Elliot Rodger and why young males go on rampage killings

Alienated and disturbed young men like Elliot Rodger who go on shooting sprees are often modelling their behaviour on other male violence, experts say,and choosemass killing "as the mark with which they can be men."

Dr. MichaelWelner, a New York based forensic psychiatristwhose cases have includedmass killers who survive their rampages, saysthe fact thatperpetrators of mass killing aremale underscores it as a social phenomenon.

"Maleness in contemporary culture is increasingly defined by icons whose destructiveness is their masculinity,"Welnersaid in an email. "There is nothing in feminine rolemodellingthat underlines large-scale destructiveness, and so women dont model this behaviour."

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Friday night's rampage near the University of California, Santa Barbara,left six victims dead and 13 injured.Rodger, who died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot, hadleft a trail of YouTube videos and a 140-page manifesto ranting against women and couples and lamenting his lack of a sex life.

Welnersaid that young people can tap into "destructive fantasy" at a time when they are learning to be men,formulating their identity and how they express themselves as men.

"Some of those who are alienated and with high expectations of themselves, and entitlement, and propensity to blame others in broader society, degenerate to the end that they choose mass killing as the mark with which they can be men."

James Garbarino, a psychology professor at LoyolaUniversity Chicago, said that when people do "crazy" things, they always do it in a particularcultural framework and context. Dramatic violence hasnot been part ofthe cultural landscape for girls the way it is for boys, he said, although there has been some shift.

When a boy is in this state, he has all of these scenarios to play out,"Garbarinosaid.

'It's a boys' thing to do'

Garbarino, who haswritten the forthcoming bookI Listen to Killers: Lessons Learned from 20 Years as a Psychological Expert Witness in Murder Cases,said he interviewed an 18-year-oldwho showed up at school with two guns and a bagful of bombs. The boy, who was intercepted before he could cause any harm, said he had studied the Columbine school massacre as if it were a primer.

"So there is that element and it sort of builds momentum. Boys do it and other boys see itand its a boys' thing to do."

While there's an element of "copycat" behaviour, cultureplaysa role in how one acts out violently, he said.

"You might do something differentif you were in the same mental state as [Rodger] if youlived in Pakistan or if you lived in Nairobi or if you lived in Sweden. There's always thatelement of cultural script orscenariothat's important and why onecrazy 22-year-old does this and why another does something else."

Another common culturalfactor in these types of rampage or school shootings is that the gunman is usuallywhite, Garbarino said.

"These are very highly,highly vulnerable individual kids. When they live in middle-class, upper middle class educated families, families have the resources and the capacity to sort of buffer them from the world. And provide them a high level of support," Garbarino said.

"If a kid like this was born in a poor black or Hispanic gang-ridden neighbourhood, he wouldnt get this far before his vulnerability translated into violence," he said."You would see it in first grade or second gradebecause the mismatch between their vulnerability and the level of stress and oppression and lack of resources would bring it out."

Garbarino said disturbed youth also have access to social media to validate their beliefs.

"Back beforeall this, if you were a weird kid, you mostly got back social feedback that said you were weird. Today theres virtually no weird thought that you can't find validationfor when you get on the web. All killers feel theyre justified in what they do. The fact that you can post stuff and otherpeoplewillsay'Yeah,I know what you mean ' this comes asa validation from the media."

Rodger, like Norways mass-shooterAnders Breivik and former LAPD officer Christopher Dorner who killed four people, all used social media to move around the traditional press and to directly communicate their packaged propaganda, Welneradded.