“Therecession in the early 1990s “saw a dramatic increase in workplaceviolence committed by vengeful ex-workers who decided to come back andget even with their boss and their co-workers through the barrel of anAK-47.”
Four Oakland, Calif., police officersshot down. An Alabama man strolling a small town with a rifle, lookingfor victims. Seven elderly people shot dead at a North Carolina nursinghome. And on Sunday, six people, including four kids, died in anapparent murder-suicide in an upscale neighborhood in Santa Clara, Calif.
The details in all these cases are still emerging. In most, the exact motive has yet to be determined – or may never be fully understood.
Ona broader level, however, such incidents may be happening more oftenbecause an increasing number of Americans feel desperate pressure fromjob losses and other economic hardship, criminologists say.
“Mostof these mass killings are precipitated by some catastrophic loss, andwhen the economy goes south, there are simply more of these losses,”says Jack Levin, a noted criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston.
Direct correlation between economic cycles and homicides isdifficult to prove, cautions Shawn Bushway, a criminologist at theUniversity at Albany in New York. But an economic downturn of thisbreadth and depth hasn’t been seen since data began to be collectedafter World War II, he also points out. “This is not the averagesituation,” Mr. Bushway says.
Still, criminologists do say that certain kindsof violent crimes have risen during specific economic downturns. Therecession in the early 1990s “saw a dramatic increase in workplaceviolence committed by vengeful ex-workers who decided to come back andget even with their boss and their co-workers through the barrel of anAK-47,” Mr. Levin says.
And in the midst of this downturn, one studyreleased Monday in Florida finds a link between domestic violence andeconomic tragedies like job loss and foreclosures. The Sunshine Statesaw an almost 40 percent jump in demand for domestic-violence centers,an increase related to the state of the economy, the study says. GeorgeSheldon, secretary of Florida’s Department of Children and Families,calls the situation “the worst I’ve seen in years,” according to theAssociated Press.
The potential link between murder-suicides andthe economy is an area of study for the Violence Policy Center inWashington. “We’ve been looking at this issue of whether there are moremurder-suicides … [and] a pattern is starting to develop that may pointin that direction,” says Kristen Rand, legislative director at thecenter. “Between the Texas Tower shootings in the 1960s until theMcDonald’s massacre in 1984, it was extremely rare to see these typesof mass shootings. Now we’re seeing them much more often, and they doseem to happen in spurts.”
To be sure, the gun-control debate is heatingup, especially after the recent Alabama shootings where a man killed 11people, including himself, using semiautomatic, military-style weapons.Gun-control advocates point to gun proliferation as a major cause forthe loss of life, especially when families turn on themselves. Thatappears to be the case in the Santa Clara shootings.
“Studies have shown over and over again that agun in the home is more likely to be used against a family member thanan intruder,” says Juliet Leftwich, senior counsel for Legal CommunityAgainst Violence in San Francisco.
But the root cause of the violence goes deeperthan gun ownership, some argue. “Social isolation is a huge factor” ina country as large and transient as America, which places big emphasison personal results, Levin says. “If you look at where many of thesemass killings have occurred lately, they’re in states that have lots ofstrangers, transients, and drifters, who don’t have support systems toget them through tough times,” he says.
In the incident in Oakland, which occurred March21, a parolee shot two officers during a traffic stop, then shot twoothers during an ensuing manhunt. The parolee also died. It was thebiggest single-day, gun-related loss of life for law enforcement in theUS since 1993.
The shootings at the nursing home occurred Sunday. Chris McKenzie, police chief in Carthage, N.C., said the gunman, who was killed, may have targeted the home because his estranged wife works there. Source