As mass shootings have become ever more familiar, experts have come to understand them less as isolated expressions of rage and more as acts that build on the blueprints of previous rampages.
Experts in violence prevention say that many, if not most, perpetrators of such shootings have intensively researched earlier mass attacks, often expressing admiration for those who carried them out.
The publicity that surrounds these killings can have an accelerating effect on other troubled and angry would-be killers who are already heading toward violence, they say.
The killing of nine people at an Oregon community college last week was a textbook example. Before opening fire, the gunman, Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, had uploaded a video about the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
The perpetrator of the Sandy Hook murders was himself a student of earlier shootings — in 1999 at Columbine High School in Colorado, where 13 people were killed, and in 2011 in Norway, where 77 people were killed.
And three days after the Oregon shootings, the F.B.I. warned colleges and universities in Philadelphia of a threat posted on the same website used by Mr. Harper-Mercer.
The potential for cultural contagion, many experts say, demands a public health response, one focused as much on early detection and preventive measures as on politically charged campaigns for firearm restrictions.
But in some cases, efforts to identify and monitor potentially violent people can raise concerns about civil liberties.
“You’re balancing public welfare and personal privacy,” said J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist in San Diego who consults on threat assessment for schools and corporations.
Some people have also suggested changes in the way the news media covers mass attacks.
“If you blast the names and faces of shooters on news stations and constantly repeat their names, there may be an inadvertent process of creating a blueprint,” said Dr. Deborah Weisbrot, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Stony Brook University, who has interviewed hundreds of mostly teenage boys who have made threats.
Experts emphasize that many factors, including mental health issues, may motivate a mass killer. Read More:
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