The firearm violence epidemic is a major public health problem. It is estimated that every day in the US, approximately 100 people fall casualty to gun violence (Evans and Anthony, 2018) and in 2019 over 14,000 people died from firearm homicide (CDC, 2019). Firearm homicides account for ∼75% of all homicides in the US (CDC, 2019). Compounding the tragic loss of life is the enormous economic burden of gun violence, which totals an estimated $229 billion annually in direct and indirect costs (U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee and Democratic Staff, 2019). Although gun violence has reached an epidemic scale, there has been a lack of research on this topic due to federal funding restrictions on gun violence research for over 20 years. This has left gun violence prevention scientists with a dearth of empirical evidence on how to best intervene, impeding the development of evidence-informed gun violence interventions. Nevertheless, it is possible that gun violence shares similar risk factors as general forms of violence, and similar protective factors that buffer against general forms of violence may also buffer against gun violence. If this is found to be true, then existing violence interventions could be effective for cross-cutting violence prevention, including gun violence. Currently, there is not enough empirical evidence to support this assertion, at least from the psychological sciences. Thus, to prevent gun violence there is a critical need to understand the risk factors for gun violence, and if these risk factors are different from general forms of violence. If the risk factors are different for gun violence, then current violence intervention programs need to be tailored to increase their efficacy. One of the most widely researched individual-level risk factors is psychopathy. Psychopathy is regarded as a robust predictor for future violence perpetration across population types (e.g., forensic, community, inpatient) for both men and women (Thomson et al., 2022). The goal of this study is to understand if psychopathy is related to gun violence, and if this association is different/similar from general violent crime (non-firearm related) in a female offender sample.

Psychopathy is a well-established risk factor for violence in both men and women (Thomson, 2021), however, research exploring the association between psychopathy and gun violence in adults is limited (e.g., Hare and McPherson, 1984). The present study has extended this early research by finding that psychopathy is associated with gun violence, and the facet level of psychopathy can distinguish women who perpetrated gun violence from women who committed general forms of violent crime and non-violent crime. This has important implications. This result underlines that gun violence in women has distinct risk factors when compared to violent and non-violent crime. Thus, existing violence interventions may need to tailor programming to address gun violence risk factors. However, given that this is one study, and a study that focuses only on incarcerated women and psychopathy, much more research is needed to unpack gun violence risk factors. Thus, I encourage future research to tease apart associations of gun violence from general forms of violence to help direct violence prevention scientists in the development of evidence-informed strategies to prevent gun violence.

The present study found the affective and interpersonal facets independently increased the likelihood of women belonging to the gun-related violent crime group when compared to the violent crime and non-violent crime groups. Although this is a novel finding it is consistent with research including women, whereby the affective facet is related to more severe forms of violence in women (Thomson et al., 2019b). Indeed, recent research has found that women who committed murder had higher interpersonal-affective scores when compared to men who had committed murder (Carabellese et al., 2020a). Given that gun violence is responsible for 75% of all homicides, it is logical that gun violence is more severe than violence more generally. Therefore, this result may be indicative of severity. To tease this association apart future research is encouraged to explore mediators that may explain the link between the affective facet and gun violence. Also related with past research in men and women, is that the interpersonal facet is related to instrumental forms of violence. Given that weapon carrying and weapon use could be considered as planned, especially during a crime, it is possible that the proactive nature of gun violence explains the relation with the interpersonal facet of psychopathy. Indeed, weapon carrying is included in measures of proactive aggression (Raine et al., 2006). Furthermore, interpersonal and affective psychopathic traits are related to social dominance (Roy et al., 2021), which is often displayed by robbers who use firearms to commit crimes (Mosselman et al., 2018). Researchers have also suggested that firearm carrying among youth with conduct problems is used to establish dominance among peers (Beardslee et al., 2018). Collectively, it may be that women with higher interpersonal facet scores use a firearm in their violence to increase dominance. Again, the specific mechanisms need to be tested in future research. Nevertheless, women who display the prototypical psychopathic traits, characterized by callousness, lack of empathy and remorse, superficially charming, conning and manipulative, and grandiose are more likely to have engaged in gun violence.

The behavioral facet was not positively related to gun violence but did increase the likelihood of women belonging to the general violent crime group when compared to the gun violence group and non-violent crime group. Because the present study parsed women who committed gun violence from those who were violent without a firearm, it may be that those remaining in the violent crime group perpetrated acts of violence with less planning, comparatively. Although this is speculative and beyond the scope of the present study design, past research has found the behavioral facet is related to reactive aggression in men (Wang et al., 2018) and women (Thomson et al., 2018). An alternative explanation beyond gun violence vs. general forms of violence being indicative of proactive and reactive violence, respectively, is simply that women who have higher levels of prototypical psychopathic traits that are characterized as “cold-blooded” perpetrators are more likely to use a firearm in their violent crime (Thomson, 2019). In contrast, women who scored high on the behavioral facet are characteristically impulsive, have poor emotion regulation, and get into conflict with others more often (e.g., LSRP item 6; gets into a lot of shouting matches). This conglomeration of personality and behavioral traits seems to place women at greater risk of violence across different contexts, while the interpersonal and affective facets seem to be context and/or severity specific (Thomson et al., 2019).

These results may have clinical implications. Women who committed gun violence were characteristically different from women who engaged in violent and non-violent crime. These women were more callous, lacked empathy and remorse, and were manipulative, superficially charming, egocentric, and dominant. In contrast, violent women (non-firearm related) were more impulsive and reported having poor emotion regulation. These types of violent offenders would require very different treatment approaches, for the health of the individual and other incarcerated women. For example, trauma-informed emotion regulation group therapies are often used in forensic settings to reduce violence and antisocial behavior (e.g., Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Linehan, 2015; Beyond Violence, Covington, 2013). These strategies may work for reducing impulsivity and anger for women high on behavioral psychopathic traits, which could reduce psychopathy-related violence.

In contrast, trauma-informed emotion regulation group therapies may not be ideal for women who have perpetrated gun violence and actually be detrimental to other women in the group. Offenders higher on interpersonal-affective psychopathy engage in a range of treatment interfering behaviors, such as “manipulative and coercive behaviors, being disruptive, attention seeking, antagonizing patients and staff” (Thomson, 2019, p. 148), and have greater rates of treatment drop out (Sewall and Olver, 2018; Thomson, 2019). This can impact the treatment for other women and staff burnout. Further, offenders with higher interpersonal-affective psychopathy may use group therapy sessions to understand other women’s vulnerabilities, which could be used for coercive and targeted manipulation (Thomson, 2019). Therefore, practitioner care should be taken to avoid placing women at risk of further victimization. Yet, women who engage in gun violence are a high need treatment group but may require specialist intervention. Instead, a more effective treatment for offenders with high interpersonal-affective traits to reduce the risk of gun violence may be to use group therapy for cognitive behavioral skills while avoiding vulnerable topics for other inmates (e.g., trauma), and to use an individual treatment approach for vulnerable topics and to increase overall retention by improving strong therapeutic alliance. This multi-pronged and intensive approach has received encouraging support for high-risk psychopathic male offenders (Sewall and Olver, 2018). In line with the Sewall and Olver (2018) statement on sexual offenders, it is proposed here that a goal of treatment for women who perpetrate gun violence who are higher on interpersonal and affective traits should be less about changing resistant psychopathic personality traits, but to break the link between interpersonal and affective traits and gun violence. In women, research has suggested that exposure to physical abuse plays a role in the link between the affective facet and violence (Thomson et al., 2019a), this may support the notion that individual sessions focused on strong therapeutic alliance using trauma-informed approaches may be beneficial for reducing gun violence among women. While this paper has explored potential treatment implications, it is clear that much more research is needed to replicate the present study findings and to understand the specific mechanisms behind psychopathy-related firearm violence.

The present study has several limitations that should be considered when interpreting the results. Although this is a large study of female offenders, it is not possible to generalize the results to male samples, nor is it possible to make sex-specific comparisons, especially as there is no existing research on psychopathy facets and firearm-related violent crime in men. The present study used a self-report measure of psychopathy. While self-report psychopathy is a widely accepted approach to measuring psychopathic traits in women, it would be important to replicate using other semi-structured clinical assessments (i.e., Psychopathy Checklist-Revised; Hare, 2003) and other self-reports (i.e., Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised; Lilienfeld and Widows, 2005). Next, as a measure of criminal behavior, past criminal records were coded. It is likely that some offenders used a firearm in violent crimes but this was not documented. It is also retrospective data, which means the findings cannot be interpreted as psychopathy being a prospective predictor of gun violence. However, this multi-source data collection is a strength to the study. Using self-report for psychopathy and official records for violent crime prevents common method variance if data were collected from the same source (e.g., self-report). Nevertheless, future studies would benefit from integrating multiple data sources to corroborate findings. Lastly, it was not possible to create a comparison violent crime group that used another type of weapon (e.g., a knife) because this data was not collected. This line of inquiry would be important to test if the present findings were related to gun violence or just weapon-related violence.

In summary, the present study demonstrates that women who engage in gun violence are characteristically different from violent and non-violent women. This should encourage future research to tease apart known risk factors for violence to understand if they replicate or differ from gun violence. Further, as these studies roll out, it is strongly encouraged that existing interventions tailor their strategies to address these firearm specific risk factors. It is also encouraged that new interventions be developed to help target the growing public health crisis of gun violence.

The datasets presented in this article are not readily available because in accordance to prison administrators request, the informed consent stated that the data would not be shared beyond the immediate study team. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to corresponding author.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the University of Hawai’i IRB. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

NT conducted the data collection and analyses and wrote of the manuscript.

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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