—by Odysseus
As the news trickled out overnight about the mass killing in Colorado, the publicity engines started up. The gun control fanatics started crafting their tweets and sound bytes while the National Rifle Association and the millions of law-abiding gun owners started preparing to defend themselves yet again. The news media members bought plane tickets and began packing for their own mass migration to Colorado. One wonders if they could get the same hotel rooms they used for their accommodations during their extended public dissection of the lives of the Columbine shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, 13 years ago.
Almost every side of these periodic spectacles has been argued out to the point that it has become almost ritualistic. The Democrats use the opportunity to try again to pass as many “gun restriction” laws as they can push through any federal and state legislature while the Republicans try to point public attention to the coarsening of our society. The media will lavish attention on the life of the perpetrator, digging into every aspect of his parentage, childhood, education, mental issues, social life, and favorite soft drink. However, not one person will address the obvious motivation for these mass killings.
Thus far, these killings in the United States have not been racially motivated; the targeted victims are of all races, creeds, colors, and political affiliations. The mass killers, themselves, have been remarkably non-discriminatory and politically correct. They do not seem to be motivated by any desire for monetary gain as they frequently kill themselves at the end, precluding any personal ability to derive a pecuniary benefit. Their killings are not, at least overtly, sex-based because they kill men, women, and children alike, with the only apparent common victim denominator being “proximity”. They do not seem to be of any particular political affiliation, coming from both sides of the political aisle with perhaps a slightly larger number having left wing, anti-society beliefs or being apolitical. Clearly, we are only addressing those mass killings that are not Islam-related, those being events of a completely different character. This analysis deals strictly with these “lone or couple of gunmen” mass slayings which began during the 1990s.
It is not about firearms; the mass murderers try to use bombs, automobiles, incendiaries, and poisons as part of their attacks. Their purpose is to kill as many of their fellow humans as possible at one time. So what exactly motivates these men (and boys) to do this? The answer is far more obvious than our society cares to admit. The latest setting, a movie premiere, should provide the clue to even the most dim-witted of our journalists. They do it for fame. They do it for attention, like any suicide. They do it to get precisely what our irresponsible journalists give them — the media circus surrounding the event. They want the entire nation to pay attention to them and to their universally empty, pathetic, unsuccessful lives just as the media pays to its other darlings, the movie stars.
There are other side issues regarding the killers’ sanity. One enterprising journalist from a small town newspaper uncovered the fact that all of these mad men had spent their childhoods loaded up with the pharmacopoeia of the drugs of choice of their generation, Ritalin® , Adderall® or other ADHD drugs. These school shootings started at a small, middle school in Louisiana, where a boy shot up a morning prayer group. It was followed by another middle-school shooting, where two boys lay in wait as snipers, killing students and teachers in the parking lot. The Columbine shootings, a few years later, happened when the same generation of psychiatric-medicated kids were in high school. Then, as the “Ritalin Generation” got through college, we got the Virginia Tech shooter. The current Aurora, Colorado shooter, James Holmes, a neuroscience Ph.D student, seems to be a bit of a “late bloomer”. (It should be noted that many people have taken these medications without going on killing sprees and there are many people with psychiatric disorders who do not engage in random acts of mass violence).
The common denominator for all the mass slayings is the killers’ motivation for attention and notoriety. If we truly want to reduce the incidence of these horrible acts, there are actions we can take as a society that do not involving punishing innocent gun owners or psychiatric patients. We can address the actual root cause by denying these monsters the attention they seek. However, that will require responsible behavior by the media. Certainly, the media can cover the event itself because the public has the right to know. The media can spend as much time as required to talk about the blameless victims and the impact on their once-promising lives and the lives of their grieving families. The media can talk about the community and even about how the attack was carried out. Nevertheless, the media must not elevate the killers into micro-celebrities, giving them their hearts’ most-cherished desire for celebrity. The shooters’ names, pictures, families, issues, and grievances should all be left out of any news coverage out of respect for the victims who should be the real story. What is needed is a simple statement by media outlets that all information regarding the evil killers will be withheld under company and industry policy of denying the perpetrators any benefits from their actions.
The desire for publicity could not be any more clear as the cause of these events, which is laid bare in this case. The movie premiere provided a lone, failing, mentally-disturbed man the starring role as “the Joker” in a flash of blood-spattered spotlight. Fame has been made so desirable by our society that even momentary notoriety will suffice. If we cannot easily change our whole society’s thirst for fame, we should not punish millions of innocent people with dubious legislation that is unlikely to deter even the statistically few perpetrators. We can, however, easily deny these psychopaths an easy route to the fame they desire. Just don’t give it to them.
