I Study Mass Shootings, Now My Town Is Reeling From One

The news of the mass public shooting that took place Wednesday night in Lewiston, Maine, hit home for me in ways I could never imagine. I am an Associate Professor of Sociology at Bates College, which is roughly a mile and a half from one of the sites of the attacks. As the story broke, my thoughts went immediately to my students and colleagues who could have been in the line of fire.

But the tragedy that came to a conclusion Friday night when the body of the suspect was located is personal to me for another reason. For more than 10 years I have been studying mass shootings, trying to understand why they happen, who the perpetrators are, and where they are likely to occur.

In 2018, I was awarded a federal grant to comprehensively investigate mass public shootings along with two experts on the topic, James Alan Fox and Grant Duwe. Together, we developed several databases of all mass public shootings in the U.S. from 1976-2018, becoming very familiar with each aspect of the attacks from every angle we could imagine. We spent many hours poring over documents, meeting virtually to discuss particular cases, and planning our analyses.

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