Citation

Silver J, Horgan J, Gill P. Homicide Stud. 2019; 23(1): 64-84.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1088767918802881

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Scholars have urged a shift in research on mass murder from the creation of typologies to theoretically rich, data-driven comparative examinations of the phenomenon. We seek to redress such calls in two ways. First, we analyze a unique sample of public mass murderers through the multistage explanatory model of cumulative strain theory. Second, we use a comparison group of similarly violent offenders--lone actor terrorists--to provide context to our findings. The results demonstrate that cumulative strain theory usefully describes the trajectory toward violence of public mass murderers, more so when a concept implicit in the theory--grievance--is made explicit.

Language: en