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Law and Crime
Criminals and Crime-Fighters in the Families of School Shooters
Family patterns among school shooters.
Posted July 20, 2009
What can we learn about school shooters by searching for patterns among their families? I have highlighted elsewhere the pattern of psychopathic school shooters coming from families that engaged in the legal use of firearms and traumatized shooters coming from families that engaged in the illegal use of firearms.[i] Pursuing this distinction further, it is interesting that a number of school shooters had parents or grandparents who represented the law or government in one form or another, whereas others had family members with criminal histories. Even more interesting is that some shooters had family members on both sides of the law.
If the military is included as representing the law, then several shooters fall into this category, including Robert Poulin, Wayne Lo, Eric Harris (all three had fathers who had been Air Force pilots, and Eric's grandfather had also served in the military), and Andy Williams (his mother was in the Army). Also, Kimveer Gill had family members in the military in India. Others who had parents or grandparents representing the law include Drew Golden, whose father was a game warden, Mitchell Johnson, whose mother was a corrections officer, Michael Carneal, whose father was a lawyer, and Jeffrey Weise, whose grandfather was a police officer. Did the shooters view their family members as representing law or justice? Were their attacks perhaps driven in part by a rebellion against their parents, or what their parents represented?
Going a step further, the cases of Mitchell Johnson and Jeffrey Weise are noteworthy for having family members on both sides of the law. Mitchell's father was arrested for theft and his stepfather was incarcerated on a number of charges. Mitchell's mother, who worked in a prison, met Mitchell's stepfather because he was imprisoned in the facility where she worked. What was it like for Mitchell to have parents on both sides of the law? He reportedly admired his stepfather and thought it was cool that he had been in prison. But what about his attitude toward his mother's work as a correctional officer? How did these influences interact within Mitchell?
Similarly, Jeffrey Weise's grandfather was a tribal police officer. The grandfather's son, Jeffrey's father, killed himself during an armed standoff with police. In addition, Jeffrey's mother had an arrest history as a result of her drinking. Jeffrey, like Mitchell, had family members on both sides of the law. Before going on his rampage at school, Jeffrey killed his grandfather. In my book I speculated that perhaps Jeffrey blamed his grandfather for his father's death. Perhaps Jeffrey also was influenced by his antipathy toward everything his grandfather represented as a police officer.
Besides Mitchell and Jeffrey, other shooters had family members with criminal histories of arrest and/or incarceration. This includes Evan Ramsey (father, mother, and older brother), Jason Hoffman (father), and Asa Coon (older brother). The shooters may have been influenced by their family histories to follow in the footsteps of their criminal relatives.
This seems particularly clear with Evan Ramsey, who referred to the "family curse." His father went on an armed rampage and his brother was arrested for armed robbery. In fact, Evan's attack occurred shortly after his father's release from prison and just five days after his brother's arrest for armed robbery. Not only was there a history of criminal behavior in his family, but it involved firearms. Similarly, Mitchell Johnson's stepfather had been arrested for firearms violation (among others), Asa Coon's brother had a weapons charge against him, and Jeffrey Weise's father committed suicide during an armed standoff with police. As with Evan Ramsey's family, the criminal behavior in these cases involved firearms.
Are there patterns among these shooters? It is impossible to be definitive, especially because too little information is known about some of the shooters mentioned above. Nonetheless, there do seem to be some patterns. The trend among traumatized school shooters is that they come from families with criminal histories. This is seen with Asa Coon, Jeffrey Weise, Evan Ramsey, and Mitchell Johnson. In two of these cases, however, there were family members on both sides of the law (Johnson and Weise). Is this simply a coincidence, or might it be a significant factor?
The trend among psychopathic school shooters leans more toward having family members in law enforcement or the military. These cases include Robert Poulin, Wayne Lo, Eric Harris, and Drew Golden. Perhaps these young men saw their fathers and/or grandfathers as masculine heroes to be emulated (see Why Kids Kill for a discussion of the failure of manhood and the search for a masculine identity; see also Rampage by Dr. Katherine Newman).
It is interesting that Eric Harris wrote in his diary that he would have been a great Marine. He wrote that it would have given him a reason to be good. It seems that he aspired to a masculine, military identity, but that this identity could have been either good or evil. Given that his grandfather and father both had law-abiding military careers, what factors drove Eric to mass murder? In Why Kids Kill I attempted to answer this through an analysis of Eric's personality. How that personality came into being is a question we cannot answer.
What about psychotic shooters? The only psychotic shooter I have written about elsewhere to figure in this analysis is Michael Carneal (though I suspect Kimveer Gill belongs in this category). Michael's father was a lawyer who handled worker's compensation and injury cases. I have not seen any evidence regarding Michael's attitude toward his father or his father's profession. The relative lack of psychotic school shooters in this discussion is interesting. Perhaps the occupations of parents and grandparents were less of an influence among them than among the psychopathic shooters.
The factors and motivations that lead to school shootings are complex. Though I have focused on family histories and occupations in this article, these factors do not explain school shootings. By looking at the shooters from as many angles as possible, however, perhaps we can continue to bring understanding to this difficult phenomenon.
[i] See Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters, and "Expanding the Sample: Five School Shooters," available at www.schoolshooters.info.
