Mass Public Shootings in Neoliberal America

Why have mass public shootings in the United States become more frequent and lethal over the last two decades? This question cannot be answered by looking exclusively at the biographies, personalities, or mental health problems of individual shooters. Instead, to paraphrase C. Wright Mills, human behavior is never self-contained and must be understood at the intersection between the personal and social realms. Employing a sociological perspective and drawing from various data sources and case studies, this book offers a theoretical analysis of mass public shootings and the structural factors that drive these incidents. Our analysis highlights how neoliberalism—not simply as a set of pro-market policies but as an ideology and governing rationality—is linked to the mass shooting phenomenon in the United States.

Since the late twentieth century, neoliberalism has not only heightened economic precarity and feelings of despair but also encouraged ruthlessness, ideological extremism, and the prioritization of personal aims over others’ well-being. These tendencies have been amplified by digital technologies that encourage social isolation and egoistical forms of agency, all of which weaken social bonds, erode empathy, and drive some individuals to kill as an effort to seek respect and recognition—what the classical Greeks called “thymos”—in a society that strips them of their dignity and makes them feel devalued and irrelevant.

This book will be an appropriate and useful supplementary text for various types of courses within sociology, criminology, and other social sciences that look at the social dimension of violence. In addition, the book should be of interest to a wider, nonacademic audience that seeks a data-driven, sociological analysis of this phenomenon that is written in clear, accessible language.