Experts Confront Multiple Explanations for Surge of Killings

Associated Press
By: David Crary

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The relentless series of mass killings across the globe poses a challenge for experts trying to analyze them without lapsing into faulty generalizations. Terms like contagion and copycat killing apply in some cases, but not in others, they say, and in certain instances perpetrators’ terrorist ideology intersects with psychological instability.

Some of the attacks, such as the coordinated assault on multiple targets in Paris in November, were elaborately planned operations by Islamic State adherents. However, they may have contributed to some of the other attacks by troubled individuals with no established ties to the militant group…

‘‘We’ve got this situation where it seems like almost any public act of violence can be attributed to the Islamic State, regardless of how nebulous a connection there is to the group,’’ said Daniel Schoenfeld, an analyst at The Soufan Group, a security consulting firm…

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