ABSTRACT
This chapter explores responses to a series of murders, in Britain and elsewhere, have become known as 'lone-gunman' or 'spree' killings. It argues that the experience of the 'lone gunman' or 'spree killer' is, both in its generic construction and its practice, a gendered and distinctly masculinized phenomenon. The chapter aims to (re)read the spree killing in such a way as to reposition the sexed male body within discourses around crime. It also explores the content of press discourse constructions of the 'spree killing' and, in particular, representations of the gunman Thomas Hamilton in the aftermath of the Dunblane massacre. The dominant image of the community of Dunblane itself as embodiment of comfortable, crime-free existence rests upon, and derives from, a heterosexual familial frame signified as such by virtue of the presence of children. The chapter provides the ways in which the (sexed) bodies of men continue to be constituted as an 'absent presence' within contemporary discourses around crime and criminality.
