The globalization of American mass shootings? An assessment of fame-seeking perpetrators and their influence worldwide

ABSTRACT

This study examined fame-seeking mass shooters worldwide who attacked from 1999 to 2022 to identify their profiles, behaviours, influences, and trends. Quantitative analyses revealed many similarities between fame-seeking shooters in the United States and in other countries: compared to other mass shooters, they were more frequently young and more likely to target schools, commit suicide, and kill and injure many victims. Fame-seeking mass shooters who attacked outside the United States appeared more likely to have been influenced by American mass shooters than by perpetrators from all other countries, combined. Findings also showed a substantial rise in the number of fame-seeking shooters over time, along with increases in the proportion of mass shooters who sought fame and the average number of victims they killed. We discuss the implications of these disturbing trends and offer an assessment for the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Mass shootings
• fame-seeking
• role-modelling
• international mass violence
• global homicide comparisons

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. We studied perpetrators who attacked from April 20, 1999 to June 1, 2022. The start date reflects when the infamous Columbine school shooting occurred; the end date reflects the point when we completed the data collection for this study.

2. Readers are encouraged to consult these studies if they are interested in the specific definitions and research designs each one used.

3. Lankford (2016b) also provided an initial list of six fame-seeking shooters who attacked outside the United States.

4. While the evidence of long terms effects is essentially indisputable, the evidence of short-term effects is less clear. Some researchers suggest that attacks increase the likelihood of other attacks within days or weeks (Kissner, 2016; Towers et al., 2015), while other researchers question those claims (Fox, Sanders, et al., 2021; Lankford & Tomek, 2018).

5. The 36 developed countries include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States.

6. There was no missing data for incident location or fatalities. In one incident, the perpetrator’s resolution could not be determined. There was some missing data for injuries (n = 2) and age (n = 34). The missing data all involved cases in developing countries and none of the shooters appear to have been fame-seeking.

7. We cross-referenced The Violence Project’s data on ideological motives with information from Silva’s (2022b) study of ideologically motivated mass shooters to ensure the most complete and accurate inclusion of this variable.

8. Perpetrators were not automatically coded as fame-seeking merely because they had ideological motives. It is possible to be ideologically motivated and mission-oriented or want to kill perceived enemies as a hate crime without also wanting fame or attention.

9. Although fame-seekers were more likely than other mass shooters to claim they were fighting for an ideological cause in both the United States and in other countries, this difference only reached statistical significance outside the United States.

10. On a per capita basis, the U.S. share of fame-seeking mass shooters is highly disproportionate, because the United States has less than five percent of the global population.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported (in part) by a Summer Stipend from the Research Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences at William Paterson University

Notes on contributors

Jason R. Silva

Jason R. Silva is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at William Paterson University. His research examines mass shootings, terrorism, and mass media. Silva’s recent publications have appeared in Justice Quarterly, Homicide Studies, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Aggression & Violent Behavior, and American Journal of Criminal Justice.

Adam Lankford

Adam Lankford is a Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at The University of Alabama. He is the author of two books and many peer-reviewed journal articles on mass shootings, mass murder, terrorism, and other criminal behavior. His research has been cited by every major media outlet in the United States and international media from more than 40 countries.