r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Little_Initiative_84 • 6h ago
What are motivations for elementary shootings?
Not a troll or engagement post. I just saw the tragedy that happened in Oregon on Facebook, and it made me wonder what could possibly be the motivation for hurting a large group of children? In no way am I justifying it, but I can understand the criminal motivation if someone had a horrible highschool experience coupling with bullying and mental health- but I just cant rap my head around hurting very small children with no ties to a stranger.
I tried to Google this but there isn't really information aside from the obvious that these people are monsters/evil/sick. Could someone provide some insight or psychological reasons this happens?
Also if it has to be said- please no controversial/political/personal things in the comments. I know this is sensitive I'm only asking from a scientific perspective for my own lack of knowledge.
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u/prolifezombabe 5h ago
You're going to struggle to find a reason that makes sense because whatever reason that person might have had it wasn't rational. Some possible reasons include wanting notoriety, resenting other people's well being and happiness (some people with terrible childhoods envy children they perceive as happy and well taken care of), or just wanting to experience the taking of life (<-- not an urge most humans have but some do).
Some people grow up in some horrible circumstances (or are born in a way) that their minds process the world very differently than the average person. They may not experience empathy on any level. They may even take pleasure in causing other people great pain. Killing small children will cause a great deal of pain to a whole lot of people.
They may not even fully understand their own reasons for doing it or for being the way they are.
There were a couple of teenagers in the UK years ago who kidnapped and murdered a small child. Leopold and Loeb are another example of people wanting to murder an innocent person really just for kicks.
You can't make sense of it because it's not a motivation that most people share.
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u/79moons 5h ago
Research into school shootings has identified several overlapping motivations, including grievances (real or perceived), resentment, a desire for revenge, feelings of humiliation or powerlessness, suicidal thinking, and a desire for notoriety. Some perpetrators become fixated on previous mass shootings or develop fantasies about violence as a way of reclaiming power or making themselves significant.
The victims may be incidental to the perpetrator's grievance. A school might represent an institution they resent, a community they feel rejected by, or simply a place where they can inflict enormous suffering. Young children are particularly vulnerable, and that vulnerability may be part of the attraction for someone seeking power or maximum devastation.
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u/CamillaBarkaBowles 4h ago
People all over the world have fucked up feelings. But having those feelings and access to a gun is the issue.
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u/doublestitch 5h ago
Bully logic: small weak targets who can't fight back.
Power fantasy for cowards.
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u/MightyMouse134 3h ago
This has become a thing for some lonely, disturbed usually teenage boys or young men, to bond over and plan and even carry out to try to gain notoriety. They egg each other on online. Tragic and terrifying.
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u/ElleMaeSinclair 4h ago
I only really know about a couple of elementary shootings, the main one being Sandy Hook. From what I can tell, there was a combination of really fucked up things that led to Adam Lanza doing what he did.
The main thing is that he had severe untreated autism and none of his parental or family figures really seemed to follow up with care or schooling. I'm not saying that autism causes school shootings at all, but we're talking about extreme and severe illness to where the guy locked himself in a darkened room, refused to eat or bathe, and spent several hours a day researching (I mean really researching, taking notes, saving videos, etc) mass shootings. If his mom or dad didn't just give up on him as some sort of lost cause, it probably wouldn't have made him feel like his life was worthless and created fuel for his downward spiral. Getting him medical and mental healthcare, forcing him to leave the house/make friends/get a job (even a couple hours a week), and moving his computer to a public area while monitoring his phone activity, probably all could've helped prevent a horrible tragedy. I think he was ultimately protesting against the world and the only way he knew how was to create a great sadness for complete strangers.
I don't know what happened with this latest elementary school shooter. In general these types of people seem to crave attention and are curious about extreme violence. There's not one single mental illness or neurodivergence that causes people to act out like that. In fact, some people who commit grave acts of violence don't have any diagnosable illness at all. But in a broad sense, being abused as a kid, having access to weapons, and having no supervision online tends to add up to create monsters.
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u/Jamjams2016 52m ago
I thought his mom did have him seeing some type of therapist but once he was an adult he refused to continue treatment. He also hated his life and thought he'd save the kids from life in this broken system. It's messed up and going in and calling those babies @ssholes before taking their beautiful lives does not align with what he wrote. I don't even believe his bullshit, but it is his words.
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u/ElleMaeSinclair 9m ago
I have to wonder if he just wrote one thing to throw investigators off or delay finding a motive. He seemed very weird and hateful but also very complicated.
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u/Uncle_Bill 3h ago
People want be feel significant and want to be remembered. If not for good things, then ill.
Media will ensure they get their wish...
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u/MisterMindFog 5h ago
As fucked up as it is, more people will remember and talk about an elementary school shooting rather than a highschool or university shooting.
Elementary schools normally don't have armed guards. Highschools and middle schools often do due to the fights seen on campus. Whether it's a taser or pepper spray, it's still a deterant criminals consider.
Elementary school students can't fight back so there's only 1-2 adults who can per classroom. Elementary schoolers also often don't realize the gravity of the situation and may make more noise making them easier to find.
Elementary schools are often smaller campuses with nearly the same amount of kids and exits, so it's less area to scour compared to a college campus or highschool campus.
The reason random adults with no current ties to the school shoot up schools in general is to try and make headline news. Highschool and uni shootings are so common now that it only makes headlines new for a couple of months as opposed to Uvalde or Sandy Hook. These fucked up people want to be remembered.
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u/mfrench105 5h ago
This kind of stretches the word "criminal". It is certainly a crime. But it is also a suicide. Someone doing this, really doesn't expect to see the other side of it. An outcome is not on their mind. Just the act itself. Why exactly.... I have to hope the investigation will shed some light.
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u/Little_Initiative_84 5h ago
Thank you for this perspective. I never thought about it like that. I guess the goal was probably to just hurt any many as possible for thier own issues.
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u/standbyyourmantis 1h ago
You know that line in The Dark Knight? "Some men just want to see the world burn."
For a certain pathology, they just want to hurt as many people as they can. Sometimes because they've been hurt and want revenge, sometimes because they just like to see others suffer, sometimes because they want to be remembered. One of the earliest elementary school shootings was a teenage girl who was sniping children out of her bedroom window and when they asked why she did it, she just said "I hate Mondays."
It doesn't really matter, though, because you're never going to understand them. At least not in any meaningful way. People study their entire lives to learn their pathologies, but if you want something that will make it make sense then I think you're on a losing battle.
Even the ones you think you understand - horrible high school experience and bullying - you don't. Very few bullied kids actually become school shooters, at least the mass ones. That myth came from Columbine, but Dylan and Eric weren't part of the trenchcoat mafia, they were just assholes. Same with Parkland, the reason the killer was being rejected by girls is because he was an asshole.
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u/Atharaenea 57m ago
Yes, this is exactly it. Some angry/ill person wants the world to suffer, wants to inflict as much suffering as he can before dying (they're always suicidal and do not expect to survive), and you can inflict far more suffering by killing innocent children than killing grown adults. That's all there is to it, they're psychopathic people who want to cause as much pain as they can on their way out.
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u/Urbenmyth 5h ago
Bigotry, mostly.
The majority of mass shooters are motivated by virulent bigotry and a belief that the world has been fully taken over by the jews, the blacks, the queers, the stacies or whoever they see as the Enemy, and now the white males are oppressed. Everyone who isn't part of their little bigoted bubble is an agent of them, and so we must make war on them. This includes children.
Mass shootings are very closely tied to bigoted conspiracy theories. If society itself is your enemy, then everyone's a valid target.
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u/No_Database1459 3h ago
They’ve been studying this for awhile. It’s common in extremist right wing ideology too.
These people are very isolated socially as well.
I think our government site got rid of some of the psych studies on it…. for tracking the media that these people consume, to understand their minds, it’s dark shit.
The stuff is so dark, that the average person could not comprehend.
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u/Loud-Strawberry-9726 5h ago
kids are fucking gross and annoying and killing them makes everyone suffer. People react viscerally to innocent lives lost, every bullet corrupts society and accelerates the end of it.
(summary of their words)
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u/hachilake 5h ago
The shooter used to be in special needs at this school. Those killed (three students and one teacher) were in the special needs class room at this school.
Will the truth come out or will it be swept under the rug?
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u/AlphusUltimus 5h ago
Same thing happens in China. People with no future want to inflict the most pain by murdering children.
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u/Little_Initiative_84 5h ago
Well yeah, people everywhere have issues. I was just asking for an understanding into these people's minds because it's hard for me to comprehend it personally.
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u/WiseKarmaCat 4h ago
I asked this in a comment on X. They answered that the person views human life as you or I would ants in the kitchen.
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u/sofiaroosee 3h ago
The awful part is that the victims may have nothing to do with what the attacker is angry about. Revenge or a risers for notoriety can play a role but there isn’t one explanation that fits every case
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u/Md655321 2h ago
I question if certain online cults/extremist groups don’t play a role, groups like 764 or terrorgram.
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u/carrotdog56 2h ago
There's a movie Prisoners, in which the killer of the children states their motif as a "war against God". If someone wants to inflict ultimate suffering then killing children is a sure way to do it. All people, parents or not, care about children, children are the symbol of the future and hope. So the killer is basically killing the future and hope, not just human beings. It's devastating for communities, for society, because we feel that we failed to protect the most vulnerable and innocent. Children are also an easy target. Adults might unite and act in the moment of danger, children are extremely vulnerable. Cowards tend to take their frustrations on the weak and disadvantaged, children, elderly, poor, disabled. So when they decide to wage the war against humanity they go for those people.
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u/panic_talking 1h ago
My guess: Easy targets, little risk of getting hurt by target, big public impact so lots of attention tion and that weird sad man perk of being scary with no real threat of being stopped. So the reasoning of every pathetic abuser ever.
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u/Excellent-One5259 1h ago
Because there are evil people who are just evil....That's literally it, there is NO reason in the world that would justify shooting up elementary schools filled with innocent CHILDREN. There is no understanding people like this because there is nothing to understand about this level of evil to a morally sound human being.
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u/magnificent_limit 3h ago
desensetize someone to violence
have them associate sudden violent actions with a reward trigger
dissasociate them so they feel disconnected with their actions
make them angry a lot
have them make a plan
rehearse the plan
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u/HipGyp57 1h ago
IMO it's mental illness because nobody in their right mind would do something like that.
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u/Fair_Mixture_8166 5h ago
Ask China, they've had 33 Elementary School massacres since 2010(100 kids killed, 500 injured), the US has had three--China attackers used meat cleavers, knives, bombs, fire
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u/Little_Initiative_84 5h ago edited 5h ago
Yeah... these are the comments I didn't want. People do horrible things all over the world. I never mentioned locations but about the murderers' reasoning. This is completely irrelevant to my question. I assume there's similar psychological reasons thats follow these cases beyond boarders.
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u/Marisleysis33 5h ago
Something in their way of thinking has them fully disregarding others, they're dead inside. Wherever there's a void evil tends to come fill it up. Why kids? I think it's tied into the spirit of death toward children in our country. We've welcomed abortion for the most part, sometimes almost up to when they're due to be born. We've deprived millions of souls of human life. That same spirit is inspiring violence toward all children. I think that's why we're seeing so many bizarre and brutal crimes. Every day when you think you've heard the worst- there's something new and even more horrific done to a child(ren).
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u/Grouchy-Display-457 5h ago
He had recently been a student at that school. The likeliest reason is that in his warped mind, he was getting even with what the school had done to him, or saving the students from a life like his.