U.S. mass attacks often sparked by personal, workplace grievances, report suggests

As the US reels from a week of high-profile shootings, new reports on mass attacks seen in the nation over five years highlight the connection between domestic violence, misogyny and shootings.

The 70-page report, issued Wednesday by the Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center, examined 173 incidents in which three or more people were injured. The attacks targeted workplaces, schools, religious institutions and public transport, among other locations, killing 513 people and injuring 1,234 others.

The report urges communities to intervene early when they see warning signs of violence and encourages businesses to consider workplace violence prevention plans.

It was launched as the US experienced a start to the new year that left 39 people dead in six mass murders, including one this week in Monterey Park, California, where 11 people died in a dance hall welcoming the event. Chinese New Year.

“This is only too often,” said Lina Alathari, director of the center, during a press conference before the release of the report.

The perpetrators are many people

The center defines a mass attack as an attack where three or more — not including the attacker — are injured. Almost all attacks were carried out by one person, 96 percent of the attackers were men and the attackers ranged in age from 14 to 87, with an average age of 34. In 73 percent of the incidents, some type of firearm was used.

While the center said it found that a quarter of the attackers had subscribed to a belief system involving a conspiracy or a hateful ideology, including antisemitic or anti-government views, half of the attackers were driven by more specific grievances and “revenge for mistakes related to personal problems, domestic or workplace.”

The report notes that nearly two-thirds of attackers exhibit behaviors or communications “that are so important that they should be responded to quickly.” But in a fifth of the cases, the behavior in question was not transmitted to anyone “in a position to respond, indicating the need to continue to promote and facilitate the reporting of the audience.”

The report also calls for greater attention to domestic violence and misogyny, noting that 41 percent of attackers “were found to have a history of engaging in at least one incident of domestic violence.”

“While not all misogynist views are violent, viewpoints that depict women as enemies or call for violence against women remain a cause for concern,” the report said.

About half of the attacks in the study involved the location of the business, and the attacker often had a previous relationship with the business, as an employee, customer or former employer.

The weekend attack in San Mateo County in California, for example, involved an agricultural worker who killed seven people on the farm where he worked, police said.

A small percentage of US gun deaths overall

While mass shootings often receive a great deal of attention in broadcast news media coverage, they account for a small percentage of the human toll seen each year from gun violence.

The Gun Violence Archive, an online database of incidents in the US that defines mass shootings as those in which four or more people are shot, recorded 513 deaths from such incidents in 2020.

That number is less than the number of accidental gun deaths (535) and gun deaths involving law enforcement (611) in the same year, according to separate tracking by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The total number of gun deaths from homicides in 2020 was 19,384 people, per the CDC, with more deaths due to gun-related suicides (24,292).

There were 13.6 gun deaths per 100,000 Americans in 2020, a higher rate than other Western countries, which have more restrictions on firearms ownership.

In comparison, Canada sees its highest per capita homicide rate in 16 years in 2021, with a rate of 2.06 homicides per 100,000 population. The figures, compiled by Statistics Canada, include all homicides, including 60 per cent that are not firearm-related.

Until the pandemic, gun deaths per capita in the US were lower than in the 1970s and early ’90s. In 1974, there were 16.3 gun deaths per 100,000, a modern high mark.

Lawmakers remain divided on the solution, with Democrats calling for more gun control measures while Republicans focus on mental health and increased safety.

Joe Biden’s administration passed the most important gun control legislation in decades last summer after the mass shootings in Buffalo, NY, and Uvalde, Texas. But the bill does not include an assault weapons ban.

Biden on Tuesday again called on lawmakers to consider banning assault weapons after the California shooting.