People pay their respects at a memorial on the steps of the Town Hall in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., on Saturday.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
After a tragedy like last week’s shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., we want to make sense of the senselessness. We want to know why it happened.
Were the shootings preventable? Were there warning signs? Who can we blame?
We want answers and explanations – and the faster and more straightforward, the better.
In the social-media age, simplistic answers come fast and furious. Before the blood had even dried on the floors of Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, all manner of purported explanations had been put forward. The shooter suffered from mental illness, or their transgender identity was to blame; others blamed bullying, a broken family, easy access to guns, violent video games, the disaffection of youth, and much more. There were more theories than you can shake a stick at.
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While school shootings, and mass shootings more generally, are relatively rare, especially in Canada, they are frequent enough that we have a trove of data.
There have been 510 mass shootings since 1966 in the U.S. alone – including 141 in workplaces, and 112 in schools; 1,728 people have been killed and 2,700 injured in these incidents, according to the Rockefeller Institute of Governance.
An analysis of data from these hundreds of incidents provides a clearer picture of who mass shooters tend be: On average, relatively young white men with easy access to guns.
But averages obscure the fact that killers come in all shapes and sizes.
Their motives are equally varied – if they are ever known at all – but, again, research shows there are clear patterns.
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First and foremost, there is rarely a single primary motivation for a person to go on a rampage. Typically, there are a combination of factors, including (but not limited to) mental illness, a history of trauma and bullying, a desire for revenge, and suicidality.
In the case of Jesse Van Rootselaar, identified as the Tumbler Ridge shooter, reports suggest that many of those factors were present.
But what was the trigger that sent her over the edge on Feb. 10? We will likely never know.
What we do know, however, is that almost everyone who commits a school shooting is suffering a mental-health crisis – 92 to 100 per cent of shooters, according to one study.
Almost all shooters also have a long history of trauma, or adverse childhood events. Witnessing or being subjected to violence, neglect, parental separation or divorce, housing instability, discrimination and bullying are all examples of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that can be triggers. The Tumbler Ridge shooter appeared to have experienced many.
The complicating factor here is that while many children and youth experience ACEs and/or mental illness, very few become violent. The vast majority of kids are incredibly resilient.
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Why do some people become a powder keg? And why do some of them explode in violence? We really don’t know.
But our growing understanding of the common traits of mass shooters should remind us that there are still opportunities for preventing these deadly tragedies.
Society certainly can’t go wrong by offering better mental-health care, especially to young people, and those who are most severely ill.
We know that the shooter had a history of mental illness. Family members said that she had high-functioning autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, deep depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
She was also hospitalized involuntarily on more than one occasion, an indication of severe mental illness. But there is little indication of follow-up care after hospitalization.
Police had been to the family’s home often. But why do we expect cops to be social workers in addition to crime fighters?
Another obvious opportunity for prevention is making it more difficult to access guns. Yet, most gun owners use them responsibly.
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In the Tumbler Ridge case, guns had been seized from the shooter’s home, but they were returned weeks before the mass killing. One was unregistered and had never been seized. Was this a contributing factor?
We have to be careful to not become enamoured with dubious theories, too. For example, there is little evidence that playing violent video games, as the Tumbler Ridge shooter allegedly did, translates into real-life violence. Nor does being transgender predispose someone to murderous intentions.
Much more impactful is a person’s real-life environment: living in poverty, witnessing domestic abuse, not going to school.
Similarly, while there are many disaffected youth – often for good reason – an infinitesimal number commit mass murder.
At the Tumbler Ridge vigil, B.C. Premier David Eby vowed to “get all the answers.” That’s unlikely. But studying this horrific event thoughtfully can certainly provide clues on how to prevent future tragedies – if we’re willing to learn, and act.