> mass shootings only started happening a few decades ago There are instances of people running amok with firearms in the early 20th and 19th centuries: > On

> mass shootings only started happening a few decades ago There are instances of people running amok with firearms in the early 20th and 19th centuries: > On August 13, 1903 [in Winfield, Kansas], 30-year-old Gilbert Twigg, armed with a 12-gauge double-barrelled shotgun, opened fire at a concert, killing six people and wounding at least 25, before killing himself. Three others died in hospitals afterward. If we allow for clubs and knives alongside firearms, I'm fairly sure the phenomenon has happened since the beginning of time. It was certainly rarer in the past. High-powered firearms were less common. And I think the very idea was simply less common. I suspect it's a mimetic virus, basically, a type of social contagion. They need to be an angry sociopath to begin with. And then they need the idea planted in their head. And it needs to be re-enforced repeatedly, a chain of thought that becomes inhabited in their minds, until it becomes realized. The pattern of media coverage, outrage, and social modification in response (metal detectors in schools, etc.) is doing that re-enforcement. A shooter's face will be in the media, they will be the most hated person in their immediate community for the rest of living memory, and they will be the most hated figure nationally for about 15 minutes. The victim community might even be so terrified as to modify the law and policies at schools because of it. If there's any emotion that could sum up the motivation for the average spree killing, it's a generalized revenge on society. Those reactions are rewarding to someone who is seeking revenge; they made their impact.