Solving The Mystery Of “Active Killers”

As the number of active shootings increases, clear patterns emerge.

Why would a young man arm himself with a gun or knife, go to an unprotected area full of defenseless strangers, and try to kill as many people as possible, usually including himself? The “Active Killer” — that most modern of criminals — is perhaps the 21st Century equivalent of a medieval werewolf: a core of genuine human violence artificially aggrandized by widespread fear and ignorance.

Sherlock Holmes famously identified three universal attributes of crime: Means, Motive and Opportunity. Unless he had a complete understanding of all three, Holmes did not consider a mystery to be solved. Yet today, the media-driven conversation about Active Killers focuses almost entirely on the Means — usually a firearm — and largely ignores the Motive. The assumption seems to be that each active killer is driven by some unique grudge that makes their act different, frightening, and impossible to understand.

You might call this the “special snowflake” theory of active killing.

The problem with this approach is that, unless we understand WHY a group of people are all doing the same undesirable thing, it is very difficult to stop more people from doing it. It was fascinating, therefore, to read Daniel…