Mass Shootings in Central and Eastern Europe

As the relative frequency of mass shootings has increased since the late 1990s in the United States, social scientists have given great attention to this phenomenon in the North American context. However, mass shootings have also arisen in central and eastern Europe but to date, scholarship has not touched on this important, understudied context. This chapter unveils that there have been 76attempted and completed mass shootings that have arisen across central and eastern European states over the last 30 years. The chapter overviews scholarly findings on mass shootings, defines this phenomenon, and explains the nature underlying it in order to draw out the major gap in knowledge that exists with reference to cases that have occurred in central and eastern Europe. The chapter finishes with an overview of the methodological approach adopted in the book as well as the theoretical framework that the book tests through statistical-based empirical analyses.

This chapter identifies a gap in knowledge of mass shootings that arose across central and eastern European contexts through reviewing literature on this form of violence. There is a major gap in research which is not only attributable to our knowledge of the total amount of cases that have arisen in CEE contexts, but also on their frequency, severity, and offender characteristics. The chapter then presents a comprehensive overview of scholarship on mass shootings. It explains trends pertaining to the histories, experiences, and motivations of perpetrators of mass shootings as well as geo-spatial characteristics of where incidents occurred in, the legislative barriers (or lack thereof) on gun acquisition, and trends pertaining to socio-economic conditions that offenders experienced. The chapter then overviews estimates of gun ownership rates across the countries under attention drawn from the Small Arms Survey, along with an explanation of regulatory guidelines on firearm acquisition in the CEE regions. It demonstrates that gun regulations are much stricter, on average, in CEE states than in the United States.

This chapter begins with contextualizing cultural, economic, and political characteristics of central and eastern European regions through utilizing data drawn from the World Values Survey on populations from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, and the Russian Federation across 1991, 2014, 2018. It finds that populations in CEE states have tended to experience less social trust, social capital, and have participated in civic association to less extent than Americans. Populations in CEE states also hold markedly different views on gender relations and political/democratic participation. On average, CEE states feature populations that can be categorized according to a materialist set of values which contrast to post-materialist values as observed in western Europe and partially in the United States.

Mass shootings constitute an extremely rare form of violence and because of their rarity, they are difficult to not only generalize on, but to study and apply theoretical frameworks to. This chapter identifies the difficulties associated with studying rare events, and engages with previous literature in which recommendations were made on how to deal with the rarity aspect of mass shootings. The chapter then describes the book’s chosen theoretical approach—Cumulative Strain Theory (CST). It justifies why (CST) is adopted in the book over other frameworks and relates earlier presented data to both individual and societal level variables that are captured in the approach as either potentially causal factors that underpin mass shootings or as background antecedent conditions. The chapter concludes by demonstrating that even in light of CST being a framework that originated from the study of American offenders, its applicability to CEE contexts is potentially fruitful because offenders across these contexts.

This chapter presents data on 76 attempted and completed mass shootings that arose in the central and eastern European countries from 1992 to 2021. These cases constitute the first sample of mass shootings that has been compiled on these regions of the world. The chapter overviews descriptive statistics on offenders’ age, gender, ethnicity, and on fatality and injury counts as well as weapon usage. It then carries out qualitative inquiry on three case studies of shootings that include the 2015 Czech Uhersky Brod restaurant shooting in which 8 people were killed; the 2018 Kerch Polytechnic College massacre (Crimea) which claimed 21 lives; the 1998 Lithuanian village rampage that claimed 10 lives. The case studies help elucidate both offender level and contextual characteristics and familiarize readers with the different contextual dynamics, cultural characteristics, and social systems in which these shootings took place in. The case studies also include identification of both the presence and absence of different stages of Cumulative Strain Theory.

This chapter puts forward the first quantitative assessment of attempted and completed mass shootings that arose in central and eastern Europe. Details on how variables were coded are provided followed by a descriptive overview of statistical tendencies of the five different stages of Cumulative Strain Theory as well as other factors including ideological motivation, the number/types of guns used to carry out an attack, and offender-related characteristics. Logistic regression is utilized to test four different hypotheses on the dependent variable of a mass shooting occurrence. In contrast to attempted mass shootings, completed mass shootings can be explained by two statistically significant models, both of which include significant coefficients of group grievance and suicide. The association of the five stages of Cumulative Strain Theory is not significant with the occurrence of mass shootings in CEE states, but these five stages are still nevertheless present in both statistically significant models. The odds of a mass shooting occurring (in comparison to an attempted mass shooting) are nearly four times greater in cases where offenders took their own lives at the scene of the attack. Likewise, when offenders were motivated by holding a grievance against a particular societal group, the odds of a mass shooting occurring were greater nearly one-fold.

This chapter analyzes 45 of the deadliest mass shootings that arose in central and eastern European (CEE) countries and compares them with 45 from the commonly studied context of the United States. Results reveal that US mass shootings have resulted in twice as many fatalities and six times as many injuries. There have been no female offenders in CEE countries, and mental illness has been less prevalent in CEE offenders. Similarly, ideologically motivated mass shootings are less common in CEE countries as are shootings that are motivated by an offender’s grievance against a social group. In terms of shooting locations and shooting types, school and higher educational shootings are much more common in the United States than in CEE states, and on average, more shootings have occurred in offenders’ localities and neighborhoods than in the United States. In contrast, several similarities can be observed with both United States and CEE mass shooters being 34 years old on average. Both sets of offenders also had experiences with five stages of Cumulative Strain Theory (acute strain, uncontrolled strain, chronic strain, planning stage, event stage) to nearly the same exact extent. The percentage of workplace shootings is nearly identical in both contexts as are shootings that were aimed at government institutions.

This chapter overviews the results of empirical investigations produced throughout the book and delves into the implications of these findings for scholarship on mass shootings. It discusses the merits of Cumulative Strain Theory and offers suggestions for future improvements that can be made to this framework. The chapter also engages with the intriguing question of whether mass shootings will continue to be extremely rare occurrences of homicide in CEE states when compared to the US context. Through summarizing different angles of the empirical analyses produced in this book, the chapter suggests that there have been fewer mass shootings in CEE countries due to a configuration of factors including low rates of civilian armament, strict firearm regulations, gun license requirements, and better mental health care access than in the United States. It remains to be seen whether the repellent effect of these different factors will remain salient in keeping the incident frequency of mass shootings low in times ahead across CEE states.