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Politics
Arie Kruglanski, Professor of Psychology, University of Maryland

Why do mass shooters kill? It's about more than having a grievance

A memorial for Joshua Barrick, killed by a shooter at the bank where he worked, April 10, 2023, at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Louisville, Ky. AP Photo/Claire Galofaro

An acutely troubling aspect of life in contemporary America is the growing proliferation of mass shootings that claim thousands of innocent lives year after painful year and make everyone feel unsafe.

The year 2023 is still young, and already there have been at least 146 mass shooting events in the U.S. on record, including the killing of five people in a Louisville, Kentucky, bank that the shooter livestreamed. There were 647 mass shootings in 2022 and 693 in 2021, resulting in 859 and 920 deaths, respectively, with no respite in sight from this ghastly epidemic. Since 2015, over 19,000 people have been shot and wounded or killed in mass shootings.

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