Potential violence is always a threat on the American sociopolitical scene, as it might be in any society that allows political dissent. However, a rash of deadly violence by young adults and teenagers highlights a disturbing societal trend: alleged killers emerging from relatively stable and financially secure upbringings.

That was a through line in the murders over the past year of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk, and two detainees at Immigration and Customs Enforcement‘s Dallas Field Office, in an attack seemingly aimed at federal agents.

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Sadly, urban violence in poor neighborhoods tends to be generational and predictable — with much of the problem credited to poverty and failed policies. This recent spate of alleged young killers, ranging in age from 19 to 27, can’t make such complaints. They come from histories of relative safety, comfort, and privilege.

The cold calculation of these alleged young killers’ actions begs the question of whether they truly understand the cost and pain of violence. Are the angered members of America’s younger generations able to threaten or commit deadly attacks because they never experienced them themselves in their lives of comparable comfort and privilege?

Paul Boxer is a professor of psychology at the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice. He points out that it’s traditionally considered more difficult to commit violence if one has never been exposed to it. Still, the safety and ever-present technology surrounding today’s young people could include a heavy dose of online exposure to violence and desensitization to its imagery.

“It’s interesting to see violence arising in young people who have grown up in relatively better circumstances,” Boxer said. “But it’s important to note that aggression and violence are never solely the product of social-contextual influences. They also arise from genetic-biological factors, impulsivity, poor judgment, intense anger, and callousness.”

Boxer, a co-editor of the new book The Future of Youth Violence Prevention, insists that the larger premise of youth violence increasing is incorrect, as a variety of indicators indicate the overall problem in aggregate is on a steady decline over the last several years. However, the middle-class identity of the perpetrators and the notoriety of recent incidents promote the issue into the headlines and raise questions about whether the prevalence of political media will drive future occurrences.

“Social media and the algorithms of curation in many apps definitely contribute to the presence and persistence of echo chambers,” Boxer added. “Depending upon the specific media directed to the viewer, that certainly can include radicalization and encouragement, tacit or otherwise, to take part in violent acts.”

Ohio State University communication professor Brad Bushman cites a new age of unchecked narcissism as a possible driver of this sociopolitical violence.

“After doing research on aggression and violence for more than 30 years, I concluded the most harmful belief people can have remains that they are superior to others,” Bushman said. “Whether it’s the perpetrators of assassination or of mass shootings, there’s a link between narcissism and fandom seeking. We see narcissistic tendencies with their peer groups, and they want to be well known.”

In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of 2012, Bushman testified before the National Science Foundation and wrote a report for Congress about Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old shooter. Bushman said the tragic fact that 20 of the Sandy Hook victims were children could have started the trend of narcissistic killers looking to “out-kill” previous tragedies with more horrific body counts.

“As for the politically motivated assassinations, (the shooters) often seem to have a perceived personal grievance, or they seem to target a public figure or a group of people in a class or a group that they believe are repressing another group with whom (the shooters) have sympathy,” Bushman said.

Examining the question of how young people living in comparative comfort and who rarely experience threats or physical suffering can eventually kill, Bushman stressed that most research questions whether there’s any real link between such actions and experiencing violent movies, TV, or video games. Instead, he credits the current tragedies to entitled perpetrators with a grievance and their ability to detach from the consequences of their actions.

Bushman found that sense of victimization is unique to American culture and the current generation’s addiction to media, while seeing little connection to low self-esteem in the attackers. He suggested that a brand of American entitlement creates aggressive people who believe they’re special and deserve more considerate treatment by society.

“For example, I’m working with a Ph.D. student who’s visiting me at Ohio State from Warsaw, Poland,” Bushman said. “She can’t think of a single mass shooting in Poland, while there’ve been 375 this year in the USA.”

Edward Taylor is the author of Pathways to Becoming a Terrorist, which will be released in 2026. The book portrays a terrorist’s violent behavior as evolving from a mix of personality, emotions, beliefs, social ecology, and cognitive development. It’s his addition of neural factors that reaches beyond that toxic blend of narcissism and aggrieved entitlement.

“In the case of (young killers), maturation and the ability to think abstractly should have occurred between the ages of 10 and 13 — but development never goes on a straight line,” Taylor said. “You can have people who are 20 years old who are just starting to think in an abstract manner.”

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Taylor believes that a lack of abstract thought means possible attackers take everything they see or hear from peers in a very concrete way. Add to that the influence of social media or Discord forums offering immediate validation, and young possible perpetrators can come away thinking their enemies deserve to die.

“Also, in my opinion, there really is an issue here with a lot of these young people being detached from the violence they create, while living in an age when they are not facing disappointment in their lives,” he added. “When you consider that empathy is something that we develop at our own speeds over time, we’ll continue to see (young people) who do very well in school, have family and friends, but lack the judgment to manage problem solving without violence.”

John Scott Lewinski is a writer based in Milwaukee.