Why are so few women found behind the triggers in America’s mass shooting sprees?

“Are men just wired for random killing”
No. Well, some of them are somewhat set up for it, due to our dysfunctional culture which has men shut down their compassionate/emotional aspects, swallow shame and upset, silence dissent, bury anger, require subservience, have no emotional support, never effectively reach adulthood, etc. Our society does create undeveloped men with lots of unreleased extreme rage and far too little allowed outlets or adult listening for it, leading to crazy violent outbursts.

“or is “airing out” schools like other “sports” where men establish the way initially, and the women’s leagues follow.”
No. Not that some women might not at some point. But a lot of violence gets a strong boost from testosterone, which most women don’t get so much of. Also, women tend to have more emotional resources, strategies, and listening available to them. And our culture doesn’t train them to relate to violence in the same ways it trains men to relate to violence.

I don’t know. There’s nothing dainty about women’s wrestling, and come to think of it, how is it that an activity as brutal as roller derby is now almost an exclusively female dominated sport.

The same reason women generally don’t use firearms to commit suicide: They aren’t that vicious, or that shockingly visual, or that theatrical. Men just gotta make a big presentation out of their anger while women are generally more subtle in theirs.

Women are more likely to kill mass amounts in a sneeky way. I have read of several female nurses who killed many people under their care. Usually by poison, or tampering with life support equipment.

I know a female tried to shoot up a school here in Charleston. As everyone was picking up their kids after school, a parent stepped out of her car with a gun, and pointed it, but it failed to fire.

I don’t think guns are as prevalent, in most female’s upbringing. That could factor in.

Midol

^Ha! Now that’s a new question. If women had no meds, to help with “that time of the month,” would there be anything left of the world but smoke and ashes?

Maybe its hormones. Like testosterone. Women tend to murder in secret. Like the nurse in Canada who killed 8 or more elderly patients by screwing with the seniors medicine. Or giving too much insulin. Elizabeth Wettlaufer

I think it has to do with having a support system. Females tend to talk things out with friends, males, even if they have friends, tend to bottle it up until it explodes. I think it has to do with how the brain is wired although it could also be culturally influenced or reinforced.

@Zaku Were there more “allowed outlets” in the past? The general perception of society seems to be that it was more “macho” in the past, so why then would (as it seems) this problem be getting worse? At least, there seem to be more mass shootings than in the past when men were even more likely to suppress their emotions.

^^ Would ease of access to more efficient weaponry have anything to do with it? Machine guns are a relatively recent invention as far as war goes, and even then it took a while for them to become faster, smaller, and cheaper, to the point that so many people can have access to them.

There also might be a cultural aspect where, as mass shootings become more common, more people on the precipice of that “type” of behavior will more likely turn to a mass shooting them self. It’s become an established “option” of behavior, something already invented and known and available, rather than something a person has to imagine up them self. (This one is completely a guess on my part.)

So it could be the case that we simultaneously have more “outlets” than in the past (though that’s still a work in progress), while still seeing an increase in things like mass shootings. With the technology available today, an individual can harm more people more quickly—and in more of a spectacle—than they could have in a past that didn’t have mass shootings as an option.

We are more rational creatures I believe. More serial killers and criminals in general are male.

@Demosthenes That’s a good question, and of course the situation varies by place and especially by when in the past you mean. Certainly there have always been men repressing anger and/or lashing out in violence. The frequent gun killing sprees seem relatively new.

I think I’d have to give it a lot more thought, and/or find some sources that have already given such questions serious study. And I’m tired, but to offer a couple of first-stabs at it:

The main negative differences that come to my mind that I notice over the last few decades in the USA is what seems to me the reduced acceptance for unsupervised outdoor roaming and physical antics by boys, as well as more control and monitoring and restriction/reaction by school authorities, cameras everywhere and cell phones making kids always available by phone. Also what seems to me like a sharp decline in adult male role modeling and a general lack of sane adult behavior in the culture, what with the news media devolving into corporate mouthpieces and so many elected politicians not even seeming to try to be intelligent or honest, and all the other stress/chaos stories going around (including the mass shootings, often at schools).

I also think that the increased control by parents and communities and authorities, though it may have the intention to make things safer, tends to create a stifling feeling of powerlessness and suspicion and resentment and so on. Violent rampages tend to be a reaction to having been made to feel powerless and unheard.

On the other hand, there have been some great positive changes. In some ways there are more and new types of outlets and counsel available. But the usual social situation for most men in our society is still pretty bleak in terms of having people they feel they can open up to, or even having much self-awareness that anything like that is something they might want to do. That situation was probably much more stifling in the 1950’s, so why no rash of shooting sprees? I don’t know, but I imagine mainly differences in the thinking back then. I think @Soubresaut is probably right that it has become a thing that people now think of to do because it is in the common thinking now, while random shooting sprees were not so much “a thing” anyone might consider, in the past. There have been decades of exposure and normalization of the idea now.