Op-Ed: Why mass shootings stopped in 2020 — and why they are now roaring back (via latimesopinion)
, have come roaring back. On Monday, a gunman opened fire at a grocery store in Boulder, Colo., killing 10. And this comes on the heels of the Atlanta spa attacks last week that killed eight.
These kinds of “why” questions are, of course, the hardest ones to answer. But a key factor in why there were no mass shootings that met our definition for about a year, between March 2020 and March 2021, was the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the settings where mass shootings typically occur — workplaces, schools, churches, shopping centers — had either shut down or sharply reduced their capacity.
We can only say mental illness played a direct role in a mass shooting if the perpetrator was experiencing symptoms when planning and committing the crime, and if those symptoms influenced the decision to act. One key factor we’ve found in mass shootings is that the perpetrators study other mass shooters for models of behavior, which is why such tragedies tend to cluster as they did in the last week.