Majority of the public’s opinion of mass shootings believe gun control will completely resolve the issue. While I believe it will help, the reason for mass shootings is not guns, it is toxic masculinity that is exhibited by these white men who believe they are entitled to everything they desire.

There is undoubtedly a direct correlation and causation between angry white men and mass shootings. A correlation between angry women of color and mass shootings does not exist.

Girls and boys are not raised the same way and depending on the extremity of the division, it can develop into toxic masculinity. Young girls are told from parents and parental figures that the world is not a place made for them. They are to hide their bodies, not to express their anger, and there a specific careers and lives made for them such as teaching and being a housewife.

Young boys, on the contrary, are told that the world is their oyster. There are endless possibilities for their futures; pilots, CEO’s, and even President of the United States. Teaching young boys that the world is theirs results in a sense of entitlement. White boys, especially because which color is most represented in American success, white. Our society is based around white, wealthy, heterosexual, able-bodied, men.

Most importantly, young boys are taught by mostly by their fathers, who were taught by their fathers, to be angry. “Big boys don’t cry”. Sadness is to not be expressed with tears because then boys are told they are “weak”, “acting like a girl”, and “being a sissy”. Since femininity is seen as inferior to masculinity in our society and therefore if a boy portrays feminine traits they are verbally shamed which may lead to physical consequences.

Though my word may not seem authentic enough, from sociologist and author of the book “Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era”, Michael Kimmel. “Our [white men] enemy is an ideology of masculinity that we inherited from our fathers, and their fathers before them, an ideology that promises unparalleled acquisition coupled with a tragically impoverished emotional intelligence”. This all forms into toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity is an ill form of masculinity since this is the form that leads to mass shootings.

All this considering, let us focus on the boys and men that are labeled as the outcast of masculinity. From this group is our answer.

We all are aware of the male outcasts, they are constantly tormented for their lack of obvious masculine traits. In schools, the “nerds”, “scrawny” , and “fa****s” are bullied by the jocks. To again quote Kimmel, “Virtually every one of the shooters described their school days, as a relentless gauntlet of bullying, gay-baiting, epithets, physical assault, and harassment until they ‘snapped’.”

Shooters are then created as retaliation against those who had humiliated their masculinity by exerting their higher gender performance over them. Most victims of bullying internalize the pain and cry when no one else is around, but this certain group of boys internalize and transform it into anger and backlash; mass shootings. “And so they did what any self-respecting man would do in a situation like that–or so they thought. They retaliated.”

In his book, Kimmel analyzes known mass shooters, “Gary Scott Pennington, seventeen years old, who killed his teacher and a custodian in Grayson, Kentucky, in 1993, was labeled a ‘nerd’ and ‘a loner’ and was constantly teased for being smart and wearing glasses.” The author goes on further to show the direct correlation between white boys who were victims of bullying and their form of revenge.

There are many solutions to prevent mass shootings. Gun control being a symptom treatment but teaching boys to have emotional intelligence is the cure. Boys and men, it is okay to cry. You are humans with a whole range of emotions who should be allowed to show every emotion in a healthy way. The world is not just yours, everything deserving will come in time through patience and hard work.