Carry

by Toni Jensen

  On June 1, 2019, the Today show declares the mass shooting in Virginia Beach the 150th mass shooting of the year. Kathy Park does the reporting, and she presents a slew of statistics that should alarm—how many shootings already in 2019, how many mass shootings—but somehow, for many, these numbers don’t seem to be ringing the alarm bell.

  The next day on his Sunday morning show, George Stephanopoulos announces he’s not going to announce the shooter’s name. He fumbles a little and looks uncomfortable trying to explain contagion theory, trying to explain what he’s clearly been told to say is supposed to be the new media norm. He ends with something along the lines of now that they know better, they’re going to do better.

  Contagion theory as a concept started getting attention in the 1890s when French doctor and theorist Gustave Le Bon said he believed individuals become less rational when part of a crowd. He proposes, “by the mere fact that he forms part of an organized crowd, a man descends several rungs on the ladder of civilization.”

  In recent years, those who study gun violence have utilized contagion theory as one way of understanding how mass shootings occur, as one way of understanding human behavior—the how and why we don’t seem to feel responsible for each other any longer in this cultural moment.

  Researchers at Arizona State University are led by Sherry Towers, who according to an article on npr.org, previously “had spent most of her career modeling the spread of infectious diseases—like Ebola, influenza and sexually transmitted diseases. She wanted to know whether cases of mass violence spread contagiously, like in a disease outbreak.”

  Towers’s research begins with plugging mass shooting data into a mathematical model. Her findings suggest some elements of contagion in how mass shootings occur, though her model is predicated on timeliness—one shooting, say, on a Wednesday having a correlation to a shooting that Friday. This element—the timeliness—doesn’t necessarily always mean contagion. In relation to disease or virus spread, of course, proximity and timeliness matter. But with mass shootings, if for example, four family members are killed at a birthday party in Kentucky on a Wednesday, and on that Friday, five acquaintances are killed after bringing guns to a drunken argument outside a bar in New York, is that evidence of contagion or is that just a regular, everyday week in this, our America?

  Most, though not all, researchers and data gatherers consider four dead by gunfire to be a mass shooting. There’s no one set standard. Still, in the broader public, many if not most people think of the shootings at Newtown, Columbine, Las Vegas, or Pulse nightclub when they think of mass shootings. But in the majority of mass shootings, as in the majority of all gun violence, the shooter and the victims know one another. In the majority of mass shootings, because we have so much everyday American violence, a shooting like the ones I mentioned above—at a birthday party, outside a bar—doesn’t make the local headlines for long and doesn’t make the national headlines at all. How then is the contagion spread?

  Certainly, there is validity in the idea of copycat killings, and in the research that goes into their examination, as detailed thoroughly and well in the 2015 series in Mother Jones by Mark Follman and Becca Andrews. Their research and reportage found that the shooting at Columbine in 1999 “has since inspired at least 74 plots or attacks across 30 states.”

  But contagion is different than copycat behavior in its purported timeliness, and the media standards for publishing details about the shooters have also shifted since Columbine, though not perhaps as far as they could or as far as many would like.

  There is an interesting, less publicized conclusion of the work on mass shootings and contagion, which all the researchers seem to note as a side fact. As Towers and her co-authors put it, “state prevalence of firearm ownership is significantly associated with the state incidence of mass killings with firearms, school shootings, and mass shootings.” So having more guns in a state is linked to a state having more incidences of all these types of gun violence, including mass shootings.

  In particular, though, I’m interested in the research on mass shootings by Jillian Peterson and James Densley. In a project funded by the National Institute of Justice, Peterson and Densley have spent two years researching the lives and histories of mass shooters. Their findings, published in a series of articles for the Los Angeles Times, indicate four commonalities among the perpetrators of nearly all the mass shootings they studied. In their study, the “vast majority of mass shooters” reported experiencing “early childhood trauma and exposure to violence at a young age.” In addition, the authors note, “practically every mass shooter we studied had reached an identifiable crisis point in the weeks or months leading up to the shooting. They often had become angry and despondent because of a specific grievance.”

  Peterson and Densley’s third finding centers around their idea that mass shootings “come in clusters” and are “socially contagious.” Their definition differs slightly from Towers’s since it relies less on timeliness. They found that “most of the shooters had studied the actions of other shooters and sought validation for their motives. People in crisis have always existed. But in the age of 24-hour rolling news and social media, there are scripts to follow that promise notoriety in death.”

  And last, they found, “the shooters all had the means to carry out their plans.”

  So though they differ slightly in how they’re defining and quantifying what they mean by “contagion,” they agree on means, on access—that mass shootings happen most often where and when there’s the most access to guns.

  It’s startling to find this assertion so minimized, rendered so secondary. In this, our America, where everything, including gun control studies, requires funding, I wonder about this reduction. If we’ve ceded the idea that we can limit access to guns—because we don’t think we can or because no one will fund a primary study on its effectiveness—then it makes sense to be focusing mainly on an idea like contagion.

  But contagion can exist without mass shooting as an end result. It’s becoming both anecdotally and statistically more and more clear that free and unfettered American access to weapons can’t exist, that it won’t exist, without mass shootings as an end result.

  II.

  When DeWayne Craddock kills twelve people and injures four more in the mass workplace shooting at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center, CNN reports not only the shooter’s name but also the most minute and chilling detail—that he brushed his teeth in the workplace bathroom and exchanged pleasantries right before the shootings.

  The same week that George Stephanopoulos and other journalists make the proclamation—no more naming of mass shooters—The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Post, USA Today, and the Associated Press all include the shooter’s name in headlines and cite it multiple times each per story. In addition, reportage from ABC affiliates out of Houston, Chicago, and other cities, ABC’s Twitter feed, and Stephanopoulos’s own ABC staple show, Good Morning America, all name the shooter. GMA not only names the shooter on June 1 but also reports details of his life and reactions to the crime from interviews with his neighbors.

  Too, a quick Google search, then and now, produces a good photo of the shooter, wearing a nice, proud-of-himself smile, a nice jacket and tie. He looks sharp and everyday, both.

  It’s not just the Virginia Beach shooting, either, of course.

  Two months after the Virginia Beach shooting, when a man enters an El Paso Walmart and begins shooting, he kills twenty-two people and wounds twenty-four others. The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, the El Paso Times, and The Independent all use the shooter’s name in headlines.

  Six months after the Virginia Beach shooting, when a Saudi national shoots dead three people and wounds eight at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, The Washington Post, the BBC, USA Today, NBC News, and Fox News all name the shooter quickly, either in the he
adline or the first line of the story. According to reportage in USA Today, at a press conference, Florida governor Ron DeSantis says, “Obviously, the government of Saudi Arabia needs to make things better for these victims. They’re going to owe a debt here.”

  When Trayvon Martin was killed in Sanford, Florida, no one, including George Zimmerman, was made to pay a debt to Martin or his family. In fact, Zimmerman, who shot Martin dead, now is suing Martin’s family.

  If Saudi Arabia owes these victims for its citizen’s action, then what of the rest of us, here in America? Does DeSantis, for example, as Florida’s governor, then owe Martin’s family a debt? Does Donald Trump, as president?

  Who owes all of us and what is owed and where do I get in line to collect and when? If there is contagion in all of this, it’s in our unearned self-congratulations. We’re not doing much better in our media coverage, so there’s no way to test or make valid our ideas about contagion theory.

  Most of our ideas about coverage of mass shootings stem from the No Notoriety movement. Started by Tom and Caren Teves after their son Alex was killed in the Aurora movie theater shooting, the movement’s basic tenets include a shift toward the journalistic equivalent of “do no harm.” Some of the specific ways suggested for enacting this principle include not mentioning shooters’ names in headlines, not publishing their names at the starts of articles, and only mentioning their names one time per article.

  These protocols—whether they’ll stop contagion or not—are good as a courtesy to families of victims, and this courtesy or decency, of course, has value. I’m not trying to devalue it.

  But when we confuse courtesy with meaningful change, with meaningful action, we do no one, including the families of victims, any service. Patting ourselves on our collective backs—thinking we’re somehow now part of the solution instead of very much part of the problem—is the most American of gestures. Journalists and newsrooms proclaim they’re going to follow these protocols, but even a cursory glance shows in most cases, they aren’t.

  Too, when the vast majority of mass shooters are men and the majority are white men, by obfuscating the names of these shooters, we’re obfuscating white male killers while publicizing each day the names and faces of Black and brown men who commit lesser crimes. In Virginia Beach and Pensacola, both shooters were men of color whose faces and names were directly publicized over and over and over. It’s hard to see this variant as anything but purposeful when mass shooters of color are so rare, when we claim to be moving away from publicizing faces and names and yet there theirs are.

  We have to look straight on at who commits mass violence, at who commits all violence, to understand the social, familial, and policy-related changes needed to shift the country toward change. We’re all in this. To withhold the names, profiles, and white faces of the majority of mass killers is to pretend otherwise.

  III.

  I end up having a third-hand connection to one of the Virginia Beach shooting victims, as she’s the dear friend of a former girlfriend of my current fiancé. My fiancé is a war veteran, has written extensively about his PTS from his time in the infantry in Afghanistan. He’s lost family members, too, some to gun violence, and is someone often called upon when friends, acquaintances, quasi-strangers need to know how to cope after violence, tragedy, loss. His former girlfriend has lost a close friend in the Virginia Beach shooting. She’s struggling with sense making, with meaning finding, with loss.

  When she reaches out to my fiancé, I’m glad, and he offers her comfort and advice, and she reports both help her, and I’m yet more glad. “Reach out to your friend’s family again in six weeks,” he tells her, “when everyone has forgotten.”

  Another side to my reaction, though, is an irrational fear. Week by week, month by month, as I read research by those analyzing gun violence, as I write about my experiences with gun violence, I have, increasingly, more and more personal intersections with this violence: a former student writes of his time in lockdown in Savannah at the college where he teaches; a friend waits in the hallway at STEM Highlands school outside Denver till his son comes out to him unharmed; a local acquaintance, gone too soon from suicide; yet another relative of my fiancé, a young relative, also lost to suicide by gun.

  I know I am not responsible for any of this—I know. But it’s hard, perhaps, to study contagion theory and not begin to consider your own part in it.

  I’ll admit, though, it takes longer than it should for me to consider how if I’m three degrees of separation from a victim in the Virginia Beach shooting, then I’m four degrees from the shooter who was her colleague. This is, of course, an uncomfortable thought.

  But it’s a thought I want for all of us, for all Americans, this lack of comfort. I want us to consider our fourth-hand connections, our tears for the shooters if they come. I want us to be uncomfortable in our complicity.

  I also want us to consider how much attention—money, media coverage, energy, fear—we put toward mass shootings when more than 99 percent of gun deaths in this, our America are from shootings other than mass shootings.

  IV.

  It’s becoming more and more common today to say everyone knows someone who’s affected by, who’s a victim of, gun violence. Gun violence is rarely random. If it’s true we know victims, then we also know perpetrators. Let’s talk about that. Let’s not allow ourselves the over-fixation on mass shootings, which represent less than one percent of the gun violence in America. Let’s not allow ourselves to feel as if withholding those names means we’re doing something about gun violence.

  As long as we distance ourselves from the perpetrators, we’re part of this, our American problem. I’m going to argue it’s important for Americans to become less comfortable with these shootings. It’s important for Americans to begin to see these men as our neighbors, our co-workers, our sons—because they are. Before they act, they are often considered the good guy with the gun. We do ourselves no favors by pretending otherwise.

  We have to know who the perpetrators are—their faces, their names—if we are to know how to stop making them. We have to acknowledge their humanity, that we all make them, that they are made culturally even though, yes, they act individually.

  As I wrote these essays, over the past years, more and more people I knew, more and more people I loved were in lockdown or had loved ones in lockdown or were shot. I wish this book could be more of an accounting of their lives—though that is what it is, in part. I wish this book could be more of a reckoning.

  It began to feel like I was part of it, the contagion, but that’s paranoia, of course, and self-aggrandizement—neither of which are useful to anyone.

  This winter 2019, as I began to consider contagion theory in reference to gun violence, there’s a shooting in my town, downtown on the square where we have each year before Christmas what’s called Lights of the Ozarks. According to a Fayetteville website, “Each year Fayetteville Parks and Recreation workers spend over 3,300 hours decorating the Downtown Square with over 400,000 lights.” It’s a spectacle, sometimes complete with camel rides—and with or without the camels, it’s something to see.

  The news is coming in through Twitter. The Fayetteville Police Department website remains unchanged, the Facebook page thanking everyone for coming out to an event earlier in the day called “Dodgeball for Doggies.” This is the sort of town in which I live.

  People are reporting a coroner on scene and that both a suspect and an officer have been killed. There’s nothing to do but wait for more information.

  The next morning, at the press conference, it’s announced that officer Stephen Carr has been shot and killed, executed at point-blank range by a man we’ll later learn has a conviction for domestic violence in Florida in 2012. Another strong indicator for who commits gun violence is who has first committed domestic violence.

  The gun used to shoot Stephen
Carr is a 9-mm Taurus pistol, which a quick search tells me is in stock at Academy Sports, Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Outdoor Superstore, and Bud’s Gun Shop. Internet gun reviews report, “There’s nothing wrong with cheap and cheerful, which is exactly what this Taurus is about.”

  From blog.cheaperthandirt.com, I learn Taurus guns are from Brazil and had a rough start in the U.S. market, due to perceived quality control issues, but now are extremely popular—due to the improvement of quality and the low price point.

  I live now in the kind of town where everyone, including me, knows someone on the police force, where police presence, as in so many places, is considered regular, normal, everyday America.

  The night before, as I wrote about contagion, Stephen Carr is shot and killed execution-style while he sits in his parked police car behind the precinct, waiting for his partner to come outside, waiting for his shift to start. The suspect is pursued and then shot and killed by two other officers who heard the initial shots and left the precinct at a run.

  I did not know officer Stephen Carr—or the man who killed him, for that matter—but once his name and picture are released, I realize I’ve seen him around town. He was once a bicycle cop downtown on Dickson Street, and he seemed too large to be comfortable on his bicycle, a little overstuffed in his summer shorts. He was twenty-seven years old, from Texas, his face still somewhat of a baby face, and though it’s perhaps trite to say, he was, of course, someone’s baby, and it’s hard not to know that, not to see it, especially in a face like his—broad, wide-eyed, a little round.

  The shooting happened off the downtown square where a lighting ceremony was occurring for the annual Christmas light extravaganza.

  This isn’t about me, except for how it happens in the town in which I live. This isn’t about me except for how I’m home, writing about contagion theory. This isn’t about me, except for how my new colleague and friend is having a birthday celebration only a few blocks away from where the shooting happens. This isn’t about me, except for how my daughter sends me a video on Instagram, telling me she’s okay. She’s at her father’s this week, and we check in regularly through Instagram, and I had opened the app to check on her since I know she’s at a sleepover. She and her girlfriends are fine, she reports. They were at the lighting ceremony, were walking around the square, and left about five minutes before the shooting.