Simply because nature abhors vacuum and after a highly publicized negative event, it is human nature to assign blame and we leave ourselves wide open for the Vultures of Gun Control to say “It is the NRA’s Fault!”
“It is the NRA’s Fault.” is a perfect capsule, easy to be repeated in the media and requires no thinking. We spend gigabytes explaining the errors of Gun free Zones and why a shooting like that happened when we take that alleged superior position of not giving the shooter what he wanted: recognition. Well, the shooter is dead and he won’t be seeing his name splashed across CNN or the Drudge Report so there is little payday on that instance.
And I don’t buy the “it encourages others’ line either. Hell, they are crazy to begin with, if they need an excuse to dispense with mayhem, they will find it. Elliot Rodger’s excuse was his ability to be the only Hollywood Elite white kid in Southern California not to get laid because women sucked. It was as good an excuse as the phases of the moon or the new taste of Twinkies or it was Bush’s fault…all bullshit: They are crazy and that is why they did it.
So yes, I will continue to mention the names of killers and will keep pointing out the banalities of Gun Free Zones as the perfect hunting grounds for assholes like Elliot Rodger, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Seung-Hui Cho, James Holmes and the rest of them.
My one quibble:
“Hell, they are crazy to begin with, if they need an excuse to dispense with mayhem, they will find it.”
They are not crazy. Or rather, craziness has nothing to do with it. I know crazy people. By and large, they’re perfectly safe, as safe or safer than you or I.
The people that do this sort of crap are evil, and we should call them that. They are not “crazy people,” they are bad people, who have chosen to do evil things.
Crazy can be treated with medication. Evil can only be treated (by us at least) with a lead pill.
I understand what you are saying, and I agree with you. However, that does noty change the fact that society and the mental health profession get to call them “mentally ill”. And until society and the mental health profession stop trying to find something to blame instead of putting the responsibility squarely on the person, we will have this problem.
stay safe.
According to Webster:
bats, batty, bedlam, bonkers, brainsick, bughouse [slang], certifiable, crackbrained, cracked, crackers, crackpot, cranky [dialect], crazed, crazy, cuckoo, daffy, daft, demented, deranged, fruity [slang], gaga, haywire, kooky (also kookie), loco [slang], loony (also looney), loony tunes (or looney tunes), lunatic, mad, maniacal (also maniac), mental, meshuga (or meshugge also meshugah or meshuggah), moonstruck, non compos mentis, nuts, nutty, psycho, psychotic, scatty [chiefly British], screwy, unbalanced, unhinged, unsound, wacko (also whacko), wacky (also whacky),
Getting caught up on names is BS and pardon the frankness. There is one inevitable truth and it is very simple: Some crazy/sick/unstable/not hugged enough as a kid individual is preparing the next Mass Killing and he will carry it out without giving one solitary hint he is gonna do it and he is gonna kill people. We can have all the Psychiatry Witch doctors coming up witj all their chants and invocations promising that they will stop the attack before it happens and the Politicians that promise that a bunch of new lines in the State’s Law will make sure it never happens again and they will also fail.
And even us, we cannot guarantee that Batshit Ernie is not gonna kill, but about the only thing we can ask for is be at the right time at the right place, pray for a steady hand and a good grouping so the number of victims remain as low as possible.
Anything else is just elf peyote-induced dreams.
There will be more than hints that the next mass killer is a problem. We will find that out as they interview his/her family and friends.
People will know s/he is “off,” strange, or weird. Just like the Doctors and Psychiatrists that were treating Cho, Holmes and Rodgers knew they were “off.” The problem is that there are probably 10,000 harmless weird people for every criminal murderous psycho. And it is impossible to predict which is which.
These criminals are just another reason why we need people capable of defending themselves and the innocent in schools, churches, daycares, homes and businesses.
Well, we have collectively done it this way with the media splashing sexy pictures of such killers on the front page of Rolling Stone and so on. To a teenager, this is nirvana even if he will be dead. You said they are crazy, so their motivation is a little twisted.
So, I disagree and do think they would be discouraged by knowing that posthumously they will not have their names spoken. They clearly crave attention given the fact they leave behind manifestos and videos like a terrorist would.
Why can’t we try it my way and ask the media to suppress their names and images? I’m not saying that they prevent access to information that might prevent further massacres or that it be mandatory. However, what is so difficult about doing it like in medicine where they’re identified only by initials and their manuscripts, videos, diaries, blogs are used by law enforcement for analysis and redacted to limit identification?
I know the counter-argument…if we ever tried to destroy Mein Kampf, we would end up promoting it. Still, is what I ask really a destruction of the First Amendment or is it a prudent suggestion?
I have a sister who is schizophrenic, and while she is mostly harmless, occasionally she’ll say something about what she’s going through that is just a little creepy…
If someone is genuinely insane, I have a difficult time with blaming them for misdeeds. Suzzana Hupp put it well: she can’t blame the shooter for killing her parents, any more than she’d blame a rabid dog.
Because many of these shooters are literally insane, I have sometimes wondered if it should be considered a violation of HIPPA or some other privacy law to release their names to the public, particularly if they survive, but even if they are killed or commit suicide. I would think that the case should be made that withholding their names, at least until trials are held, would be the ethical thing to do from that angle, and it may even reduce the notoriety of committing these acts…