School Shooting Data: What is the Menninger Triad? Murder+Suicide by Proxy

One thing that holds true of every single mass shooter out there, they were consumed by hate. The targets of that hate vary greatly, some mass shooters have cited feminism as the source of their fury, others have targeted religion, some seemed to blame social problems for their ills, while others pointed the finger at society as a whole.

If you take the source of the trigger out of the equation you will be left with hate. Pure, unbridled, red hot, passion and fire, hate. Those that left writings behind were often full of anger and fury, reaching out for anyone and everyone who could be to blame. 

If you go down even deeper, you will find a deep hatred of their situation, of their life, of their very self. They got kicked out of school, lost their job, or their girlfriend, or got grounded, or humiliated. Whatever the trigger event may have been, their life had hit a dead end. 

Freud described suicide as "murder of self," but theorized that those who are depressed but lacked the ability to kill themselves would seek to identify a cause for their pain, an enemy if you will. Once the enemy is identified, the hatred builds to a bursting point and eventually explodes. 

This is what people think of when they say someone "snapped" but they didn't just snap. They wallowed in their dead end world for weeks, months, even years in some cases. Feeding it, nurturing it, watching the seed of hatred grow. 

They have an unbearable urge to end their pain, but lack the courage to go through with in on their own. Many mass shootings end in the perpetrators death, either by the hands of authorities, or when finally backed into a corner with no other choices. Writings left behind indicate they did not actually plan on escaping, they knew their death would be inevitable. 

The Menninger Triad is a common term in psychology and law enforcement. Based on research by psychologist Karl Menninger, the Menninger Triad says that suicidal people a) want to be killed, b) want to kill, and c) wish to die. Once a person gives in to hopelessness that things will ever improve, they are overcome with guilt for burden they bring, and the desire for revenge against the perceived source of that pain takes hold the suicidal person acts. 

If these theories are accurate, then mass shootings are really public suicides that were impossible to back out of. 

Which once again brings us to the need for adequate mental health screenings and treatment. 

More:

The Psychology of Suicide-Murder and the Death Penalty

https://sites.uni.edu/vanworme/murder-suicide.html