{"id":154,"date":"2016-08-22T00:48:42","date_gmt":"2016-08-22T00:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/101psych.com\/?p=154"},"modified":"2020-02-06T05:55:46","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T20:55:46","slug":"mass-shootings-in-the-us-the-case-of-charles-whitman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themantic-education.com\/ibpsych\/2016\/08\/22\/mass-shootings-in-the-us-the-case-of-charles-whitman\/","title":{"rendered":"Mass Shootings in the US: The Case of Charles Whitman"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a high school student the Columbine Shooting<\/a> in Colorada, USA made worldwide headlines. It was a terrible tragedy and\u00a0one I could never imagine happening, or happening again. Sadly, incidents of mass shootings in the United States seem to be a regular occurrence. Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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I like beginning my Criminology unit with the story of Whitman. The unit covers the biological approach – click the image for more info.<\/p><\/div>\n

Why have there been more deaths in the US by domestic gun violence in the past fourty years than in all the wars the country has fought in?<\/p>\n

One obvious argument is because guns are readily accessible and too easy to get. There is a lot of merit in this argument, but we want to delve deeper to the potential root causes. And there has to be more to the story than just being able to own a gun. I myself own five guns (for hunting) and have never once thought about using them on another human being. It’s widely reported that Switzerland has more guns per capita (per person) than any other country, yet they have less than 1\/3 of the gun deaths of the US (source<\/a>).<\/p>\n

So what other possible explanations are there? This is an exceptionally broad problem and one that is impossible to answer definitely. We will instead explore\u00a0possible\u00a0<\/em>explanations for the rise in gun violence in the USA.<\/p>\n

To do so, we will be use the story of Charles Whitman as a case study. Whitman’s atrocious acts in 1961 are often used as the chronological starting point for investigations into modern gun crime in the US, so we’ll start here as well. It’s a valuable case study as well because there are multiple possible explanations for why he did what he did.<\/p>\n

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Here you can see the dramatic rise in mass shootings in the United States over the past century. Why is this happening?<\/p><\/div>\n

You can read more about statistics on gun violence in America in this BBC article<\/a> or in this article from the US newspaper the Washington Post<\/a>.<\/h6>\n

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Charles Whitman: What Happened?<\/h2>\n

You can watch the whole documentary on Charles Whitman below, which goes into details about the course of the shootings and what actually happened. If you already know the story, watch only the first 15 minutes. As you’re watching, be listening for details that might give you some clues as to why he did this. Remember though, you’re not going to “crack this case”. There are no definitive answers and no-one will ever truly know. All we can do is theorise and hypothesize. We’re also practicing being able to apply psychological research to address problems (i.e. answer questions).<\/p>\n

If you’d prefer to read about what happened, you can read this news article<\/a> that was originally published on August 2nd, 1966 (i.e. the day after the event).
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