Texas attack proves, yet again, mass shooters often have a history of domestic violence
As many as 26 people have died in the Texas church attack.
In one of the deadliest mass shootings in the United States' history, 26 people died and more than 20 were left wounded after a 26-year-old white gunman opened fire at a congregation of parishioners at First Baptist Church, Sutherland Springs, Texas.
The motive for the attack is still unclear, but what has emerged is that the attacker, Devin Patrick Kelley, had served in US Air Force and was court-martialed in 2012 on charges of assaulting his wife and child. He was sentenced to 12 months' confinement and received a "bad conduct" discharge in 2014.
On November 5, Kelley entered the church carrying a Ruger military-style rifle and a ballistic vest strapped to his all-black outfit. He seems to have started firing indiscriminately, shooting children and the elderly, killing — among many others — a pregnant woman and the pastor's 14-year-old daughter.
He was killed as he attempted to flee the church, after being engaged by a local and pursued by the police.
The tragedy has sparked off the usual debates on the need for gun control laws in the United States – fanned by President Donald Trump's quick clean chit to the murder weapon – and how crimes by non-Muslims are rarely branded as "terrorism".
However, there is another, equally worrying but oft-overlooked link to the Texas attack and several other incidents of mass shooting from the recent past - the accused had had a history of domestic violence.
Once again, domestic violence, not national origin or religion, is the surest predictor of who will kill people. https://t.co/Z92geLg0ZK
— Brandon David Wilson (@Geniusbastard) November 6, 2017
Domestic violence at home, that's what we know.#nomore https://t.co/qeZyAwwnOT
— Lynn Shaw (@LynnShawProd) November 6, 2017
The white shooter in Texas shot his wife and his kids first before shooting everyone else. Domestic violence strikes again.
— Courtney Weaver (@CourtneyWeaver9) November 6, 2017
1. James Alex Fields Jr., the 20-year-old who drove his car into a group of activists in Charlottesville in August, had been reported to the police in 2010 and 2011 by his mother, for threatening to harm her.
2. Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people at Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016, beat his ex-wife regularly for things like "failing to do the laundry". His second wife, who was arrested for abetting the shooting, told the court that Mateen "was both verbally and physically abusive to her" and had threatened to kill her.
3. Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who killed 85 by driving a truck through a Bastille Day crowd in Nice, France, in 2016, had a history of physically abusing his wife.
4. Seung Hui Cho, who shot 32 students and teachers at the Virginia Tech campus in 2007, had previously harassed two women students.
There are many more instances of mass shooters starting out as domestic abusers – too many to dismiss their actions as coincidence. In fact, Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group, analysed FBI data on mass shootings from 2009 to 2015, and found that 54 per cent of the cases were related to domestic or family violence. As many as 16 per cent of the attackers had previously been charged with domestic violence. This, when not all cases of domestic violence are reported.
The trend has some clear pointers – a preference for violence as a means to settle grievances, a lack of intrinsic inhibitors that keeps people from violence, a history of stress and poor self-control. However, it also points to institutional failure at various levels.
The most obvious is the ease with which people with a history of violence seem to acquire guns. Legally, Kelley, convicted of domestic violence, should never have been able to buy a firearm.
President Trump might argue that the problem was Kelley's "mental health" and not his gun, but the fact remains that a mentally-unfit person was allowed to have a gun.
This is linked to the other, probably graver, aspect of the problem - that domestic violence is somehow considered less of a crime than public violence.
A man bashing up another at the workplace or on the street is a criminal, a man giving his wife a bloody lip is just "angry, carried away in the moment". Every other kind of assault is clearly seen as a law and order problem, but domestic violence finds apologies and shields such as "passion", or a desire to enforce "discipline within the home".
Movies and TV programmes continue to peddle the narrative that physical abuse is often an extension of passionate love, women continue to defend abusive partners as "stressed but good at heart".
Before proportionate efforts can be made to tackle it, domestic violence needs to be recognised for the crime that it is – and any man who believes physically assaulting people is a valid way to settle scores, stamp his authority and enforce order needs to be branded a criminal.
The Texas Church attack, like many others before it, shows that such men use the same prescription on the society at large, that domestic violence can easily spill over into the world outside the house.
While every person accused of domestic assault cannot be branded a potential terrorist, his/her actions must be seen as red flags, and adequate help needs to be offered to the offender right at that stage. This can include counselling, healthy stress-busting mechanisms, and an intimation that the offender would be kept under watch. Obviously, they should not be allowed to buy guns.
Domestic violence is not a domestic matter, not something that happens behind closed doors and hence deserves privacy. It is an indication, often the first, that a man is wont to use violence as an operational strategy.
Recognising the signs early and extending help to the troubled person can curb the tragedies visiting the US, and indeed the world at large, with alarming regularity.