Weaponized Masculinity: Who Commits Gun Violence & Against Whom?

*This article is the second in a series on Gun Violence and Gender in the United States*

​​NPR reports that, on average, there have been ten mass shootings per week this year in the United States. Based on this frequency, since my first article on gun violence in April of this year, there have been an estimated 240 mass shootings across the country.

Records state that gun violence has been increasing across the nation over the past two decades. According to The Washington Post, 2020 was the deadliest gun violence year in decades, and 2021 is already outpacing 2020.

With the increase in gun violence in America, it is pivotal that we examine who commits gun violence and against whom.

I argue that gender plays a significant role in mass shootings and domestic gun violence in the United States. Furthermore, I believe it is essential to center the role socialized masculinity plays in perpetuating gun violence.

Who Commits Gun Violence?

In the United States, gun ownership is predominantly male.

In 2017, Pew Research Center reported that “gun ownership is more common among men than women, and white men are particularly likely to be gun owners.”

Not only are men more likely than women to own guns, but the data suggests that men are also more likely to be mass shooters and perpetrators of gun violence than women.

According to the FBI, out of hundreds of “active shooters” between 2000–2017, only nine were women. Additionally, the US Secret Service reports that none of the perpetrators of the mass shootings in 2017 were female.

When it comes to school shootings, very few are committed by girls. According to The Violence Project, in America, “Girls and women commit just 2% of both mass shootings and school shootings.”

These reports demonstrate that men significantly outnumber women in the role of active shooter in the United States.

In a now-viral Tweet from earlier this year, @adamcbest posted the following to highlight that AR-15s are the weapon of choice for mass shootings in America.

Interestingly, someone could replace “AR-15” with “male,” and suddenly, it’s the same story but viewed through a different lens.

The mass shootings highlighted in this tweet were all at the hands of men with AR-15s. Just as we cannot ignore the role of the AR-15 in gun violence, we cannot continue to overlook the role of gender, particularly the influence of masculinity, in gun violence.

Who Are the Victims of Gun Violence?

Men perpetrate mass shootings, but the victims can be of any gender.

Mass shootings are typically designed to instill fear in ordinary daily-life locations such as schools or supermarkets. However, when mass shootings are targeted, they are usually rooted in hate.

Targeted mass shootings have a pattern of attacking women (e.g., Georgia massage parlor attack, 2021), members of the LGBTQ+ community (e.g., Orlando gay nightclub attack, 2018), faith-based establishments (e.g., Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue attack, 2018), and BIPOC communities (e.g., Charleston Church Shooting, 2015).

Notably, I cannot find an instance where mass shooters have targeted straight men because of their straight male identity.

When it comes to domestic gun violence, women are significantly more likely to be the victims than men.

As stated in the Violence Policy Center’s 2018 Homicide Data Analysis, women are “far more likely to be the victims of violent crimes committed by intimate partners than men, especially when a weapon is involved.”

Furthermore, the number of American women who are affected by domestic gun violence is frightening.

A 2016 report by The Educational Fund To Stop Gun Violence (EFSGV) states, “around 4.5 million women in the United States have been threatened with a gun and nearly 1 million women have been shot or shot at by an intimate partner.”

Additionally, according to Everytown Research & Policy, “every month, an average of 53 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner.” American women are 25 times more likely to die because of a firearm than women in other high-income countries.

These numbers are alarming; women, especially low socio-economic status (SES) and Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) women, are dying at the hands of gun violence perpetrated by men.

Why Does This Keep Happening?

We live in a society that comfortably breeds male anger and entitlement while also providing largely unchecked access to guns. Our patriarchal society values individual “freedoms” over communal safety, but usually, and conveniently, only when those individual freedoms pertain to men.

Although guns can be obtained illegally, the legal acquisition of firearms is, surprisingly, particularly concerning.

Unfortunately, it’s very easy to legally obtain a firearm as an abuser or someone who intends to harm.

For example, in the blue state of Massachusetts, where I’m located, the permit form asks, “Have you ever been convicted of a violent crime or a crime of domestic violence?” At first glance, this question may seem to address domestic abusers, but, in reality, it fails more than 99% of the time.

Less than 1% of domestic violence cases are reported to the police, and even fewer are charged and convicted. Therefore, the wording on the permit allows for 99% of domestic abusers to safely apply for a firearm permit.

This is incredibly dangerous because, according to The EFSGV, “when an abusive partner has access to a firearm, the risk the other partner will die increases more than five-fold.”

The male structures that established the licensing system were not concerned with screening for traits and warning signs of domestic abusers or “violent” men in permit forms. As a result, this system largely fails to protect women in the United States.

It is easy to read the data and conclude that men are the problem. But the issue is more insidious and nuanced than that. Today’s men are both aggressors and victims of the patriarchal structures that shape who they become.

While it is clear how gun violence hurts women, it is less evident that the same patriarchal structures that allow, and encourage, men to hurt women are the same structures that are first wrongfully teaching men to exert power, to demand control, to suppress all emotions other than anger, and to embody militarized ideology.

Gun violence is merely a form of weaponized masculinity.

Generally speaking, the patriarchy, in part, survives because of the continued generational perpetuation of male entitlement to power, and gun violence is largely a socialized expression of power and control.

I’d go so far as to suggest that this system is teaching men that one’s manhood is measured by the length and power of his rifle — so to speak — and, in some cases, his ability to use this demonstration of masculinity against his, often, female partner.

Where Do We Go From Here?

We need to center gender in the discourse of gun violence because this issue is unmistakably gendered, both in terms of its perpetrators and victims.

If we continue down this path of overlooking the gendered relationship of gun violence, we will collectively do our society a grave disservice by neglecting to highlight that mass shootings and domestic violence are male-coded phenomena.

There is no question that we desperately need gun reform in the United States. Still, the foundational issue that is repeatedly ignored is this: we need to re-examine the patriarchal systems at play that simultaneously propagate male violence and seek to control, not protect, women.