they swallowed him whole, then they spit him out, radically changed forever. I feel sorry for the poor folks that died. They deserved better. May god bless them,and grant them a place in heaven.

    Reply
  3. Townie says

    May 17, 2022 at 6:59 pm

    Where are all the white fathers to stop all the white mass shooters???

    Reply
  4. A.j says

    May 17, 2022 at 7:41 pm

    Sad but common. For eons Whites hsve always murdered people of color. Blacks especially men hsve always been targets of the white man. The Kkk years. The lynching years. Now modern lynching, Brunswick GA. and more. White cops shooting and killing unarmed black men. Usually the common denominator is white men killing people especially black men. Whie men can get guns more than people of color. They kill I believe they know the cops will treat them angles. I can go on and on. This will continue because thus country hate people of color . These young men will continue to kill because they go to prison and live. White evangelist say this country was founded on Godly Principles. Give me a break this is a way to justify the white man killing.

    Reply
  5. Joe says

    May 23, 2022 at 7:52 am

    The headline is misleading. “Mass Shootings Are Increasing, Becoming Deadlier, and 13% Are Targeting Minorities”. So, who is targeted the other 87%?

    Reply
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