Gun Violence is a
Demographic Problem
Joel D. Joseph (Mr. Joseph published NRA: Money, Firepower & Fear in 1992)
In the United States we are experiencing mass shootings at an alarming rate. Most of the perpetrators are males under the age of 25. Salvador Ramos was the 18-year-old gunman who killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022. Ten days earlier, a mass shooting occurred in Buffalo, New York, at a Tops Friendly Markets supermarket. Ten people, all of whom were black, were murdered. The shooter was 18-year-old Payton S. Gendron. The two young men accused of carrying out the massacres in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas followed a familiar path: They legally bought semiautomatic rifles right after turning 18, posted images intended to display their strength and menaceand then turned those weapons on innocent people.
As investigators and researchers determine how the tragedies unfolded, the age of the accused has emerged as a key factor in understanding how teenagers become driven to acquire such deadly firepower and how it led them to mass shootings.
They fit into a critical age rangefrom 15 to 25that law enforcement officials, researchers and policy experts consider a hazardous time period for young men, a time when they are in the throes of developmental changes and societal pressures that can turn them toward violence in general, and, in the rarest cases, mass shootings.
Six of the nine deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 2018 were committed by boys who were 21 or younger.
In addition to Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, there was a mass shooting at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, in March, 2021 that was carried out by a 21-year-old man; a massacre by a 21-year-old gunman targeting Hispanic shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso in August, 2019 resulted in 23 deaths; a school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, in which a 17-year-old student was accused of killing eight students and two teachers in May 2018; and the killing of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018 by a 19-year-old former student.
When Vanderbilt University professor Jonathan Metzl, a psychiatrist, learned that the perpetrator of the Uvalde, Texas school massacre was a young man barely out of adolescence, he pointed to the peculiarities of the maturing male brain. Salvador Rolando Ramos had just turned 18, eerily close in age to Nikolas Cruz, who had been 19 when he shot up a school in Parkland, Florida. And Adam Lanza, 20, when he did the same horrendous shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Similarly, Seung-Hui Cho, 23, killed 32 students at Virginia Tech. Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, murdered 13 students and one teacher in Columbine, Colorado.
Teen and young adult males have long stood out from other subgroups for their impulsive behavior. They are far more reckless and prone to violence than their counterparts in other age groups. Their leading causes of death include fights, accidents, driving too fast, or, as Professor Metzl put it, other impulsive kinds of acts. Theres a lot of research about how their brains are not fully developed in terms of regulation, he said. Perhaps most significantly, studies show, the prefrontal cortex, which is critical to understanding the consequences of ones actions and controlling impulses, does not fully develop until about age 25. In that context, Metzl said, a shooting certainly feels like another kind of performance of young masculinity.
Dr. Frances E. Jensen, M.D., author of The Teenage Brain,said that our brains don't fully develop until we're we're almost 30. The scientific consensus? Most researchers agree that the male brain reaches full maturity somewhere between the ages of 25 and 30. Neurolaunch, September 30, 2024
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