The two mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas, both perpetrated by 18-year-olds, have highlighted a disturbing reality: The shooters are getting younger.
The big picture: Most of the deadliest shootings in the U.S. since 2018 were committed by men who were 21 or younger.
- Between the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, committed by a 20-year-old, and late 2017, killers were between the ages of 26 and 64. All of them were men.
- When looking at school shootings specifically, killers tend to be younger, PolitiFact reports.
- Nearly half of homicides in 2020 were committed by people 29 and under, according to the most recent FBI data on the matter.
- Wednesday's shooting in Tulsa, Oklahoma was committed by a man in his 40s who was targeting a doctor he blamed for his back pain.
The problem seems to be getting worse. Per the New York Times only 2 of the deadliest mass shootings from 1949 to 2017 were committed by gunmen under 21. The two were the Columbine high school shooting in 1999 and the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in 2012.
"We see two clusters when it comes to mass shooters, people in their 40s who commit workplace type shootings, and a very big cluster of young people — 18, 19, 20, 21 — who seem to get caught up in the social contagion of killing,” Jillian Peterson, a criminal justice professor who helped found the Violence Project, told the New York Times.
State of play: Under federal law, a...