Mass Murder
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Before examining mass murder and mass murderers and how they relate to society, we need to define mass murder and make them distinct from their commonly mistaken for cousins, serial murder and serial murderers, “A person who kills many persons over periods ranging from one month to many years. The term was coined in the 1980s to differentiate from mass murderers who kill several people at once” (Serial, 1999, 1). Timothy J. McVeigh and Terry Nichols (Oklahoma City bombing) are mass murderers. Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer are serial murderers. The irony of mass murder is that more than individuals can be guilty of it. Whole governments are often responsible for mass murder. Generally, in the individual mass murderer, type falls into one of three categories: family murderers, paramilitary-type murderers, disgruntled worker murderers. We have also seen a dramatic rise in mass murder among high school children who have also killed family members and who might be seen as disgruntled students or peers.The bottom line of mass murderers is that they are exhibiting deviance when they commit murder. There are many theories of deviance as a product of social organization and ideology, but one of the ones that best offers an explanation of how mass murderers are evolved in society is Emile Durkheim’s theory of social anomie and cult formation. Anomie refers to a state of normlessness or an erosion of norms. Durkheim believed that
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eep connection to the values and norms of) the American dream and workplace helped catalyze deviance in Sherrill. A similar situation drives Willy Loman to suicide in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman when he discovers his employers treat a man like an orange by sucking out the inside and then throwing away the peel. Durkheim felt suicide, another form of deviance, was caused by a loss of bond or connection to community. Since most mass murderers commit suicide after their actions, we might assume the two are closely aligned. If a society is undergoing a period of rapidly changing social norms coupled with a great deal of diversity, as America is at present, then a higher level of deviance can be expected. Likewise, if many individuals in a society exist on the fringes of society (the fired, the ostracized, etc.), a lower degree of integration with the community at large typically promotes a higher level of deviance. Therefore, it is easy to see Durkheim’s theory on crime (deviant behavior like mass murder that breaks legal social norms) which posits deviance as a natural aspect of collective society as being particularly valid with respect to mass murder and mass murderers:
There is, then, no phenomenon that presents mo
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Approximate Word count = 2297
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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