Toxic Avengers

motive behind a mass shooting is often difficult. Shooters tend to be driven by a poisonous blend of entrenched grievances, personal setbacks,’ in-depth database of public mass shootings reveals a stark pattern of misogyny and domestic violence among many attackers. This link is already well known in cases where men gun down intimate partners and other family members in their homes. We found that in at least 22 mass shootings since 2011—more than a third of the public attacks in the past eight years—shooters reportedly had a history of domestic violence, specifically targeted women, or had stalked and harassed women. The shootings included the recent massacres at an Orlando nightclub and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. (We did not include the 2017 concert massacre on the Las Vegas Strip, though the perpetrator had reportedly verbally abused his girlfriend in public.) In a couple of cases, the attackers bore the hallmarks of so-called incels: virulent misogynists who self-identify as “involuntarily celibate,” an online subculture that gained notice following Elliot Rodger’s 2014 deadly shooting spree in Southern California.