Your Independent Journal from the Heartland
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 menace—and 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 range—from 15 to 25—that 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.” “There’s 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 one’s 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,” Sept. 30, 2024
Gun-related violence in Israel remains low by international standards. The death rate as a result of gun use in Israel is 1.86 per 100,000 people. In the United States it was almost six times higher, with 10.3 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people (Forward, Feb. 11, 2013). One significant factor that has reduced the death rate in Israel is that fact that gun ownership is prohibited under the age of 27.
Most of the male mass shooters in the United States have also been violent video game users. “We are no longer worried that children are missing school because of video games. We are worried that they are murdering their classmates because of video games,” said Tom Bissell, journalist and author of “Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter.”
“Studies of children exposed to violence have shown that they can become: ‘immune’ or numb to the horror of violence, imitate the violence they see, and show more aggressive behavior with greater exposure to violence,” said the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
The California legislature, after conducting extensive hearings including testimony from well-known psychologists and psychiatrists determined that children under the age of 18 should be prohibited from purchasing violent video games. The California video game legislation was designed to strengthen the industry-controlled rating system, and would have placed an outright ban on the sale or rental to those under 18 of video games deemed excessively “violent.” The video game industry sued, challenging the constitutionality of this law and the case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court made a scientific determination that violent video games do not cause violence in society. (Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786, 2011), Real scientists disagree. Craig Anderson who has devoted his professional life to proving a link between video game violence and real-life aggression. In 2010, Iowa State University issued a news release demonstrating that one of Anderson’s studies “proves conclusively that violent video game play makes more aggressive kids.”
Anderson appeared on CNN to talk about the fondness of Adam Lanza, the shooter in Newtown, Connecticut, for violent video games. Anderson said: “Every major scientific society that has studied the question has come to the same answer, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, most recently, the International Society for Research and Aggression, have all come to the same conclusion that basically media violence is a risk factor, is a causal risk factor for increased aggressive behavior, including violence.”
To reduce gun violence in the United States, we need to raise the age for gun ownership to at least 25. In addition, we need to prohibit the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. The latter recommendation will require either a constitutional amendment or a new Supreme Court ruling overthrowing the decision in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association.
Joel D. Joseph is a lawyer, an economist and author of 15 books, including “NRA: Money, Firepower & Fear” in 1992.
