It’s not just mass shooters Videos of police beating Tyre Nichols in Memphis. I just can’t watch them this morning. But a New York Times special report on mass shootings clicked with the reported violence of the policemen who beat the Black motorist (ultimately to death) during a traffic stop. “Jillian Peterson is a professor of criminology at Hamline University. James Densley is a professor of criminal justice at Metro State University. Together they run the Violence Project and are the authors of ‘The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic‘,” reads their bio in The Times. They intersperse their conclusions about 50 years of mass shootings with terse summaries of what motivated shooters they studied (emphasis mine): These are abridged details from profiles of the suspected or convicted perpetrators of more than 150 mass shootings in the United States. The profiles are based on news reports, public documents and our conversations with the shooters’ friends, colleagues, social workers and teachers. These events have become more frequent and more deadly over time. One-third of all the mass shootings in our study occurred in the last decade. This is no coincidence. The killings are not just random acts of violence but rather a symptom of a deeper societal problem: the continued rise of “deaths of despair.” This term has been used to explain increasing mortality rates among predominantly middle-aged white men caused by suicide, drug overdose and alcohol abuse. We think the concept of “deaths of despair” also helps explain the…