Men and Mass Shootings 25 Years After Columbine

Men and Mass Shootings 25 Years After Columbine
PUBLISHED 4/23/2024 by Rob Okun

The vast majority of men are not mass shooters—but 98 percent of mass shooters are men. Until we’re willing to say, men’s gun violence, we can’t prevent these tragedies.



Incoming Columbine High School freshmen Ellie Fairweather (L) and Ava Kyle, both of Littleton, Colo., read quotes along a wall at the Columbine Memorial in Clement Park on April 20, 2024—the 25th anniversary of the school shooting where two male students killed 12 of their classmates, one teacher and injured many more on April 20, 1999. (Marc Piscotty / Getty Images)

Fortunately, there wasn’t a copycat mass shooting on Saturday to grotesquely mark the 25th anniversary of the Columbine massacre on April 20, 1999. But just as we can be certain there will be another solar eclipse, it’s only a matter of time before a hail of bullets will block out the sun for another community somewhere in America. What’s also true? Expect the shooter to be male, probably white. In an effort to prevent mass shooters from attaining posthumous fame, today the media rarely reveals their names. Back in 1999, after high school seniors Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris murdered 12 classmates and a teacher in Littleton, Colo., their names were widely broadcast and published. A quarter century later, despite substantive actions to prevent mass shootings by a number of states—and, with Vice President Kamala Harris now overseeing the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention—we still lead the world in this particular brand of murder. USA! USA! USA! (As horrific as the April 13 murder of six by an Australian man at a mall outside of Sydney is, he was only wielding a knife. I shudder to think of the level of carnage if he had been brandishing an AR-15, the weapon of choice in most mass shootings.)


Australia’s Gun Regulations Serve as Example

Australia, you might recall, banned automatic and semi-automatic weapons after a mass shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania, on April 28, 1996. There a gunman opened fire in a café, slaughtering 35 and wounding 23. Then-Prime Minister John Howard, a conservative politician in office for just six weeks, was able to push through sweeping gun control legislation 12 days after the shooting. The legislative package he shepherded through banned selling and importing semi-automatic and automatic rifles, and shotguns. The package also required gun purchasers to explain the reason for buying the firearm and wait 28 days before obtaining it. Most significantly, the Australian law required a mandatory gun-buyback. The government confiscated and destroyed nearly 700,000 firearms, cutting in half the number of households that possessed guns.


Prime Minister John Howard prays and his wife Janette Howard during a memorial for the 35 victims of the Port Arthur massacre held on April 29, 1996. (Andrew Meares / Fairfax Media via Getty Images)
. . . .


Men’s Gun Violence

In a world where leaders of all stripes use the term “a just war” with a straight face, working to prevent mass shootings feels more within our grasp then say, ending the war in Gaza. What to do first? Change how we talk about the issue. That means refusing to speak out against generic “gun violence.” Until we’re willing to say, men’s gun violence, we’ll continue to miss the mark, falling short of any campaign to prevent mass shootings. This is not a condemnation of men. The vast majority of men are not mass shooters. For decades, I worked at a men’s center, published a magazine promoting a new definition of manhood, and championed revisiting how we socialize boys, as early as preschool. More and more men are rejecting conventional masculinity.



The weakened, shell-of-itself National Rifle Association coined the oft cited cliché, “Guns don’t kill people. People do” more than a century ago. Variations have long been used to thwart gun control legislation. It’s astonishing how little pushback there’s been. “People kill people?” Really? Sure, there are rare occasions when women pull the trigger, but as certain as I am that we’ll never hear a news report begin with the words, “A gunwoman opened fire today…” I believe that to minimize mass shootings, we must move the question of the gender of the shooter from the periphery to the center of a long overdue national conversation. Now is a good time to listen again to entertainers Martin Mull and Steve Martin. They had it right when they penned the satirical sea shanty, “Men” with its one word chorus: Men, men, men, men.

https://msmagazine.com/2024/04/23/men-guns-mass-shooting/