Josiah M. Hesse in Vice:
When Dylann Storm Roof ended Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina and unleashed a hurricane of bullets, he secured himself a place in the dark history of young, white American males who kill strangers indiscriminately. Of course, we've known for some time that most violent crimes are committed by young people, and that men are more violence-prone than women, but in recent cases like Roof's, Sandy Hook's Adam Lanza, and the Aurora Theater's James Holmes, it seems like this newer breed of psychopath is more dangerous than its predecessors. When trying to decipher gun violence, it's tempting to focus on impoverished minority neighborhoods defined by structural woes like mass incarceration, poverty, lack of education, and so on. But research shows that mass shootings are primarily committed by white males—the most privileged class in society. So why are they the ones who snap? And is calling them “mentally ill” a way to avoid talking about race? “If you look at how the James Holmes case has played out, it's amazing how the themes [of other shootings] line up,” true-crime author Stephen Singular, who collaborated with his wife, Joyce, on the new book The Spiral Notebook: The Aurora Theater Shooter and the Epidemic of Mass Violence Committed by American Youth, tells VICE. “Most of these young white shooters—they're not underprivileged, they have so many advantages, particularly in the Holmes case. He was dealing with an inner reality that he didn't know how to contend with.”
…”There's a feeling of entitlement that white men have that black men don't,” Alan Fox, a professor at Northeastern University and co-author of Extreme Killing, told the Washington Post in a 2012 interview. “They often complain that their job was taken by blacks or Mexicans or Jews. They feel that a well-paid job is their birthright. It's a blow to their psyche when they lose that.” Roof was reportedly unemployed at the time of the shooting, having previously worked in landscaping.
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