Scholars have urged a shift in research on mass murder from the creation of typologies to theoretically rich, data-driven comparative examinations of the phenomenon. We seek to redress such calls in two ways. First, we analyze a unique sample of public mass murderers through the multistage explanatory model of cumulative strain theory. Second, we use a comparison group of similarly violent offenders—lone actor terrorists—to provide context to our findings. The results demonstrate that cumulative strain theory usefully describes the trajectory toward violence of public mass murderers, more so when a concept implicit in the theory—grievance—is made explicit.
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