The story PP links to fails to mention the scourge of black-on-black crime that has turned places like Chicago into a warzone.

For years, we’ve discussed gun violence against the backdrop of multiple mass shootings. But rarely have we examined gun violence as a feminist issue.

Following mass shootings, we as a country often discuss gun control and mental health. Although mental health does play a role in mass shootings, sociologists believe that the concept of masculinity and what it means to be a man in America play a huge role in getting people to commit violent acts.

“There are so many people with mental illness that never commit violence,” Stony Brook University researcher, criminologist and sociologist Rachel Kalish told Desert News National. “But many rampage shooters have been made to feel marginalized in some way and our culture makes violence seem like an appropriate way to assert masculinity.”

In addition, a 2013 study discovered that “a strong majority of mass shootings in America were carried out by white males” and found a “correlation between feelings of entitlement among white males and homicidal revenge against a specific demographic.”  […]

In many of these cases mental health did play a factor, but the need to address masculinity, gender and violence is something that Ms. Magazine writer Soraya Chemaly discussed in a piece written in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy:

“This tragedy happened and will continue to happen because too many guns are readily available in a culture that is optimized for their tragic use, most often by unstable boys brought up to define themselves as men through violence, and taught from birth to expect control. Men with cultural entitlements to and expectations of power and privilege. Expectations, when not met and combined with illness, loss, depression and more, explode into uncounted tragedies every day.”