Mass Shootings and the Failure of Empathy

We can divide criminal or antisocial actions into two broad categories: failures of empathy and means to an end. Doing so allows us to better see how our everyday actions affect others.

Classifying Mass Shootings

As I write these words, nine days have passed since a mass shooting at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado. As you read these words, it’s likely another mass shooting has occurred during the previous two weeks.

Once again, the media will offer one of many possible explanations for why this person has committed these mass murders: racism, xenophobia, sudden rage, psychosis, psychopathy. But all of these explanations boil down to a failure of empathy. In essence, a mass shooter somehow believes that his potential victims are less than human and don’t deserve to be recognized as beings with needs and desires comparable to his own.

Failure of Empathy vs. Means to an End

In contrast, there are other violent crimes that serve as the means to an end. Take, for example, murder committed for power (such as removing a political adversary), for money or commercial advantage (as in a drug war), or for love/lust/desire (perhaps as revenge for adultery). Certainly, each of these acts involves a failure of empathy, but the perpetrators are driven primarily to satisfy a particular need.

This failure of empathy is part of what makes mass shootings so unsettling and why they capture public attention to a greater degree than everyday inner-city crime. Compared to means-to-an-end violence, it is much harder to understand or explain a motive that involves nothing more than seeing others as less than human. Most of us can’t even imagine what it must be like to see others through such callous eyes. Mass shooters remain objects of curiosity precisely because we cannot understand such utter absence of fellow-feeling divorced from a discernible purpose.

Yet while we may not fully understand mass shooters, we are all familiar with failures of empathy that lead to bullying, driving drunk or littering. All of these actions involve a self-centered desire for advantage or convenience and ignored the needs and desires of others. And at some point, we have all acted based on such a desire. So we understand how a person can act without empathy, just as we understand how a person can steal out of need or rape out of lust, even if we would not consider performing any of those acts ourselves.

From Understanding to Action

Failures of empathy crimes aren’t necessarily more or less harmful than means-to-an-end crimes. Committing a mass shooting is worse than stealing a loaf of bread, but a drug kingpin murdering scores of rival gang members is worse than littering. But by understanding the underlying motivations for any kind of crime, even at the least harmful level, we are in a better position to understand and hopefully prevent the more harmful varieties.

This categorization should not be construed as a slippery slope argument. People don’t easily transition from leaving an empty beer bottle on the beach to shooting up a supermarket. But by recognizing that mass shootings fall into the same category as less serious failures of empathy, we can start to examine our own shortcomings.

Instead of wondering what could possess a person to shoot up a public place filled with strangers, we can recognize that heinous action for what it is: a massive failure of empathy. Mass shootings are tragic and infuriating and leave us feeling helpless and despondent, but they are also a reminder that there are many moments when we could do a better job of stepping back and considering how our actions affect others.

Mass shootings and gun violence are complex problems with myriad possible solutions. But as with many other issues, looking inward is a good place to start.

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