The attackers turned their firearms on family members before killing 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School and 19 students at Robb Elementary School. In Enoch, Utah, in January, the man who shot his five children, wife, and mother-in-law was previously under investigation for reportedly choking his daughter.
Just last Friday, prosecutors claimed that an Ohio father shot his wife while his daughter ran for help, and then shot his three sons with a firearm.Experts have discovered a troubling, long-term trend as gun violence rates rise in the United States: There is a glaring connection between mass shootings and domestic abuse of family members.
According to April Zeoli, Ph.D., an associate professor and the policy core director for the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan, more than half of mass shootings—those involving four or more victims—are “actually shootings of intimate partners and families.” Zeoli focuses on the interactions between gun violence, domestic abuse, and laws intended to prevent both. She added that mass shooters frequently have a history of domestic abuse, even when family members and partners are not slain.