Motivations Underlying Mass Acts of Violence

Introduction

In keeping with the intended outcome of this book, relating to mitigating Mass Violence, and managing violent threats in contemporary society, this chapter will address various aspects of Mass Violence. The chapter will also make a strong attempt at providing insight into the various motivations which have been uncovered via research that has been seen to inspire and drive individuals to use mass violence as a way of achieving their wants and desires in our society. When taking the time to break down the various aspects of Mass Violence it appears that the reality of Mass Violence is that there are many different types of motives for mass violence and mass murder as there are individuals who use Mass Violence to commit these horrific acts.

This chapter will also address factors that have been identified over time by researchers that appear to relate to individuals who commit Mass Violence notwithstanding the fact that these individuals are in different geographical locations and from different backgrounds. The following are some of the areas that this chapter will address while attempting to provide some insight into explaining motivations and actions of individuals who commit Mass Violence (Mullen, & Pathé, 2018).

In trying to provide information regarding Mass Violence this chapter will address one of the most common manners in which to perpetrate this phenomenon which is Mass Shootings. There have been mass shootings in our society with more and more frequency since the middle of the 1960’s meaning there has also been Mass Violence being perpetrated by individuals for decades. The chapter will address the fact that the issues of Mass killings can be of a variety of types including family slayings, cult killings, revenge killings, bombing of buildings, and also some being the by-product of other criminal activities. This chapter will further address reasons why the perpetrators indiscriminately kill people in pursuit of a highly personal agenda arising from their own specific social situation and psychopathology from a theoretical perspective (Mullenm, 2004).

The chapter will address the fact that Mass Violence has been on the rise for some time now and the response by law enforcement has been changing year after year based upon the lessons learned from each incident. This phenomenon is influenced by factors such as access to guns, mental illness, the desire for fame, revenge from being bulled, and copycat killing to name a few. However, this chapter will be specifically focusing on what various research scientists cite as being several common and contributing factors such as The Contagious Nature of Mass Murder; The Glorification of Violence in Video Games; and the Need to Act on “red flags” to identify and potentially confine the individuals who commit Mass Violence (Owers, Gomez-Lievano, and Khan et al., 2015).

In the case of Mass Violence the act of Mass Violence resulting in the death of human beings an end goal which is seen as being paramount is the attempt to identified what caused the individuals to perceive what they experience din the manner that they perceived it; to identify as many common triggers (reasons or motivators) for believing there is a need which must be achieved at any cost; to understand the why, the use of Mass Violence is the only method they feel will be successful in satisfying the driving need of the perpetrators, and in the end having a hopeful desire that some form of common indicators, which can be applied to individuals pre-usage of Mass Violence, thus hopefully leading to some percentage of prevention which can possibly be achieved via the results obtained from the study (Collective violence, 2002). It is the authors intent that the information obtained from the data being collected, examined, and presented can assist with addressing issues concerning the perpetrators and the ancillary victims of the Use of Mass Violence in our society.