Extremist Manifestos: Mass Shooters’ Understanding of Law, Politics, and Crime

by Tifenn Drouaud

B.A. in Criminal Justice & Political Science, May 2018, The George Washington University

A Thesis submitted to

The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of the George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master in Arts

August 31, 2020

Thesis directed by

Fran Buntman Assistant Professor of Sociology

© Copyright 2020 by Tifenn Drouaud All rights reserved

ii Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Professor Fran Buntman for igniting my passion in this field and for her continued support, guidance, and encouragement throughout the many stages of this project. Her ability to challenge me has yielded my best ideas.

The author also wishes to thank Professor Xolela Mangcu of George Washington

University for providing his unique perspective and feedback.

Additional thanks are given to the author’s parents, family, and friends for their relentless unwavering love, patience, and praise. Their support has never waned and without them, none of my accomplishments are possible.

iii Abstract

Extremist Manifestos: Mass Shooters’ Understanding of Law, Politics, and Crime

A subset of mass shooters writes manifestos which outline the rationale for their intended violence. Most scholarly assessments focused on the psychological perspective of the shooters (Hamlett 2017; Knoll 2012; Bondü & Schneithauer 2015). Instead, this thesis considers the shooters’ socio-legal imagination as offered in their manifestos, focusing on their understanding and construal of crime, law, and politics. Most of these shooters portray their violence as a form of justice in an unjust world. They consider themselves as at once individual actors and as part of a collective resistance of fellow mass shooters challenging illegitimate socio-legal orders. In this regard, they are best understood as an “imagined community” (Anderson 1983). Using critical grounded theory, this study analyzes the manifestos to understand the shooter-authors’ implicit and explicit ways of seeing and defining legality and legitimacy. In particular we consider:

(1) their relational identity (e.g. to other mass shooters and like-minded people), (2) their view of their victims (e.g. enemies, collateral damage, symbols, criminals), (3) their construction of their acts (e.g. narrow illegality intended to challenge an aspect of law, legitimate but illegal, resistance against state or non-state entities, etc.), and (4) how they believe their violence intervenes in the socio-legal order. Answering these research questions highlights the socio-legal justifications mass shooters utilize in their resistance to dominant institutions and rules. The manifestos articulate the shooters’ extremist ideas which, together with their violence, are intended to challenge the socio-legal order in favor of a reactionary nostalgia.

iv Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ...... iii Abstract ...... iv Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1 Chapter 2: Literature Review ...... 7 Chapter 3: Methods ...... 16 Chapter 4: Findings ...... 23 Chapter 5: Analysis ...... 39 Chapter 6: Conclusion ...... 57 References ...... 61 Appendix ...... 71

v Chapter 1: Introduction

Mass public shootings (MPS) have captivated the public attention for good reason. They are extreme violent acts that result in multiple casualties and reap “damage and devastation far beyond that which is measured in lives lost” (Peterson and Densley

2019:4; Fox and DeLateur 2014; Harding, Fox, and Mehta 2002). Mass shootings represent “1% of all firearm homicides” in the United States (Peterson and Densley

2019:4; Fox and DeLateur 2014). While statistically rare as the smallest percentage of gun homicides, MPS appear at once both routine and random—a chronic occurrence perpetrated haphazardly without warning. This type of gun violence garners the largest amount of American public and media attention regarding firearms, due to its high numbers of casualties, often unclear explanations for these acts, and the seeming randomness associated with its public nature.

This study attempts to fill a gap in the discussion of MPS by focusing on the shooters’ expressed rationales and justifications which motivate them to act in this manner. MPS in the United States are increasing in incidence and mortality (Peterson and

Densley 2019). Of the recent American MPS, 20% occurred since 2014, 33% since 2013, and over half since 2000 (Peterson and Densley 2019:13). While MPS occur in other countries, they remain an overwhelmingly American phenomenon. Moreover, they not only occur more frequently but are increasingly lethal. Of the 20 deadliest shootings since

1965, 75% took place in the last twenty years, with 40% in the last five years (Peterson and Densley 2019:13). A 2016 FBI study also found that these incidents rose from 6.4 incidents annually between 2000 and 2007 to an average of 16.4 incidents per year from

2007 to 2013 (Blair and Schweit 2014:8). An analysis of mass shooter data compiled by Mother Jones, an independent media outlet, found that the average number of days between each incident of mass shooting (defined by the Congressional Research Service as four or more fatalities pre-2012, and lowered to three or more after 2012), has shrunk.

From 1982 to 2011, a mass shooting occurred on average every 172 days. From 2011 to

2014, the interval shrunk to 64 days (Cohen, Azrael, and Miller 2014).

Despite the large amount of attention on these acts, public discussion of MPS is limited in scope, whether by law enforcement, media, or scholars. The law enforcement and legal communities primarily discuss MPS through the lens of applicable charging statutes and sentencing guidelines for those arrested. “Some statutes establish stand-alone crimes, while others authorize penalty enhancements for...crimes... motivated by bias”

(German and Maleon 2019:10). Of the sample included in this thesis, only Dylann Roof and Patrick Crusius face criminal charges–including but not limited to both state and federal murder, attempted murder, and hate crime penalty enhancements (Kennedy 2017;

Aguilera 2020; Corchado 2020; U.S. v. Dylan Storm Roof, July 20, 2015). For the majority of the perpetrators who perish during the commission of their crime, death preempts legal prosecution. But their ideas live on through public and social media.

Mass media outlets often capitalize on the fear and chaos created by these violent acts, offering simplistic explanations for these phenomena. They merely designate perpetrators as mentally ill, “bad apples” (individuals who violate rules that the majority of the group follow), or “lone wolves” (individuals who act alone, separate from a larger group or organization) (Beydoun 2017; Kimball 2019; Walter 2012). Media coverage is typically shallow, touching briefly on the individual shooter’s past and, almost inevitably, highlighting any history of mental illness—even going so far as to speculate if no such

2 history is apparent. Most of this coverage remains psychologically focused, answering

“why did this perpetrator commit this act?” Oftentimes, these incidents and accompanying manifestos fuel existing policy debates on gun access and control. These important discussions tend to omit also vital investigations into the expanded number of

MPS and, especially, what messages the shooters want to convey. Existing studies that have looked at MPS have done so from a psychological and individualistic perspective, consistent with the predominant narrative surrounding these offenders (Hamlett 2017;

Knoll 2012; Bondü & Schneithauer, 2015).

Beyond widespread and appropriate legal and moral condemnation of these shooters, there is inadequate analysis of how they understand their own actions in socio- legal and/or political terms. Even when perpetrators explicitly state their motivations in written manifestos, these documents are rarely relied upon or seriously analyzed to contribute to understanding this violence from a sociological or criminological perspective. The manifestos are usually tangentially mentioned as evidence of the mental instability of the perpetrator. Scholars generally employ the manifestos as supporting evidence for theories of contagion and copycat among mass public shooters (Langman

2017; Helfgott 2015; Meindl and Ivy 2017). The increase in MPS and the persistent emergence of manifestos, often referencing previous shootings and perpetrator rationalizations, draws attention to the need to more fully utilize and engage with these texts to better understand the shooters, and, in this study, their socio-legal imaginations.

This study does not attempt to absolve the criminal actions of these mass shooters.

It does not dispute the danger and devastation of their violence nor the potentially threatening implications of a copy-cat contagion. Moreover, it does not negate the

3 influence of mental illness nor reject that psychological factors do play an important role in the perpetration of these shootings. Rather, it considers the necessity of analyzing MPS as a social phenomenon, understood through the expressed words of their deadly authors.

Broadly, their manifestos outline their motivations, ideologies, grievances, and attitudes about themselves, their victims, and the society generally. Using the words and declarations of the shooters themselves, this approach combines criminological theory with political dimensions to identify trends and patterns among the shooters’ declarations.

Such analyses uncover how social institutions and arrangements shape and influence the killer-authors and their actions, while considering how they understand and interact with the legal codes that govern them. By seeing the world through the shooters’ eyes and words, their justifications expose not only individual rationales but also their self- identification as members of a collective with sometimes shared worldviews, including a critique of the status quo and, in some cases, an inchoate vision for long-term change.

Their shared messages and themes draw them together as part of a resistant identity

(Castells 2003), but not reality. They seek to counter the image of mass shooters as being reclusive and socially rejected. While outsiders see them as loners and they did, indeed, live marginal lives of considerable exclusion (if to different extents), their manifestos seek to both justify their imminent acts of murder and to situate themselves as members of a fraternity of similarly righteous and aggrieved men. This invented fraternity seeks to redress their vision of systemic socio-legal wrongs through their manifestos and violence.

The shared expressive nature of their acts – communicated in furtherance of a message of condemnation and reform – highlights the structural nexus of MPS. Although they act alone and are invariably isolated outsiders who often lament their marginalization, the

4 shooters situate themselves as part of a virtual social group. They dress up their criminality in political and ideological justification and mitigate their exclusion by claiming a band of brothers. They feel inspired and encouraged by one another, compelled to communicate injustices they perceive in society through their manifestos and violence to challenge and ideally change the socio-legal realities they reject. This ad hoc claim of community and challenge is at odds with the individualism of mass shooters and the understanding of MPS as purposeless. The shooters acknowledge their acts are overwhelmingly understood, and rejected, as criminal, and seek to defy that labeling by claiming to act to resist an unjust polity through both writing and killing.

Using written manifestos of American mass shooters since 2000, this study aims to address four topics of inquiry: (1) each shooter’s self-reported relationship to other mass shooters and ostensibly like-minded people; (2) the shooter’s view of and relationship to his victims; (3) the shooter’s legal construction of his act; and; (4) how the shooter sees his act as addressing or resolving his grievances about the current socio-legal order. As the primary source material in this thesis is all authored by men, the use of the masculine pronoun will be applied. This unusual decision reflects on the maleness of the mass shooters studied rather than the maleness of political agents. Chapter 2 considers relevant literature from criminology, political sociology, and political communication, in addition to concepts relating to collective identity construction, to provide theoretical and empirical approaches to allow an understanding of the shooters’ legal consciousness, perceptions of political legitimacy, and understanding of justified resistance to legality.

These literatures are used as lenses through which to explain and understand patterns found in the data. Chapter 3 describes the methodology of the study, including the

5 selection and scope of the chosen sample and the application of critical grounded theory which allows the data to drive the analysis and ensures the findings are rooted in the ideas and messages from the manifestos. Chapter 4 synthesizes the findings by looking at the manifestos’ answers to the study’s four topics of inquiry while Chapter 5 analyzes its implications along with limitations and prospects for future research.

6 Chapter 2: Literature Review

The justifications, motivations, and explanations for crime have been cornerstones of the study of criminology. The application of existing criminological and law and society literatures provides an effective means to analyze the socio-legal imagination expressed within the shooters’ manifestos. The scope and definition of MPS defines the contours of this complex phenomenon. The shooters’ legal consciousness casts light on their understanding of the extent of the legitimacy of law and government authority. The communicative nature of crime (and punishment) provides a lens through which the shooters’ actions can be understood politically while the concept of the “imagined community” provides a unique perspective on these lone actors.

Scope of MPS

Defining MPS is a contested legal and social exercise. Much debate has resulted from how to define the murder by firearms of multiple people in easily accessible spaces frequented by large populations. This thesis defines a mass public shooting as a multiple homicide incident in which three or more victims, excluding the perpetrator, are murdered with firearms within one non-domestic and non-familial event, usually motivated by ideological goals and personal grievances translated into a broader social message. This usage is informed by those from the FBI, media outlets (including Mother

Jones and Time magazine), Gun Violence Archive, Everytown for Gun Safety, the

Congressional Research Service, and a legislative amendment relating to the

Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012. A relatively recent change to this law lowered the fatality threshold to three or more deaths is not yet been substantively reflected in the literature but is used in this thesis. Limitations to such

7 classifications include omitting the shooter in the death count and precluding attempted shootings and injuries from fatalities.

MPS: Resistance

Law, perception of it, and its effectiveness, are relational and contextual. Law is

“not merely an instrument or tool working on social relations but is also a set of conceptual categories and schema that help construct, compose, communicate, and interpret social relations” (Silbey 2005:327). Consciousness of the law is expressed subtly “in the way people act and speak as well as in the content of what they say,” and develops in myriad ways, including through individual experience (Merry 1990:5;

Comaroff and Comaroff 1987). While MPS involve clear violations of criminal law, the shooters do not always accept their actions as such. What law is depends not only on formal definitions but ways in which individuals and societies experience and understand law, which is the idea of legal consciousness (Merry 1990).

Ignoring, rejecting, or violating law may be a form of resistance to the social structure. Members of society are part of the social contract of self-governance and have implicitly consented to an “agreement to regulate human interaction” (Buntman

2003:247). However, under most understandings of the social bond, they have the right to resist when conditions of the contract are violated (Buntman 2003; Friend n.d.). The shooters, as members of the polity, consider the social contact violated in part or in whole, and consequently invoke their rights to act outside previously respected norms and resist or challenge existing law.

The literature on resistance is focused primarily on answering “how and why people do and do not resist the power that is exerted over them” (Buntman 2003:249).

8 Succinctly discussed by Buntman in her discussion of resistance and power relations, resistance has been explained as variously perpetual (e.g. Scott 1990), a political awakening spurred on by injustice (Moore 1978), or a ubiquitous part of power relations

(Foucault 1990). Scott warns that the appearance of accepting power arrangements can be

“induced by repression” (1985:314-51; Merry 1990:7) and as a result, he argues that individuals are “always already resistant” (1990:25). Moore believes that resistance results from the sparking of “some indomitable spirit of revolt in all human beings”

(Moore 1978:459), while Foucault observes that resistance cannot be ignored as part of what constitutes power and power struggles in society. Resistance to rule, including against the law, is a way to challenge and potentially remake political arrangements. The shooters have arguably failed to remake the socio-legal structures they resist, but they both reflect, and have influenced, discourses and movements to which they have some degrees of affinity or connection. It drives them not only to carry out a MPS but also to communicate a message on behalf of their “community,” solidifying their identity as a resistant collective. Buntman differentiates two approaches to resistance to illustrate the substantive yet differing political consideration of the actors, including in how they weigh varying techniques and strategies of resistance based on short- and long-term motivations. Categorical resistance is emphasis on principle (political, ideological, or even religious) as the basis of action at every turn. Actors may “demand confrontation with the authorities as a matter of principle” in order to shape and reinforce their political identity (2005:127). Put simply, they resist because it is their raison d'être. They do not necessarily consider its effectiveness or attempt to maximize its efficiency. They see their resistance as imperative to remaining true to themselves, their values, and their cause of

9 action. Meanwhile, those who engage in strategic resistance are more pragmatic and considered in their approach. Even if they aspire to “fundamental social change,” the potential radical challenge or vision will be crafted including to consider the impact and outcomes of their resistance. They “expend time and energy developing themselves and their organizations to affect and have an impact on the political terrain” against which they are resisting (Buntman 2003:129).

Communication through Crime and Punishment

Mass shooters are keenly aware that they are in violation of criminal law but deliberately violate those criminal codes, as well as use their manifestos, to challenge the world. As such, they employ the communicative nature of crime to try to impact power relations. While punishment as communication is well-developed in the literature

(Feinberg 1965; Lacey 1988; Bedau 2001), crime can also convey messages; MPS are a form of politics to communicate resistance to socio-legal realities through crime. One example of knowingly challenging the legitimacy of criminal codes as resistive communication was the historical practice of “speeches from the dock,” traditionally associated with the Irish Republican resistance movement. The “dock” is the courtroom site from which an accused person speaks publicly, following conviction but prior to sentencing. Speeches at this point represent “a strategically placed discursive and political space” to challenge the authority of the state (Harlow 1993:874). These expressions rejected the legitimacy of the judicial system under which they were charged.

These speeches were a prisoner’s final public declaration, “an attempt to reclaim -even momentarily-the legal space”. In an analogous vein, the mass shooters’ manifestos are attempts to reclaim, subvert, or reject the legal order the purpose of “discursive

10 opposition” (Harlow 1993:876). Similarly, Foucault’s “I, Pierre Rivère, having slaughtered my mother, my sister and my brother…” invoked this discursive response in

Rivère’s statement written to explain and justify his parricide (1975). Both the shooters’ manifestos and their imminent crimes have a communicative function: to articulate the illegitimacy of the law and society which the shooters are resisting and rejecting.

Identity Building

As part of communicating rejection of and challenge to the socio-legal status quo, the shooters’ identities are shaped by their resistance, which is individual but is understood, at least in part, in collective terms. Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities” describes the development and sustainment of a socially constructed community, conceptualized by people who perceive themselves as part of that group.

These communities are “imagined” as those within it will most likely “never know most of their fellow-members” or have “face to face contact” (Anderson 1983:15). Their connection is rarely physically realized yet the members both develop and assume a sense of “communion” and “kinship” that tie them to each other (Anderson 1983:15). The shooters express this sense of collective identity and belonging despite the lack of structured organization or physical contact. While this study only analyzes a select number of MPS, the broader network of mass shooters is motivated by similar ideologies, sometimes even posting their manifestos on the same online platform (Alcorn and Neely

2020). They maintain a “deep horizontal comradeship” (Anderson 1983:15) through these shared ideas, aspirations, and recognition for their actions. Based on this feeling of fraternity, the shooters both subscribe and contribute to a resistance identity. Castells’ idea of collective identities can be used to further deepen our understanding of the

11 shooters’ self-understanding of themselves as resistant oppressed subjects. These identities are constructed and emerge within a social context of alienation turned resentment (Castells 2009). Castells believes that resistant identities necessarily create alternative communities (or communes), designed to provide “refuge and solidarity to protect against a hostile, outside world” (2009:69). The manifesto authors vehemently reject key social institutions, including law. They allude to and, to greater and lesser extents, envision alternative futures, informed by their values and ideologies with recourse to their imagined communities. The shooters’ cultural communes are reactive but also articulative and designed to challenge the status quo. Both Anderson and Castells recognize these virtual collectivities are created and facilitated by social networks.

Anderson argues that mass communication contributes to the proliferation of these imagined communities and collective identities. Castells recognizes that globalization and the invention of the Internet has further expanded the application of communication, especially via social media platforms (Acquisti and Gross 2006; Gruzd, Wellman and

Takhteyev 2011). Imagined communities have proliferated in sites from Facebook and

Twitter to 8chan and Reddit, with people’s feeling of mutual connection and bondedness ever greater through these online forums. Gruzd et al. explain that while “users could never know everyone…they are certainly aware of other users’ presence” (2011:1298).

They share “an imagined sense of identity and belonging which they aspire to get” from their belonging (Al-Rawi 2019:559; Fox 2004; Weiskirch 2019). Facilitated by digital tools, publication and distribution of ideas has become ever easier to communicate, expanding the prevalence of imagined communities into cyber-space. The online transfer further validates the imagined and communal aspects of these disparate individuals.

12 Castells’ collective identities, coupled with Anderson’s imagined communities, reflect aspects of the actual and aspirational communal nature of mass shooter resistance.

Legality and Legitimacy

Legality is, in some senses, quite simply what the law is. In a democracy, legality is at least ostensibly defined by elected representatives and some version of majoritarianism. The authority of legality and law remains more or less dependent on its perceived legitimacy. Accepted power requires both legality and legitimacy. Legality is insufficient to uphold the dominant socio-legal arrangements and does not always confer legitimacy but rather supports its development. Legitimacy depends on a consent of the polity to be subject to a legal authority—the nexus of the social contract (Coicaud 2013).

The dominant institutions are subject to checks of power and “respond to and reasonably satisfy key needs and expectations” of the polity (Coicaud 2013:40). Legitimacy wanes when rights are deemed insufficient or improperly fulfilled, potentially to the point where the social contract may be considered violated. The shooters, as dissatisfied members of the polity, act out in an effort to rectify the violative situation.

Coicaud outlines elements necessary for successful reform and while the shooters’ ability to enact change is arguably unsubstantiated, their manifestos indicate the degree to which they construct and understand themselves as change agents. First, the resistant actor must publicly identify what is problematic. Leverage, achieved through obtaining status and/or supporters, is used to challenge the status quo which “can trigger support or rejection among the rest of the members of the community” (Coicaud 2013:47). When dissatisfaction can be extended or universalized to impact and affect the community, the resistance and resulting upheaval of this collective will garner support. Giving action a

13 political character is sought both to enhance legitimacy and to blame political actors. A goal includes reframing perspectives so that actions previously considered acceptable will come to be seen as suspect because they violate newly-articulated rights. This new orientation contributes to the continuous pattern of change in dynamic democratic societies. More importantly, however, this integration of new rights enhances the actors’ sense of agency by recognizing their victimhood by the prior arrangement and imposing the criminal label on those previously unrecognized as such (Coicaud 2013:50-51). The labels of victim and criminal are redefined and reassigned, as are the assignments of credit and blame. Tilly posits that these are socially rooted and informed labels, that

“invoke some standard of justice.” They either associate the “giver and receiver in the same moral milieu” (i.e. credit) or “separates two moral settings from each other” (i.e. blame) (Tilly 2008:6). Notably, both assume the actor is responsible for the action and deserving of the subsequent consequences, indicative of the ongoing reframing.

The shooters’ acts “convey to others [their] conviction of an injustice within the society” (Moraro 2007:2). Their resistive actions, from writing manifestos to killing, can be understood as part of a spectrum, which share this communicative nature and conscientiousness but differ in their approach. They articulate the degree of defiance against the dominant structure. Some challenge the law in part, akin to an expression of civil disobedience, while others reject the entire legal structure. The former calls attention to an aspect of the law that “warrants re-examination by the government, and that the risk of an injustice allows for a law-breaking action in order to communicate” their value- system (Brownlee 2004: 341). “Civil disobedience” is a conflict between, on the one hand, the government and the legitimizing identities that uphold it, and, on the other

14 hand, a polity of resistance identities who reject aspects of these institutions (Brownlee

2004; Castells 2009). Alternatively, resistance can conflict with the prevailing power structure in its entirety. People who embrace political criminality are adopting a fuller identity of resistance, highly considerate of the social context in which they act. They reject the dominant socio-legal structure and act against the reigning law to “express unselfish concern for [their] social groups” (Schafer 1971:385).

15 Chapter 3: Methods

This study analyzes eight manifestos authored by mass shooters to proclaim their rationale and motivation. These texts are used to uncover their socio-legal imaginations, specifically their understanding and construal of crime, law, and ideology.

The scope of the data is defined by two major delineations: the definition of MPS and criterion for selection of the manifestos. This study applies a methodology that ensures the manifestos remain the centerpiece of the analysis and all subsequent findings and theoretical linkages are built from the “ground up.”

Selection of Sample

There are many ways to define MPS but this study chooses to adopt a hybrid composed of the definitions used by the Congressional Research Service (Peterson and

Densley 2019:6) and the lowered the legal threshold instituted by the Investigative

Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012. As such, the present study defines MPS as multiple homicide incidents in which three or more victims are murdered with firearms—not including the offender(s)—within one event. Defining a MPS is contested.

MPS are a subset of multiple homicides (otherwise called mass murder). Furthermore, the use of MPS avoids the term mass shooting which combines “cases that vary along what researchers agree are important dimensions: time, place, and method” (Peterson and

Densley 2019:5; Dowe 2007), which leads to variability in defining the term. The

Violence Project Mass Shooter Database, a National Institute of Justice funded study, describes the variations in MPS definitions as distinctions between those who kill in private versus in public, kill their victims over several events versus all at once, and the method by which they kill (e.g., gun, bomb, arson, etc.) (Peterson and Densley 2019). For

16 instance, governmental institutions, such as the FBI and Department of Justice choose not to use the term in favor of an alternative non-synonymous term: “active shooting.” Media outlets such as Mother Jones and Time magazine, and advocacy groups including Gun

Violence Archive and Everytown for Gun Safety, have also introduced additional variations. (These may include consideration of the public requirement; related incidents of underlying criminal activity; family-focused crimes; and increasing the death threshold.) Notably, all definitions consider incidents that end in completed killings, precluding attempted events and differentiating fatalities from injuries, thus understating the presence and impact of public violence through the use of firearms. This study’s definition is an approximate consensus of all of the above variations.

The exact prevalence rate of mass shootings varies based on this plethora of definitions. According to Mother Jones, between January 1, 2000 and January 10, 2020, there were 86 mass shootings in the United States. The Violence Project reports 94 mass public shootings during the same time period, while the Congressional Research Service, using the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Reports and other data sources, identified 66 incidents of mass public shootings from 1999-2013 (Krouse and Richardson 2015:14).

Everytown, a non-profit organization advocating for gun safety legislation, counted 56 incidents from 2009-2018. Despite the fluctuation, most organizations and agencies agree that the trend is rising, in both prevalence and death toll. The Congressional Research

Service’s report on mass shootings found that “for 44 years (1970-2013), the prevalence of [MPS] has increased: [from] 1.1 incidents per year on average in the 1970s, […to] 4.5 in the first four years of the 2010s” (Krouse and Richardson 2015:2). Days between incidents of mass public shootings have shrunk since the 1970s: “From 2010 through

17 2013, for example, there were on average 74 days between mass public shooting incidents…[while in] the 1970s, [it was] 282 days” (Krouse and Richardson 2015:23). In addition to this, the number of deaths per incident has risen: “During the 1970s, mass shootings claimed an average of 8 lives per year. […and in the] 2000s it reached 24. This decade has seen a far sharper rise. Today, the average is 51 deaths per year” (Peterson and Densley 2019:13).

While not every perpetrator of a mass public shooting writes or publishes a manifesto, they have become increasingly commonplace. The selection of eight manifestos used in this study was done in two phases. Phase 1 limited the scope of the sample to incidents of MPS committed in the United States beginning January 1, 2000.

Phase 2 further culled the manifestos based on the criteria that they were comprehensive, publicly accessible, written documents. Importantly, as discussed briefly below, this methodological choice meant other forms of shooter expression were not included in the sample.

First Phase

The present study identified eligible incidents through open source data collection. Secondary sources such as media coverage and existing databases of mass shootings, including those compiled by non-governmental entities (e.g., Mother Jones, the Violence Project, Everytown) and scholars such as Duwe, Fox, Langman, and

Lankford, were used to compile a comprehensive list of MPS incidents in the United

States beginning January 1, 2000. In line with other studies that analyzed MPS (Duwe

2007; Taylor 2018; Petee, Padgett, and York 1997; Peterson and Densley 2019), both print and electronic media coverage were used to obtain accurate information on the

18 shooters and their manifestos. Major media outlets, both national (e.g., CNN, NBC News,

Time magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Post) and local (e.g., Houston

Chronicle, LA Times) along with less mainstream, alternative online sources such as

8chan and DocumentCloud were consulted.

The decision to focus on incidents since 2000 is at once potentially arbitrary and also appropriate and opportune. The new millennium was widely experienced as a singular and notable moment. This century has also seen rapid and large changes in the nature of mass media, especially through the development of the Internet and social media, including a democratizing of ordinary people’s ability to broadcast their perspectives and, in turn, the expansion of the institutional media’s attention to such events (Lankford and Silver 2020:42; Lankford 2016; Lankford and Madfis 2018; Meindl and Ivy 2017). There were also other objective socio-legal changes in the U.S. marking the post-2000 period as distinct. These include the expiration of the assault weapons ban in 2004; multiple laws allowing easier access to guns and the permission to carry and conceal firearms in public; the evolution of firearm technology; and the increased polarization of American politics (Peterson and Densley 2019). Social media and mass media coverage of MPS has played a significant role in the “social construction of mass murder” (Duwe 2000:364). Furthermore, an analysis conducted by Duwe of the media coverage of mass killings from 1976-1996 indicated the highly local nature of the reporting (Duwe 2000:364). Rarely did these incidents achieve national attention, which differs largely from the current pervasive coverage (Schildkraut, Elsass and Meredith

2018:227). These socio-legal and political circumstances are among those that shape the increase in MPS.

19 The sample was also limited to MPS in the United States. The U.S. is distinct in many regards including population and demographics, public attitudes towards firearms, legal access to firearms by the citizenry, and historical context. Applying this geographic scope does exclude the impact of some international mass shootings that have occurred in countries such as Finland, Norway, New Zealand, and Germany. Indeed, some of this study’s shooters were influenced by, and reference, at least two non-U.S. shooters’ manifestos. Nevertheless, this thesis focuses on one country—notably the nation with more MPS than any other.

Second Phase

Phase 2 further culled the sample into incidents of MPS with publicly accessible manifestos in English and that fit the singular manifesto format. The study defines manifestos as documents formatted to a single, consolidated, comprehensive text written for specific publication or dissemination prior to the shooting itself. While understanding that the manifestos do not exist in a vacuum, these texts provide the shooter’s message in a cohesive articulated manner. The collection of the manifestos themselves were subject to being publicly accessible, as defined by the ability to locate full texts online. Both mainstream and alternative sources, such as user-created message boards and online forums, were searched thoroughly for the texts published by these individuals. As a result of the study’s definition of “manifesto,” some of the most infamous MPS in recent

American history (Columbine - which was also pre-2000, Aurora, Newtown, and

Pittsburgh’s synagogue shooting) are excluded. Although those killers left behind an assortment of social media posts, video blogs, and journal entries that have been collected over time, they do not conform to the singular format prescribed. All the manifestos

20 analyzed in this thesis were written in a considered manner and meant to be disseminated.

Designed for the public as the final “last word” of the author-shooter, these texts provide a consolidated and clear message for analysis (see appendix for a brief background of each MPS and manifesto). The manifestos of the following shooters, identified by their

MPS location, and noted here in chronological order, were analyzed in this study:

● Seung Hui Cho – Virginia Tech University, Virginia (April 16, 2007)

● Robert Hawkins – Westroads Mall, Omaha, Nebraska (December 5, 2007)

● Jiverly Wong – Binghamton, New York (April 3, 2009)

● George Sodini – Pennsylvania Gym Shooting (August 4, 2009)

● Elliot Rodger – Isla Vista Shooting at UC Santa Barbara (May 23, 2014)

● Dylann Roof – Charleston Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church

Shooting, South Carolina (June 17, 2015)

● Christopher Sean Harper Mercer – Umpqua Community College Shooting

(October 1, 2015)

● Patrick Crusius – El Paso Walmart Shooting (August 3, 2019)

Limitations in Methodology

The study has limitations relating to both the sample size (eight cases) and scope

(the post-2000 United States, and only full-written manifestos). As noted, the resulting manifestos were comprehensive documents written for public consumption, not multimedia and journal-like cases, which led to the exclusion of widely-known incidents of MPS. The expansion of the time period or pool of eligible shooters could yield more detailed findings and uncover additional trends between these individuals.

21 Analytical Methodology

This thesis applies a critical grounded theory (CGT) approach to center the written words of the mass shooters as core to the analysis. The methodology utilizes an

“iterative process” which builds upon a constant interaction between a close reading of the manifestos and questions and insights invited by the literature, to inform and build upon understanding and interpretation of the shooters’ words as the primary source

(Charmaz 2017). With the data as the centerpiece of the analysis, theory is built from the

“ground up.” “In keeping with its pragmatist antecedents, constructivist grounded theorists attend to language and how it shapes participants’ meanings and our own”

(Charmaz 2017:5). The manifestos were coded in vivo which were then refined into thematic categories. Charmaz explains that primary data sources are used to identify initial and provisional understandings by identifying codes which are a prelude to incipient theoretical categories (Charmaz 2017). CGT focuses on theory building rather than theory testing. Perhaps most crucially, this critical type of grounded theory does not have a presumption of neutrality. While traditional grounded theorists believe absolute neutrality is necessary when studying a topic, CGT rejects this epistemological assumption. It prefers to recognize that researchers cannot exclude their prior knowledge and context, and nor should they be expected to. Research is not conducted in a vacuum and it is imprudent to assume as much. Instead, the theoretical and empirical knowledge gained from prior research, contributes to the analysis, rather than influencing “how researchers interpret the data” (Charmaz 2017:4). CGT then takes into consideration the presence of the researcher “in time, space, and circumstance” and is aimed at abstract interpretive understanding (Charmaz 2017:4).

22 Chapter 4: Findings

The manifestos are this study’s primary data sources, and the findings are based on these proclamations by the shooters. Examining how the shooters see themselves, their victims, and their social world provides understanding of their construal of crime, law, and politics. Each perpetrator articulated his message in his own writing style, with varying levels of clarity, mastery of grammatical and sentence structure, and voice.

Understanding of the shooters’ socio-legal perspectives emerged from unpacking four topics of inquiry:

• relational identity to other mass shooters, (e.g., as a fraternity, brotherhood,

community)

• view of their victims (e.g., enemies, collateral damage, symbols, criminals)

• construction of their act (e.g., legitimate but illegal, resistance against state or

non-state entities)

• belief as to how their violence intervenes in the socio-legal order (e.g., catalyst of

change, responding to imminent threat)

By interrogating their manifestos in this manner, the distinct world view of individual shooters is discerned at the same time as patterns, shared themes, and trends of sociological and criminological import are recognized. These criteria unveil themes that emerged across each of the eight manifestos and help uncover the authors’ socio-legal imaginations.

Category 1: Relational Identity

In their manifestos, each of the eight shooters express (1) their membership in a community of similarly minded people, including prior fellow perpetrators, (2) their

23 exclusion from the larger society and (3) in response, their renunciation and imminent punishment, via the shootings, of society. Despite the authors writing and killing as individuals, their proclamations show that they aspire for a sense of community, composed of sympathetic followers and fellow shooters that the shooters can, or wish to, relate. As a counterpart, the shooters also describe their relation with those outside of this insulated community—that is, the broader society from which they are excluded.

Notably, the shooters’ portrayal of their relational identities differs, to greater and lesser extents, from reality.

Implicit and Explicit Mention

The eight manifestos all demonstrated a consciousness of other individuals who have engaged in similar acts. Some, like Harper-Mercer, Cho, and Crusius, explicitly name individuals who have engaged in mass shootings prior to them. Across these three manifestos, six mass shooters are named. Manifestos in this study’s sample cited two shooters who are also a part of this study (Seung Hui Cho, Elliot Rodger). Four cases outside the sample criteria are also cited; these are the Columbine shooters, Vester

Flanagan, Adam Lanza, and an international case, Brenton Tarrant, the shooter in

Christchurch, New Zealand. Other manifestos, like that of Hawkins, Wong, and Sodini, implicitly refer to this community by alluding to prior mass shootings. They salute their historical predecessors without specifically naming them. Hawkins mentions the fame awarded to mass shooters (“Just think tho [sic] I’m gonna be...famous”), expressing his excitement at joining these ranks. Similarly, Wong and Sodini recognize the attention associated with mass shootings and design their manifestos to provide answers the public will seek after the act. Wong states “Of course you need to know why I shooting?”;

24 Sodini prefaces his manifesto with “Why do this?? To young girls? Just read below.”

They acknowledge and anticipate the public reaction associated with mass shootings through knowledge of past acts and tailor their manifestos to heighten the attention they want their message to receive.

Labels and Collective Terms

In conjunction with these internal references to other mass shooters, the manifestos also employed collective language and group labels. Words and phrases indicating similarities allow the shooters to draw links among each other and those they see as other similarly minded people. They use communal language to express this sentiment: “we” (Cho, Roof, Harper-Mercer); “us” (Cho, Harper-Mercer, Crusius); and

“our” (Cho, Roof, Crusius). Harper-Mercer draws links between himself and similarly minded “people like me/us/[name of mass shooter]” while Rodger and Crusius consolidate this group as a fraternity of “comrades.” Crusius and Cho define and take ownership of the collective, using possessive terms: “my people” (Cho) and “my country” (Crusius). All six use terms such as “we,” “our,” and “us” to imply a sense of comradery. Harper-Mercer has the most unifying terms, often referring to “people like me” who have also experienced being “denied everything they deserved, everything they wanted.” He even gives explicit directives to “others like me...to buy a gun and start killing people.” Roof understands his community to be composed of “White people” who need protection from black people, not only from being physically harmed but from mere interaction and being “brought down” to what he considers the lower level of black people. Cho sees himself as a leader of “people...of all ages that [society] fucked and will always try to fuck”; he will “lead” them “to eternal freedom.” Rodger and Crusius refer

25 to their “comrades,” unifying those who “need[] to repel the millions of invaders that plaque [sic] their country” (Crusius).

This language unites the shooters both in their shared grievances and their shooting. Utilizing such expression when outlining complaints allows others who identify with the grievances of the shooters to feel included and recognized. This community may be an illusion, imagined by those who do not belong to established groups in conventional society, but it offers the idea of unity for these excluded persons. Moreover, the collective language can be an inspiration for similar acts by these like-minded people.

This vocabulary promotes a sense of community that normalizes such behavior and, in turn, encourages its replication.

Additionally, the manifestos utilize often descriptive labels to describe how their authors relate to their quasi-community of like-minded people (both prior mass shooters and sympathetic supporters). They depict this group as innocent victims and/or glorified persons. Rodger affixes a divine label upon himself—“I will be a god,” while Harper-

Mercer applies it to his supporters as well: “people who stand with the gods.” Cho assigns a litany of labels to his “Brothers, Sisters, and Children” to communicate their innocence; they are the “Weak and Defenseless people,” “the Innocent Children,” “the

Poor and the Weak,” and, showcasing their righteousness, they are “martyrs,” “Anti-

Terrorist,” and “Children of Ishmael.” Both the collective and positive framing indicate the shooters seek to establish a bond between themselves and other mass shooters, as well as a fraternity of followers, more likely imagined than real. Despite the individualistic nature of these mass shootings, the perpetrators depict themselves as part of a community of similarly minded people who share their social exclusion and their goals

26 Category 2: View of Victims

Every perpetrator wrote about and defined their intended victims as part of the problem, i.e. contributing to or facilitating the planned violent act, and the justification for it. The extent of their conceptualization varied, with some shooters devoting entire sub-sections of their manifestos to their victims, while others mentioned them within the context of their larger manifestos. Many shooters expressed multiple, overlapping views of their victims. Several patterns emerged from the data, consisting of identifying victims as (1) symbols and/or (2) a danger/threat.

Victims as Symbols

Victims were stripped of their own identities and relegated to symbols in all eight manifestos. They were anonymous, public targets who served as placeholders for those against whom the shooter had a grievance. As Crusius noted, “My motives for this attack are not at all personal.” Rather than engaging in targeted killings—as assassination per se—they chose strangers who could act as conduits for their message. Some targeted victims who shared a common characteristic (e.g. race, sex, age), while others selected populations who were generally representative of society.

Both Dylann Roof and Patrick Crusius targeted, respectively, African Americans and Hispanic people, who they believed posed a threat to white Americans. George

Sodini selected young women to represent both women who had previously rejected him sexually and those who perpetuated this rejection by continuously choosing other (black) men. Wong targeted immigrants who he perceived had successfully integrated into

American society, unlike himself. When victims were chosen for their group membership and its respective symbolism, it often influenced the location of the shooting itself. Roof

27 explained he selected the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston because of the city’s historically high African-American population: “I chose Charleston because it is the most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country.” Rodger approached the “hottest sorority of UCSB” in order to attack female peers and Crusius drove hours from his hometown to El Paso to target its majority Hispanic population. Sodini selected his local gym to target young

“beautiful” women whom he yearned for but had rejected him throughout his life. Lastly,

Wong focused on the community center, the American Civic Association Center, where he took English language courses, to kill immigrants. The shooters marked their victims as sources of the problems they wish to redress. The people who perish deserve their fate.

For instance, Roof sees the “racial awareness” of black people as a “problem for

Americans.” His targeted population “view[s] everything through a racial lense (sic),” which is “bring[ing] Whites down to [a] level of brute animals.” Roof acts to “fight for these White people.” Similarly, Cho’s victims could “have avoided” the shooting but

“succeeded in extinguishing” his life instead. Crusius sees the Hispanic “invaders” as causing “problems.”

To further underscore the divide between the shooters and their victims, the objects of their attacks are ascribed with pejorative labels. Sodini and Rodger use colloquial labels like “morons,” “idiots,” “bully,” and “mean” to draw attention to the unjust nature of their exclusion. Cho focuses on the cruel nature of his social isolation and uses more forceful labels: “hedonists,” “Descendants of Satan,” and “Lovers of

Terrorism.” He even goes so far as to draw connections to infamous perpetrators of brutality such as Osama bin Laden and the former North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il. All

28 of the shooters felt unfairly excluded, isolated, and ostracized, notably even those who explicitly recognized a social contract. Rodger spends chapters of his manifesto depicting his life as “a lonely, unwanted outcast”; Harper-Mercer describes his life as “one lonely enterprise.” In doing so, the shooters can highlight the exclusion and isolation they feel in relation to society. Downplayed or contradicted when the shooters identify themselves as part of a righteous community because of their intended actions, these feelings of social isolation re-emerge when the shooters relate to their victims and the broader society for whom they are random placeholders.

Victims as Dangerous Threats

Victims are cast in a variety of conflict-oriented roles: as enemies in war-like terms, as evil, or as explicitly and implicitly criminal. They are in direct conflict with the shooters’ virtuous “us” identity and represent the other “them.” Crusius and Roof cast the victims as threats, menacing and a danger to the shooter and the comparatively virtuous

“us” group. Crusius frames his act as a response to the “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” His victims represent the danger and threat posed by the Hispanic “invaders” and

“instigators.” Similarly, Roof acts to “protect us” from black people, who are “violent” and who forced whites “to move to the suburbs,” an active incursion on the superior white race and lifestyle. Cho pairs his war-like framing with religious symbolism to cast his victims as evil. He refers to them as “Descendants of Satan” who terrorize him with their continuous “menacing” on the “battlefield.” His victims must be stopped from threatening his “people,” whom he also refers to as “Children of Ishmael” and “Jesus

Christs,” and must be stopped. Cho equates his act as “like Easter...a rebirth...[that] will be the start of a revolution” to contrast against these “Apostles of Sin.” This religious

29 imagery depicts his victims as inherently evil.

Some of the shooters go further to assign an explicit label of “criminal” upon their targets. Notably, the shooters’ definitions of crime vary. Some manifestos understand criminality to refer to ‘couriers of evil’ or perceived threats; that is, crime refers to behavior that is dangerous and prohibited by law. Seung Hui Cho describes his victims as

“rapists,” “terrorists,” and “Lifetakers” who perpetrated crimes against him and his community of “Innocents.” They are lawbreakers and thus subject to the formal punishment he intends to mete out. He acknowledges and uses conventional categories of crime and punishment. Similarly, Rodger refers to his female victims as deserving punishment such as “to be dumped in boiling water for the crime of not giving me the attention and adoration I so rightfully deserve!” Both Cho and Rodger define what these crimes entail as their social rejection and exclusion. Other manifestos see criminals as an implicit designation for people who are “lesser,” commenting on their social value (or lack thereof), as understood by the shooters. Even when the specific terminologies of criminality are not used, the shooters employ such framing which furthers the “us v. them” divide. Wong repeatedly invokes the image of an “undercover cop” to symbolize the way he was excluded by hidden enforcers who prevented him from being accepted by society. Hawkins refers to his victims as “a few pieces of shit” and Roof states black people are “inferior,” both express their victims’ worthlessness.

Regardless of how the shooter sees his intended victims, whether as a symbol and/or a threat, the subjects of the violence are deemed to inherently deserve the violence that will be inflicted on them. The blame lies with the victims, not their shooters. This inverted perspective is present in all eight manifestos and reinforced an inherent “us v.

30 them” framework. While we in the mass public see the shooters’ targets as innocent victims, the shooters see them as collateral damage at best, and, consistent with this politicization of crime, more often guilty criminals or enemies within these conflictual frameworks. As symbols, they carry the burden of their representation; as enemies, they are a source of the violence; and as criminals, they deserve the punishment they receive. Through this inverted lens, the shooters reveal a challenge to the legitimacy of current socio-legal arrangements.

Category 3: Construction of Act

Central to understanding how the shooters see themselves is how they construct their acts, especially in relation to their perceived context. While they engage in behavior labeled as criminal by conventional society, we need to ask: how do they see their behavior? Do they agree that they are acting in violation of the law? Do they believe they are exempt from the legal prohibitions? Do they recognize law but reject its legitimacy?

Do they believe certain injustices justify their act and if so, what degree of injustice?

These rationalizations are greatly informed by how the shooters view society. Each manifesto answers this question and thus divulges these worldviews.

These violent acts are challenges to the conventional society in which the shooters exist. Social norms dictate this type of killing as unacceptable and legal standards relegate it as unjustified and deserving of punishment. Acting out despite contrary social norms, these individuals position themselves in direct conflict with society. Doing so demands that they recognize how their behavior is understood from the conventional standpoint while also offering an alternative view. The constructions that emerged from this study’s sample were understood as (1) as an act of necessary deviance or (2) an act of

31 insurrection against a repressive society. The shooters subscribe to either or both of these alternate views, which reject or circumvent the predominant stance on mass shootings.

The first construction is best understood as an act of necessary illegality, to which

Hawkins, Sodini, Rodger, Harper-Mercer, Roof, and Crusius all subscribe. They all recognize the authority of the state and its resulting laws and social norms, including the codification of their behavior as criminal. Crusius acknowledges his act will be

“blast[ed]...as the sole result of racism and hatred of other countries” and that, should he be captured by authorities, he would get “the death penalty anyway.” Hawkins notes that

“everyone will remember me as some sort of monster.” This construction does not entirely disown society and the social contract but rather calls attention to an unjust feature. They do not disavow current legal and social norms. Some even acknowledge that their act is criminal, such as Wong’s nod to the involvement of the judicial system.

Rather, they “have a sincere and serious belief that [an aspect of the law] warrants re- examination” and feel “that the risk of an injustice allows for a law-breaking action in order to communicate such a belief” (Brownlee 2004:341). Roof explains that integration has been propagated by “nonsense,” “historical lies, exaggerations and myths” that favor the black population over the “superior” white people. For Crusius, the growing

Hispanic population is causing an imbalance in the political, economic, and social systems which will be “detrimental to the future of America.” Both Sodini and Harper-

Mercer see injustice through women’s repeated rejection of them: “There are 30 million desirable women in the US...and not one of them finds me attractive”; “when good individuals like myself are alone…it’s not fair.” With the shortest manifesto, Hawkins simply makes reference to his “meaningless existence” as the justification for his act.

32 The shooters in this category of necessary illegality are usually nostalgic for an idealized past version of society and yearn to return to the “good old days.” They feel compelled to act, often expressing a sense of urgency to rectify this perceived derailing of society. They see their violence as a legitimate response to injustice resulting from the breaking of the social contract, one worth engaging in despite its criminality. The shooters implicitly claim a right to act in violation of the law in order to correct resulting injustices. The shooters announce they feel compelled to act: “I can no longer bear the shame of inaction” (Crusius); “I have to do this [act]” (Sodini); “I have been forced”

(Cho); and “I’m gonna have to go this [act] alone” (Hawkins). Roof both framed his compulsion more hesitantly and individually - “I guess that has to be me,” and more urgently, as acting on behalf of a collective - “We need to and we have to” act. These individuals understand their acts as conveying their “conviction of an injustice within the society” (Moraro 2007:2).

The second construction –the act of insurrection—is more absolute. Cho, Wong,

Rodger, and Harper-Mercer see their acts as a legitimate rejection of an illegitimate society. They do not agree with the categorization of their behavior as criminal. Because of society’s repressive nature, they challenge the rightfulness of its authority to dictate law. In Harper-Mercer’s words, “society …den[ies] people like me...everything they deserved, everything they wanted.” The act is one of righteous rebellion, not criminal conduct. They are resisting a society that, through repeated repression of various groups, has lost its authority: “What did you expect me to do, you violators of human rights?”

(Cho). Like their counterparts who construct their act as necessary deviance, these shooters’ construction also invokes the social contract. However, they believe the social

33 contract has been negated by society’s repression:

The final solution...was to...carry out my Day of Retribution, to exact my ultimate

and devastating vengeance against all of the popular young people who never

accepted me, and against all women for rejecting me and starving me of love and

sex. (Rodger)

Their treatment by society violates the contract and as part of this repressed group, the shooters believe that they can, and should, act violently. These four shooters blame a repressive society for the ensuing mass shooting acts. The men highlight how society has wronged them; the personal is political. Rodger “desired girls, but girls never desired

[him] back. There is something very wrong with that. It is an injustice that cannot go unpunished.” Cho feels “beaten, humiliated and crucified” while Harper-Mercer felt society denied him the opportunity for friendships, work, and romantic relationships.

Society’s purportedly targeted repression of the shooters violates the social contract and they feel obligated to act in rebellion: “[S]ociety left us no recourse, no way to be good”

(Harper-Mercer). They reject society’s labelling their acts as criminal or wrong because they identify their actions as a permissible, even necessary, insurrection against society.

Wong even expresses that he must act as a “judge” to dispense “impartial” justice (“must oneself get a judge job for make an impartial”). The shootings call attention to this shift in social authority, which in turn legitimizes their behavior in contrast to the illegitimacy of the law.

The two constructions appear mutually exclusive—the authority of social norms and legal codes are accepted or rejected. However, both constructions appear in the manifestos of Rodger and Harper-Mercer. This contradiction reveals an interesting

34 internal conflict. These two shooters believe they are exempt from social norms prohibiting behavior because they were wrongfully isolated by conventional society.

Rodger notes: “I was condemned to suffer a life of loneliness and rejection.” Harper-

Mercer echoes this sentiment, noting “I was... a loser, rejected by society.” Although they act outside the bounds of society, in part rejecting its authority, they still also accept the criminal nature of their actions. Thus, they label their acts as “demonic” (Harper-Mercer) and acknowledge the punishment associated with their act: “I knew that I had to kill myself after I exacted my revenge to avoid getting captured and imprisoned” (Rodger).

These two shooters fail to reconcile how their acts can be simultaneously criminal and legitimate.

Category 4: Intervention in Socio-Legal Order

As members of society, each shooter believes the existing socio-legal arrangement is unjust. The killing sprees are perpetrated to reform and reshape the status quo in each shooter’s idea of a better socio-legal alternative. While the immediate results are the injuries and death of victims, the manifestos extend beyond the simple desire to kill. Writing and sharing a manifesto, and then engaging in the shooting, is a shooter’s means of articulating messages about the social change they seek. The end is the social response to and implication of the act.

Most of the shooters aim at enacting change within the current society although for two men, Hawkins and Wong, the goal is revenge. They are the only shooters who do not address a longer term, or more lasting impact, of their act. For them, the shooting is an end in itself, not the means by which they can induce change. They focus primarily on short term revenge upon those who have wronged them. Hawkins wants to end his

35 “burdensome” life while taking a “few pieces of shit with [him].” Wong wants to avenge an unjust life full of perceived persecution. They do not seek to challenge or change the status quo that they believe has pushed them to this violence.

The other shooters, however, look beyond the immediate and short term and express a desire to be a catalyst for change. As products of society, they have a sense of agency that inspires them to not only contribute to but lead or enable what they see as social improvement. In contrast to Wong and Hawkins, the other shooters believe it is necessary for them to change the status quo through their violent acts, with the shooter as the leader spearheading the cause. Crusius states that he is “honored to head the fight” to protect his country from “the brink of destruction.” His manifesto articulates his national vision to “decrease the number of people in America using resources” and limit

“competition for skilled labor” by restricting immigration. He sees his intended violence as the beginning “of the fight for America and Europe.” Roof believes “someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world and I guess that has to be me.” His action is intended as the catalyst for a return to more conservative times, when the white population was recognized as superior and protected from their black counterparts. From his perspective, “integration has done nothing but bring Whites down to level [sic] of brute animals” and society should correct this by re-establishing the proper social pecking order. His act serves to call attention to this “problem” and inspire other “great White minds” to join this defensive fight. Harper-Mercer hopes “all who have read [his manifesto] enjoyed it and find inspiration in it.” His act serves to highlight the injustices of society, in which some people enjoy friends, work, sex, and so on while others are those norms that are denied to others like himself. He hopes to encourage “others like

36 me...to buy a gun and start killing people.” Despite being half-black, Harper-Mercer does not identify with his victims, even going so far as to blame black men for taking away opportunities from him. Similarly, Cho feels he has been prevented from “mingling among you hedonists, being counted as one of you” and wants to “set the example of the century for my Children to follow.” His act serves as a rallying call to “the Weak, the

Defenseless, and the Innocent Children of all ages” to take part in “a day of rebirth” in which the tables are turned. His worldview works to reverse repression; he will lead “his” people who will rule. Sodini and Rodger do not explicitly express their vision of an alternative society but do allude to the possibility of change. Sodini concludes his text with an acknowledgment that his manifesto may be studied by others who could follow in his footsteps: “Some people like to study that stuff.” By mentioning potential followers, he implies that his message can be perpetuated by studying and emulating his act. Rodger describes his alternative reality, one without “sexuality…women themselves would…be abolished.” He outlines his reasoning in favor of this “ideal world” instead of the current social arrangement. Neither identifies themselves as direct catalysts for change but introduces the possibility of long-term change in subtle ways.

Despite their different grievances, far-reaching visions are present across most of the manifestos. Some, such as Crusius and Roof, envision their act, and by extension themselves, as correcting a social wrong, not just a personal one. Others set their sights on reforming society by elevating themselves and those they consider worthy and excluding or downgrading those who they do not consider eligible for equality or inclusion. The shooters aspire to act as a catalyst for change to the social order, one in

37 which they are no longer isolated, excluded, or inferior. This objective is apparent across the sample, coupled with a desire to be a leading figure in the reform.

38 Chapter 5: Analysis

This study examines how mass public shooters construe crime, law, and politics as well as their victims and the society they seek to impact. An analysis of their manifestos uncovers trends and patterns in their answers to the following questions:

• How does each shooter understand himself in relationship with other mass public

shooters and like-minded people?

• How does each shooter see his victims as contributing to/causing the shooting? In

turn, how does each shooter relate to the victims?

• How does each shooter construct his act in terms of legality and illegality? What

is his understanding of and relationship to the law?

• How does each shooter see his act as resolving his grievances about the current

socio-legal order?

This chapter will begin by challenging the popular public portrayal of mass public shooters as “lone wolves” who are mentally ill and commit a mass shooting arbitrarily without a long-term vision (Beydoun 2017; Kimball 2019; Walter 2012). I argue that although the shooters act individually and may be lonely or loners, they identify themselves as members of an idealized or imagined fraternity, best understood through

Benedict Anderson’s “imagined community” (1983). The analysis of shooters’ manifestos will dispute both an individualistic framing of their act and their perceived lack of purpose by highlighting a strong sense of fraternity, solidarity, and intent. They reframe their criminal acts as legitimate challenges to perceived violations of the social contract. Their consciousness of their acts as intervening in the socio-legal landscape will show how the shooters feel a sense of agency and meaningfulness in carrying out their shootings.

39 A Message in Crime and Punishment

This study finds that the shooters act purposively and intentionally, adopting a resistance identity (Castells 2009), including through identifying themselves as members of a community (Anderson 1983), despite their solo actions. Each aspect of their mass shooting, including the execution of the act itself, the selection of the targeted population, and the authoring of a written manifesto is intentional and engages with audiences. The shooters utilize these discursive aspects of their act in multiple ways. All of the shooters in this sample see their act as communicative of a desire to react against injustice. By committing a mass shooting, they are able to actively resist the conditions they feel are oppressive. The shooting itself is an act that communicates resistance against society and its socio-legal norms which they are openly violating. Some shooters targeting of specific populations as symbols or representatives furthers this point. Their resistance, represented by their bullets, is aimed at the symbols of injustice. Moreover, the shooting acts as a form of punishment against society, and especially the symbolic victims, as the perpetrators express “attitudes of resentment and indignation, and of judgments of disapproval and reprobation” (Feinberg 1965:74).

All of these individuals intend to die during the commission of their act, either during fatal interactions with law enforcement or by their own hand. The publication of a manifesto acts as the utterance of the shooter’s “last words” containing their final thoughts and grievances, beyond the grave. Usually widely distributed or available by the shooter prior to the commission of the shooting, these documents are designed to be consumed by an audience. Mimicking the revolutionary intent of the Irish “speeches from the dock,” the shooters substitute its historically anti-colonialist goal for their inverted

40 anti-egalitarian vision. They claim their ideas of legitimacy as trumping legality and

“reclaim - even momentarily - the legal space...for the purpose of discursive opposition”

(Harlow 1993:876). The shooters create their own “dock” on paper, from which they can articulate the injustices they are resisting. The act itself is not the ultimate goal or message—the shooters wish to express their perspective and communicate with the greater public. Their communication is through the rejection of law, in whole or in part, by claiming the legitimacy of their illegality, and for some shooters, the illegitimacy of the social contract. In addition to the ability to communicate with a larger audience posthumously, the manifestos continue to tighten the bonds of the imagined community.

As originally predicted by Anderson, mass communication allows people to express, share, and transfer ideologies and experiences to those with whom they would not otherwise interact. A manifesto provides an opportunity to relate to others and create bonds within an imagined community. Invoking Tilly’s concept of narratives, they form “new relations” and affirm “existing relations” (2006:70). Digital publication accelerates the distribution and reach of the manifestos, allowing “rapidly growing numbers of people to think about themselves, and to relate themselves to others”

(Anderson 1983:48). Both direct and indirect communication is embedded in MPS, enhanced further by manifestos. Writing and shooting are discursive and expressive acts that articulate the actor’s justification and actual impact, stemming from his socio-legal understanding, and solidify his resistive identity, both individually and communally.

Imagined Community of Mass Public Shooters

As part of their own socially constructed imagined community (Anderson 1983), mass public shooters consider themselves as part of a group made up of other mass public

41 shooters and those who admire them. Paradoxically, mass public shooters are typically excluded loners from society but in their manifestos seek to frame themselves as part of a collective, even while they often voice their isolation as the injustice that has occasioned their killing spree. In mainstream society, these shooters are often ostracized and seen as alienated “loners.” They share a sense of marginalization and feel excluded from conventional society. All of the shooters studied in this thesis articulate feelings of being in the “out group” and perceive the world as unfair and cruel. The shooters create or invoke a community of which they consider themselves members; their manifestos and murders are their participation. Both like and unlike traditional labeling theory (Mead

1934), the shooters acknowledge but also reject their label of “loner.” Instead, through their written manifestos, they identify as members of a resistant collective. They act in defiance of conventional society (i.e. legitimizing identities) to “affirm the permanence of their values” (Castells 2009:423). The “deep horizontal comradeship” described by

Anderson is clearly shared among the shooters of this sample (1983:15). Despite acting alone, propelled by different reasons, and separated by time and place, mass public shooters express - but therefore also create - a sense of kinship.

On the most fundamental level, they connect with one another based on a shared experience of engaging in MPS. Just as these types of shooting are considered a unique category of violence, gun violence in particular, these shooters consider themselves a part of an exclusive club. They signal this community sentiment with both explicit and implicit mention of other shooters in their manifestos. Within this study’s sample of eight manifestos, six mass shooters (both from the United States and internationally) are referenced by name. These references are exclusively framed in a positive manner,

42 serving as a source of inspiration for both the shooter and others to follow. Their past actions are revered and their manifestos are cited. In addition, some of the shooters utilize more implicit mentions of the fame and attention given to MPS by the public media.

Their desire is to achieve a similar level of attention and join the fraternity of prior shooters—giving new application to “imitation is the greatest form of flattery.” The ideological linkage among the shooters is more or less coherent. For instance, while

Crusius cites Brenton Tarrant’s manifesto in an effort to concur with his discriminatory views against unwanted immigrants (whether Hispanic or Muslim), Harper-Mercer references a litany of the mass public shooters (i.e. Elliot Rodger, Vester Flanagan, Eric

Harris and Dylan Klebold of Columbine High School, Adam Lanza and Seung Cho) with widely differing ideologies. The very fact of being a mass public shooter is a key element of their identity, even overcoming these ideological and factual inconsistencies.

Us v. Them: An Inverted Relationship

The shooters create or underscore the illusion of this community by defining its membership, both in how they relate to one another (“us”) and in relation to non- members (“them”). Their identity is “built around sharply distinct principles, defining an

‘in’ and ‘out’” (Castells 2009:421). This community is “imagined” and those within it will most likely “never know most of their fellow-members” (Anderson 1983:15), including because they reference manifestos of dead men. But shooters use collective terms to solidify the ideas and ideals of these bonds and their shared identity.

As part of their manifestos, each shooter outlines, in varying levels of detail, the grievances they have about current socio-legal arrangements. Some shooters explicitly assign blame like Cho’s unequivocal statement that society chose to “extinguis[h his]

43 life.” Wong faults an “undercover cop” who gave him “a lot of ass [discrimination] during eighteen years.” They all believe there is a fundamental and profound unfairness, wrong, and/or illegitimacy with the world they live in, usually stemming from their isolated status in society. They employ collective terms such as “we,” “us,” and “our” to bolster their complaints. This unifying language signals to the public that their claims are shared by others—clearly identifying the imagined community. It identifies a point of commonality shared by existing community members, signals the membership of the shooter within the community, and gives validation to other non-members who share these grievances. The utilization of the online medium, to both publish their manifestos and interact with like-minded supporters, strengthens the shooters’ imagination of a community. Consistent with the application of Anderson’s concept to social media networks, their connection is never physically realized (Fox 2004; Weiskirch 2019).

However, the use of collective terms allows fellow members (and potential members) who identify with the shooters’ complaints to feel invited to, recognized by, and part of the community.

The shooters resist the current socio-legal order. Their common feelings of isolation, exclusion, and rejection relate to the social component while the legal aspect is more variable among the sample. For some shooters, like Roof and Crusius, the legal dimensions of their cited injustices are more overt (i.e. immigration or anti-discrimination laws). For others, it is more subtle, such as rejecting the right of women to refuse sex. In practice, the shooters’ have plural imagined communities of different and often irreconcilable values. In other words, being a mass public shooter intent on articulating a socio-legal critique of the world does not make those critiques, or the identities of the

44 shooters, consistent. Each shooter expresses a desire to connect with “my people” but each of their definitions of who “their people” are differs. As a white supremacist, Roof

’s community is white by definition and domination; black people are outside the polity in a subordinate role. Sodini’s community excludes female members, all the while using language of inclusion. Harper-Mercer, ignoring his own mixed-race heritage, idealizes a homogeneous white past both in the U.S. and in European countries, despite the increasing diversity of these nations. Despite these glaring inconsistencies, and the fact that most of the ‘community’ members are dead, the existence of this imagined community is proffered in all the shooters’ manifestos and contributes to the creation of a new “us.” Furthermore, the manifestos’ use of labels that are overwhelmingly positive allow this community to re-frame itself as a victim of injustice and a leader for justice.

Rather than criminals or mass murderers, they see themselves as “martyrs” and righteous

“Children of Ishmael” which both legitimizes and justifies their actions. Their lack of actual power to define, dominate, or control current socio-legal arrangements, leads to their using violence as a substitute for power where, as Hannah Arendt (1970) noted, power and violence are antithetical. They imagine and, in that sense, create this collective of people who share their sense of powerlessness. This absence of real impact and influence is translated into an argument for violence to displace the socio-legal order which they see as the source of their powerlessness. This unifying vocabulary promotes a sense of community that endorses MPS as a response to perceived socio-legal injustices.

The shooters are able to create a newly defined “us” composed of a conglomerate of excluded persons. This relational identity exists in contrast to “them”—those who themselves are excluded from the imagined community. In this inverted worldview, the

45 ostracized group is made up of the larger and external society which rejected or excluded them, of which the victims are usually random placeholders. Not surprisingly, the shooters reject those who they believed had previously excluded them from conventional society. The newly excluded majority are what the imagined community is resisting.

Some shooters chose to target a specific category of people (i.e. young “beautiful” women, Hispanic “invaders,” “blacks”) while others chose populations that were more generally representative of society. Regardless of their approach, the shooters do not relate to their victims as being meaningful as individuals or in terms of some group or symbolic identity. Each shooter depicts his victim population and the larger society of which they are a part to solidify the boundaries of his ‘in’ group and explain his actions.

Regardless of whether the shooter sees his intended victims as symbolically threatening

(i.e. Hispanic “instigators”) or actually criminal (e.g. Cho refers to his victims as

“terrorists”), the subjects of the mass shootings are deemed to inherently deserve the violence that will be inflicted on them. They are not part of any of the shooter’s imagined community and they are not righteous, unlike the shooters. The victims are guilty representatives of the status quo and the shooters are the aggrieved victims of the unjust socio-legal order. Through this inverted lens, the shooters reveal a challenge to the legitimacy of the current socio-legal arrangement.

A View of Justice

The shooters consider themselves righteous and responsible parties challenging an inverted socio-legal system that continues to exclude and protect the wrong groups of people. The shooters see the legal system, as well as the social one, as playing a role in upholding and perpetuating the structures of exclusion they experience. For instance,

46 Roof believes the normative and legal provisions designed to protect the rights of racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S., such as affirmative action and anti-discrimination statutes, unfairly protect black people while disadvantaging his white community.

Similarly, Crusius sees the pro-immigration agenda as diluting the political and economic power of Americans by driving down wages and building a powerful voting bloc. Wong, with one of the least developed manifestos, implies that immigration in the United States is fraught with inequality, from which he suffers. The shooters who do not directly cite political policies or legal codes still invoke the political nature of social norms that create dominant social policy. Sodini and Rodger both articulate that their exclusion is perpetuated by the dominant image of a desirable man, and despite their efforts, they cannot fit this mold and are doomed to remain unattractive and undesirable to women.

They reject both social norms and the laws that protect the equal rights of women, rejecting the development and enforcement of gender equality as politically unjust. Legal protection for women from sexual domination and subordination by their power-holding male counterparts is, for these shooters, illegitimate. This arrangement appears to them to protect the wrong group of people: the female “them” instead of their righteous community, implicitly male, who are instead regularly denied these ‘freedoms.’

All of the shooters’ legal, and socio-legal, consciousnesses identify injustice in their current arrangement. This legal consciousness, or how they understand what the law is and how it shapes their lives, is informed by their understanding of the social contract.

In adopting illegal violence, they are challenging the social contract, an “agreement to regulate human interaction” (Buntman 2003:247), in whole or in part. Implicit in this consent is the requirement that the contract improves the conditions of the society. By

47 allowing the existence, or perpetration, of perceived injustices, the shooters believe the social contract has been breached. As a result, the shooters invoke their right to “resist[] the authority of the civil government” in the form of a mass public shooting (Friend n.d).

The socio-legal order lost its legitimacy for these men who believed the obligations under the social contract were not upheld, rendering it illegitimate.

The shooters’ legal consciousness is forged out of this inverted perspective of “us v. them” which interprets the current socio-legal order as illegitimate. This foundation reveals a key perspective in the shooters’ “imagined community”; they consider themselves as no longer protected by or subject to the social contract which protects

“them” and perpetuates an injustice against “us.” The shooters feel obligated and compelled to correct the resulting injustice and see themselves as within their rights to act in violation of the law to achieve this objective. They feel justified in doing so with the p that the society has lost its legitimacy in allowing the injustice to continue. Notably, they do not believe they can enact change by working within the system, as the system is now illegitimate. The only option is resistance. Resistance becomes part of their identity - crucial to both unifying and protecting their community of outsiders. They engage in this categorical resistance to remain true to themselves, their values, and their cause of action.

Their resistance, in the form of a mass public shooting, is carried out as a means to correct a socio-legal injustice.

Construction of their Act

As a consequence of the social contract being violated, the shooters invoke their right to “resist[] the authority of the civil government” (Friend n.d) in the form of a mass public shooting. Notably, none of the shooters articulate understandings of legal,

48 political, or personal alternatives to social change, reflecting at least in part serious psychological or cognitive distortions (Hamlett 2017; Knoll 2012; Bondü & Schneithauer

2015) and/or political alignments with far-right causes (Alcorn and Neely 2020; Lilla

2016; Smith 2018; Feeney 2016; Stern 2019). The only option is resistance through their written proclamations and their violence. Although not a term the shooters themselves use, resistance becomes part of their identity, crucial to both unifying and protecting their community of outsiders. They engage in what they see as an imperative to resist as part of their raison d’être, or categorical resistance (Buntman 2003:127), to remain true to themselves, their values, and their cause of action. They consider their words and their bullets as a means to correct socio-legal injustices.

Resistances encompass a large and diverse range of understandings and actions with no inherent ideological substance. Two of the shooters’ expressions of resistance are versions of civil disobedience and political crime, closer to insurrection. The former involves shooters who engage in acts of selective criminality; i.e. rejecting or violating criminal law in part rather than in blanket repudiation of the legal order. The latter is a broader act of rebellion against and rejections of a repressive legal order. That is, they differ in the degree of their rejection of society and/or its laws. While these perspectives may be easily understood as a convenient neutralization technique (Sykes and Matza

1957), shooters are attempting to justify their actions through alternative and rejectionary paradigms. They deviate from the conventional code of conduct by assuming alternative ideas of legitimacy and legality.

Hawkins, Sodini, Rodger, Harper-Mercer, Roof, and Crusius all subscribe to the

“necessary illegality” point of view—which does not entirely disown society but rather

49 calls attention to an unjust feature. Akin to civil disobedience, the perpetrators in this group believe they must act in a prohibited way in order to correct the resulting injustice.

They recognize the authority of the state and its resulting laws and social norms, insofar as they recognize the codification of their behavior as criminal. Crusius acknowledges his act will be “blast[ed]...as the sole result of racism and hatred of other countries” and that, should he be captured by authorities, he would get “the death penalty anyway.” Hawkins notes that “everyone will remember me as some sort of monster.” The shooters believe that an injustice exists within the current social arrangement and feel compelled to act, consistent with categorical resistance: “I can no longer bear the shame of inaction”

(Crusius); “I have to do this [act]” (Sodini); “I have been forced” (Cho); “I guess that has to be me” (Roof); and “I’m gonna have to go this [act] alone” (Hawkins). Understood best through the analogy of civil disobedience, these individuals understand their acts as conveying[s] their “conviction of an injustice within the society” (Moraro 2007:2). They do not disavow current legal and social norms (i.e. Hawkins’ acceptance that “everyone will remember me as some sort of monster”). Some even acknowledge that their act is criminal (e.g. Wong’s nod to the involvement of the judicial system). Rather, they “have a sincere and serious belief that [an aspect of the law] warrants re-examination” and feel

“that the risk of an injustice allows for a law-breaking action in order to communicate such a belief” (Brownlee 2004:341). Roof explains that racial integration has been propagated by “nonsense,” “historical lies, exaggerations and myths” that favor the black population over the “superior” white people. For Crusius, the growing Hispanic population is causing an imbalance in the political, economic, and social systems which will be “detrimental to the future of America.” Both Sodini and Harper-Mercer see

50 injustice through women repeatedly rejecting them: “There are 30 million desirable women in the US and not one of them finds me attractive” and “when good individuals like myself are alone…it’s not fair.” Hawkins justifies his imminent murders by his

“meaningless existence.” The shooters in this category are usually nostalgic for an idealized past version of society and yearn to return to the ‘good old days’. They feel compelled to act, often expressing a sense of urgency to rectify this perceived derailing of the appropriate social order. They understand their violence as a legitimate albeit criminal response to injustice resulting from the breaking of the social contract.

The second view is more absolute in its condemnation of society. Cho, Wong,

Rodger, and Harper-Mercer believe that the current socio-legal arrangement is wholly illegitimate. They reject the norms of social behavior and do not agree with the categorization of their behavior as criminal. They challenge the authority of state law as illegitimate, conceiving themselves as rebels pushing back against a repressive society.

These shooters do not wish to reform an aspect of society that has gone awry but to overthrow the entire system in favor of an alternative vision. This construction is much more radical and is understood as such by the shooters. They are knowingly and intentionally using violence to subvert an illegitimate social order; it is not crime nor simply an act of civil disobedience but an act of insurrection, in order to convey a stronger rejection of the socio-legal framework. In their view, their actions are not a crime if the legal foundation has no basis.

Interestingly, Rodger and Harper-Mercer subscribe to both views despite their contradictory implications. Rodger oscillates between rebuking those who made his “life of loneliness and rejection” and accepting the “demonic” label of his shooting. Similarly,

51 Harper-Mercer repudiates his status as “a loser” yet accepts he will face punishment, including imprisonment. Rodger and Harper-Mercer seem to accept and reject the existing structure without reconciling their mutually exclusive nature. Indeed, internal inconsistencies are present at many points in the manifestos.

Long Term Vision

Building upon the communicative nature of the crime, the shooters articulate a long-term implied vision (the end) through their act (the means). Beyond simply communicating their grievances on the current injustices of society, the shooters want to express their desire to correct and reshape the current order. Most of the shooters are consistent in their long-term vision to challenge the status quo for the better. The ultimate goal of each shooter’s conscious resistance is to enact change within the current society.

They desire not only personal recognition and even fame, but a greater acknowledgment and admiration for their community and its ideas. Each shooter believes the existing arrangement is unjust and engages in this shooting to reform and reshape the status quo to further his preferred alternative view. The shooters’ views of how their actions intervene in the socio-legal order connects their acts to their effects on society, both in the short and long term. While the instant goal is mass death, the manifestos express ambitions that extend beyond the simple desire to kill. The means of articulating their message of desired change is the shooting itself, while the end is the social message and implication of the act. The manifestos mostly envision a better world, created and shaped in the image of their worldview, with different ideas of law, both formal and informal, and social structure. Hawkins and Wong are the only shooters who do not address a longer term, or more lasting impact, of their act. They focus primarily on short term revenge

52 upon those who have wronged them. Hawkins wants to end his “burdensome” life while taking a “few pieces of shit with [him].” Wong wants revenge for an unjust life full of perceived persecution. They do not seek to challenge or change the status quo that they believe has pushed them to this violence. Unlike the majority of the shooters, Hawkins and Wong offer their violence as an end in itself to repudiate injustice by subverting law, not a means by which they can induce change.

Most of the shooters express a desire to be leaders and leave a meaningful imprint on the world. Their shooting is not simply a crime but an inchoate political act intended to facilitate a new social contract along with new laws and social structures, including by inspiring others to join their fraternity. They see themselves as leaders spearheading social improvement through their violence. Crusius states that he is “honored to head the fight” to protect his country from “the brink of destruction” (emphasis added). He uses his manifesto to articulate his worldview that America should “decrease the number of people in America using resources” and limit “competition for skilled labor” by restricting immigration.” Roof believes “someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world and I guess that has to be me.” Harper-Mercer hopes those who read his manifesto “enjoyed it and find inspiration in it.” He hopes to encourage “others like me...to buy a gun and start killing people.” Similarly, Cho wants to “set the example of the century for my Children to follow.” Sodini and Rodger allude to their potential for leadership. Sodini concludes his text with an acknowledgment that his text may be studied by others who could follow in his footsteps: “[s]ome people like to study that stuff” while Rodger refers to himself as a “living god” sent to “purify the world of everything that is wrong with it.”

53 Despite their different grievances, far-reaching if poorly-developed visions remain present across most of the manifestos. The shooters aspire to act as a catalyst for change to the social order, one in which they are no longer isolated, excluded, or inferior.

These long-term visions are complementary to each shooter’s understanding of the current social injustice. Building upon how pervasive the shooters’ perceive the injustice to be, they, in turn, develop and act in furtherance of a long-term reform of society that will address these grievances. Notably, they see themselves as the leaders of this cause, spearheading the movement. As political actors, they see their “violation of the law [as] intended to legitimate social ideas through crime, and [their] deviance contemplates social progress” (Schafer 1971:384). They see their acts as “the best available means to express unselfish concern for social groups” (Schafer 1971:385).

The long-term vision for a changed society differs among the shooters with some tapping into their nostalgia for a past socio-legal order (e.g. Roof’s craving for a return to eras of racial segregation and explicit white supremacy) and others imagining an entirely idealistic world (e.g. Rodger’s vision for a society without women and girls). Informed by the pervasiveness of the injustice they perceive, they respond by committing MPS, in hopes of inspiring others, including those in their imagined community. Some of the shooters explicitly articulate this aspiration to inspire and lead. None of the shooters believe they can single-handedly change the socio-legal order, but they do believe they are contributing to a movement of outright resistance. By interrupting the normal social order, they hope to tap into and grow the community they imagine. In doing so, more attacks to advance their community’s message will be perpetrated, from which they will be able to effect change. The social contract “can be dissolved and the process to create

54 political society begun anew” (Friend n.d.). Most of the shooters see themselves as, at once, starting a movement and building on the manifestos and shootings of others. Gaps and even contradictions in grievances and intended outcomes are ignored in the interests of asserting fraternity.

In seeing their acts as a revolutionary or expressions of civil disobedience, the shooters challenge the socio-legal world they inhabit. Understood as a form of legitimate resistance against an illegitimate society, they want an upheaval of the current system— one that will reflect their inverted view and release them from a status of exclusion. They identify the problem (i.e. their grievances or perceived injustices) that plague both themselves and their imagined community of like-minded people. This community provides them the illusion of dedicated supporters from which their causes can gain momentum. The shooters blame these injustices on the socio-legal framework and the political actors sustaining it. The shooters’ views of themselves as catalysts for a movement invokes their aspired vision for repeated acts of resistance, which would force power-holders to recognize them (Coicaud 2013:48). Notably, the publicity from political crimes is intended to inspire further subsequent acts as “the convictional criminal disseminates his ideals” to like-minded supporters. (Schafer 1971:386). The development of social media exacerbates this dynamic as it has increased the speed and spread of information, making dissemination both instantaneous and global. In the case of these shooters, their explicit references to other MPS support this assumption. Prior studies echo this influence factor, both in which past shooters “primarily serve as inspiration” and “by vividly demonstrating that...killers of this type are consistently rewarded by the media with fame (Lankford and Silver 2020:42; Lankford 2016; Lankford and Madfis

55 2018; Meindl and Ivy 2017). Repeated challenges, through multiple mass shootings as acts of resistance, may cause previously non-problematic actions to “now be viewed as unacceptable because they violate the new rights” being created (Coicaud 2013:51). This integration of new rights enhances the actors’ sense of agency by recognizing their victimhood under the prior socio-legal arrangements and imposing the criminal label on those previously unrecognized as such (Coicaud 2013:50-51). The ideological or political nature of this type of resistance reflects its fluid labeling as “the political criminal of our time may be the hero, martyr, or saint of another age” (Schafer 1971:371). The shooters’ understanding of their resistance, particularly long-term, indicates an adoption of a political identity, both as an individual and as part of a larger reform movement spurred on by their mass shooting.

56 Chapter 6: Conclusion

Analyzing mass shooters through a socio-legal lens provides a unique insight into their perspectives and legal consciousness, rather than dismissing them merely as dangerous losers and loners. Studying the manifestos unveils the ideologies and worldviews of the shooters, including their invocation of an imagined community with whom they share common feelings of exclusion. Mass shooters variously assume and expand upon their common bonds and how their range of grievances share a fundamental disagreement with, and rejection of, the current social structure. The shooters’ feelings of fraternity connect them with individuals with whom they variously cannot, and mostly will never, interact. While this community mimics some elements of other social change movements, they remain imagined given the absence of strategy, organization, and actual group identity. Their long-term visions, however inchoate and undeveloped, invoke a political edge; they are words and deeds of violent reactionary nostalgia, politically unmoored resistance intended to act as catalysts for social change (Lilla 2016; Smith

2018; Feeney 2016). The shooters feel compelled to act in order to air their grievances and upend the social structure that perpetuates the injustice they perceive. Recognizing the socio-legal imaginations of the shooters expand our understanding of these individuals, both individually but more importantly, in terms of how they identify as part of a collective, which also underscores their nascent senses of political agency. Their identity becomes a direct articulation of resistance against dominant socio-legal structures. While they may remain ineffective in enacting social change, they do challenge the existing socio-legal arrangement in favor of cultural communes bound by

57 shared values or visions of society. In doing so, they can inspire change by acting as the stepping stone for project identities.

Beyond simply constructing and contributing to ideologies and imagined communities, the shooters’ ability to use their acts to communicate their socio-legal imaginations is crucial. The shooters carry out purposeful and meaningful resistive action in order to articulate their rejection of society. Furthermore, they articulate their sentiments and messaging in direct written texts to inspire and disseminate their ideas to potential supporters and sympathizers. Carrying out direct and indirect communication, the shooters harness the power of mass media, especially social media, through their acts—a medium that both creates and sustains their community. While their individual perspective on the socio-legal structures of conventional society remain purely solitary, their writing and action play a role in crafting the collective identity of which they are a part. Without the ability to project their individual thoughts and messages to a larger audience, this analysis is limited to understanding an individual’s own self-reflection. By contributing to the crafting of the resistance identity of their imagined community, the structural implications of these findings become evident, transforming an individual into a part of a collective.

It is clear that these mass shooters are dangerous in both their worldviews and their long-term visions. They interrupt society with their manifestos and mass shootings to not just kill human beings but to promote a more discriminatory society. They transform personal alienation and exclusion, as well as dislike of inclusionary policies or equity-promoting law, into violent public vendettas, which they justify by inverting and challenging law and widely-held values. This alchemy is the crux of their socio-legal

58 imagination as it transforms their individual pathologies, complaints, and prejudices into a larger socio-political cause for which they engage in both written and violent resistance.

They sometimes allude to but do none of the actual work of building organizations and structures necessary for the change they seek, unlike the growing far right ideologues, organizations, and movements who are transforming politics (Lilla 2016; Smith 2018;

Feeney 2016; Stern 2019). Nevertheless, although these shooters lack aspects of strategic resistance that need to be combined with categorical resistance, their legacies go beyond the death of individual victims and the destruction of norms and communities, including through their manifestos which spread their hate and rage-filled visions, including to inspire followers.

Although this study’s results shed light on the worldviews and imagination of mass shooters, it is limited in its ability to generalize its findings. The sample remains small with only eight manifestos, restricted both temporally and geographically. Other manifestos outside the scope of the sample could be analyzed using the same socio-legal approach, to determine whether the findings can be generalized beyond these eight manifestos. A number of future research opportunities exist based on these findings.

Subsequent studies could expand the number of manifestos, including those written prior to 2000 and/or internationally, to determine the applicability of the findings across all

MPS. Additionally, the implications of gender could be developed more explicitly than in this study, despite the fact that gender did not emerge as a prominent category during coding. Furthermore, the threshold of three or more killings could be expanded to include attempted killings, rather than successful ones, which considers the mindset of like- minded individuals who were not able to carry out their plans in whole or in part.

59 Expanding the operationalization of manifestos to include mixed media or journal-like varieties could yield additional trends.

This study clearly identified a research gap: a socio-legal analysis of the words and would-be worlds left behind by mass shooters. In focusing on the perpetrators’ messages, we better understand how they view, challenge, and aim to change the socio- legal world. We uncover the complex relationship between politics and crime. For the vast majority of the society, these shooters are criminals (Kennedy 2017; Aguilera 2020;

Corchado 2020; U.S. v. Dylan Storm Roof, July 20, 2015), easily dismissed as unmoored, evil, or mentally ill individuals. There is a small but growing recognition of their political intent, especially for those who label some of the shooters as terrorists (Alcorn and Neely

2020). As a matter of law and dominant public narratives, however, their acts are criminalized and their political intentions and implications ignored. For the shooters themselves, they are ideological agents challenging law and society through acts of more or less coherent political resistance against what they perceive as illegitimate injustice.

Recognizing the politics, they see and intend in their crime means taking their words and social visions, not just their violence, as serious threats. This study does not provide a policy prescription or solution to lowering the prevalence of mass shootings but does provide a unique lens by which to help understand this social problem.

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70 Appendix

Seung-Hui Cho: On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old Korean-American, entered the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia and killed 32 people before shooting himself (Biography 2014). Cho’s manifesto contained graphic violence and expletives, mirroring the anger he felt towards society. He felt alienated and assigned labels to both his victims and his followers to describe the power differentiation involved in his social isolation. Cho saw himself as a leader of a new revolution, designed to put an end to this social repression. He depicted his cause as a righteous reaction with repeated religious imagery and symbols.

Robert Hawkins: On December 5, 2007, Robert Hawkins, a 19-year-old white male, entered the Westroads Mall in Omaha and killed eight shoppers before committing suicide. Hawkins’ manifesto was left for his mother to find in their home (CBS News

2007). As the shortest manifesto within the sample, his text resembled a traditional suicide note. He addressed his family and friends, apologizing for “being a burden” on them. Nevertheless, he also expressed the desire to punish others for his personal

“failures” per social standards: “I just want to take a few pieces of shit with me.” He felt his actions were inevitable and his victims were symbols of the conventional society from which he was excluded.

Jiverly Wong: On April 3, 2009, Jiverly Wong, a 41-year-old Vietnamese immigrant, entered the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York. He opened fire in the classroom where he had taken English lessons, killing thirteen former classmates before

71 committing suicide (Fernandez and Schweber 2009). His manifesto was mailed to a local television station prior to the shooting. Wong wrote a relatively condensed manifesto outlining his personal grievances against the American society that rejected him. He repeatedly mentioned an “undercover cop” who appeared to symbolize the unspoken social norms that punished him and kept him from full integration.

George Sodini: On August 4, 2009, George Sodini, a 48-year-old white male, entered an

LA Fitness gym in Collier Township, Pennsylvania. He opened fire on the patrons attending a group exercise class, injuring nine women, killing three and ultimately taking his own life (Hamill 2009). His manifesto was published hours earlier on his online blog.

Sodini expressed an obsession with social acceptance, particularly sexually, and had deep resentment against those who achieve what he yearned for: attention from the opposite sex. He was explicit about his hatred of both black men and “bosses” who he saw as part of his unjustified isolation.

Elliot Rodger: Elliot Rodger was a 22-year-old mixed race (white and Malaysian

Chinese) student at the University of California—Santa Barbara campus. On May 23,

2014, he killed his two roommates and another man before escaping into his car. While driving around campus, he fired shots near a sorority house and ultimately he killed six individuals and injured 13 additional people. Once he was surrounded by police, he committed suicide (Nagourney et al. 2014). Rodger outlined all the injustices in his life, from birth to just before his shooting spree, as a way to justify his actions. He believed that society had corrupted him, cast him out, and forced him to live in isolation without

72 value. Rodger felt forced to both exact revenge and punish those who have ‘wronged’ him.

Dylann Roof: On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white American, entered the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine people attending a prayer meeting (Blinder and Sack 2017; Sanchez and

Payne 2016). His manifesto was published on his own website, The Last Rhodesian, among a collection of racially charged photographs (Robles 2015). He saw his actions as a way to fight back against black people and for the advancement of whites as the superior social group. His manifesto stated that he believes black people are inherently inferior, both physically and socially, yet have managed to encroach on white power through allowances given by conventional society. It also noted that he felt compelled to act and protect whites in this conflict and saw himself as a martyr for the cause.

Christopher Sean Harper-Mercer: On October 1, 2015, Christopher Sean Harper-

Mercer, a 26-year-old mixed race (white and African American) student, killed ten people at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. He entered his writing class where he opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle and handgun. Upon being confronted by law enforcement, he took his own life (Healy and Lovett 2015). Harper-Mercer’s manifesto expressed his desire to exact revenge for his social rejection and encouraged others to do the same. Despite being half black himself, he believed society overly favored black men, whom he saw as a threat to both his manhood and to society as a

73 whole. He called attention to these injustices and hoped to inspire others to act in his footsteps.

Patrick Crusius: On August 3, 2019, Patrick Crusius, a 21-year-old white man, opened fire at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas. Using an AK-47, he killed twenty-two individuals, injuring dozens more before surrendering to law enforcement. He published his manifesto on the website 8chan minutes before he began shooting (Arango, Bogel-

Burroughs, and Benner 2019). His manifesto stated that his act was a response to the social, political, and economic “invasion by Hispanics.” Crusius saw the Hispanic group as eroding the cultural and ethnic fabric of Americans, posing an imminent threat that needed to be stopped with a targeted attack.

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