Beth Hossfeld, LMFT

All of us - of all genders, ages, and cultures - have a role to play in solving this crisis. Underneath the abject horrors of school shootings, below the grasp of automatic rifles and magazine cartridges, exists a teenager, angry, overwhelmed, who’s endured childhood abuse, domestic violence, and severe bullying at school. According to data trackers, the adolescent is, on average, 16 years old.New York Times columnist David Brooks notes this teen is in crisis, isolated, bitter, at a breaking point, and craving revenge, power, and notoriety. And, he is male.  98% of mass shooters are male, as reported in The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic, 2021, by researchers Jillian Peterson and James Densley. We know this. But do we ask, “Why?”  As gender violence prevention educator and activist, Jackson Katz, asks, why does the media avoid saying so, most often using gender-neutral terms like shooter, perpetrator, or intruder for an action that is patently not gender-neutral? While access to assault weapons must urgently be addressed, it’s also imperative that we dig deeper to uproot a rotted source of male violence deeply embedded in our social