The two young men accused of committing the massacres in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, followed a familiar path: they legally purchased semi-automatic rifles shortly after turning 18, posted images intended to show their strength, and then used those weapons. against innocent people.
As investigators and investigators determine how the tragedies unfolded, the age of the accused has emerged as a key factor in understanding how two teenagers were tricked into acquiring such deadly firepower and how it led them to engage in slaughter.
They fall into a critical age group — 15 to 25 years — which experts consider a dangerous crossroads for men, a period when they are subject to developmental changes and societal pressures that can lead to violence in general.
Six of the nine deadliest shootings in the United States since 2018 were committed by people aged 21 and under, representing a shift from attacks that prior to 2000 were more often carried out by men in their 20s, 30s and 40s. “When it comes to mass shooters, there are people in their 40s who attack in the workplace, and a very large group of young people who seem swept up in the social contagion of the killing,” says Jillian Peterson, a professor of criminal justice who helped found the Violence Project.
There is no single, easy explanation for the greater tendency of boys to commit attacks – girls and women represent a small percentage of perpetrators. But many of the most frequently cited seem intuitive — online bullying, the increasingly aggressive marketing of guns to boys, lax state laws and federal statutes that make it legal to buy a semiautomatic gun at age 18.
The attacks come against a backdrop of a worsening teen mental health crisis, which predated the pandemic but was intensified by it. Much of the despair in this group was directed inward, with rising rates of self-harm and suicide. In this sense, perpetrators of shootings represent a radical minority, but one that exemplifies broader trends of loneliness, hopelessness and the darker side of a culture saturated by social media and violent content.
In addition to Buffalo and Uvalde, there was an action at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, in March 2021 that police said was carried out by a 21-year-old man; a massacre by a 21-year-old man against Hispanic shoppers at a supermarket in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019, with 23 deaths; one at a school in Santa Fe, Texas, in which a 17-year-old student was accused of killing eight students and two teachers in May 2018; and the February 2018 murder of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida by a 19-year-old former student.
Only 2 of the 30 deadliest shootings recorded from 1949 to 2017 involved gunmen under the age of 21: the massacre of 13 people by two teenagers at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999; and when a 20-year-old killed 27 people, mostly children, at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.
The Day 1 attack in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with four dead in a hospital, defied recent patterns: Police said they believed the gunman, who was not identified, was between 35 and 40 years old.
Frank T. McAndrew, a professor of psychology at Knox College, says that nearly every young murderer he’s researched has been motivated by the need to prove himself. “They feel like losers and have an overwhelming urge to show they’re not down,” he says. “Since Columbine they tend to study and imitate each other. It’s a growing problem.”
In almost all cases, social networks or online gaming platforms played some role. A 22-year-old college student who murdered six people in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 2014 offered one of the most direct expressions of a gunman’s mindset in a video posted to YouTube: The gun gave him a sense of power, he said.
The Buffalo shooter, mimicking the 28-year-old terrorist who massacred 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand, three years ago, went live on the internet while killing shoppers because they were black. The man accused of the Uvalde murders used Yubo to share threatening messages in which he appeared to telegraph his plans.
In addition to the social network, there is a biological component. Scientists have long known that the period of adolescence is critical for brain development and, for most, is often characterized by aggressive and impulsive behavior. Girls of the same age, by comparison, have greater control over their impulses and emotions.
Overall, boys and young men account for half of all homicides involving firearms, or any other weapon, in the entire US, a percentage that is steadily increasing.
Mass attacks, involving the death of more than four people, are rare; on the Buffalo and Uvalde scale, with more than ten victims, they are even less common. Of all actions in the country, 99% involve fewer victims, are the result of crimes or personal disputes and are motivated by drugs, gang conflicts and domestic violence, according to statistics compiled by the federal government and academics.
Laurence Steinberg, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Temple University, has worked extensively on issues related to adolescent brain development and has addressed the disproportionate number of crimes committed by men in their early twenties and under.
The explanation, he says, includes the increasingly well-understood neurobiology of adolescence. At this stage, a “huge mismatch” develops between the parts of the brain that cause impulsive behavior and emotional sensitivity and other parts that regulate the physical manifestation of these impulses. Men, he adds, typically tend to have an even higher and faster peak of arousal, while women see a higher peak of regulation at an earlier age — and therefore “at all ages, men seek more sensation.” “.
The height of this incompatibility tends to be in the late teens. “Regulatory systems begin to follow impulses, and there is a gradual improvement in the ability to control thoughts, emotions and behavior that occurs in the early 20s,” says Steinberg.
However, what differentiates mass murderers from other young people who do not follow these impulses is difficult to define and even more difficult to combat — not least because most young people with mental disorders, even serious ones, never commit acts of violence.
Republican politicians, defying calls from Democrats for tighter gun controls, have scrambled to improve school safety and modernize mental health services in the wake of the recent massacres. Conservatives are also resisting efforts by congressional Democrats to raise the legal age for buying semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21.
