Swanson: The Shooter’s Ideology
The Shooter’s Ideology Leave a Comment / September 17, 2025 The hunt for the political ideology driving each murder that makes the news obscures some key points. One is that the shooter is almost always a man, even though women are equally capable of shooting, meaning that the ideology is one of masculinism. Another is that the shooter, more often than not, shoots himself (and it may not make the news, but most often a shooter shoots only himself), which blows a rather large hole in the idea that he is working to advance some subgroup of people or some desired better world. Another is that, to the extent that coherent thoughts are involved, every shooter shares the masculinist ideology that holds that anything good can come of shooting people — an ideology also shared with many non-shooters (including angry, violent individuals in places not saturated with guns and gun training and war veterans) and with many indirect shooters (including those ordering, funding, authorizing...
