Why did school shootings go from being a rare horror to an ongoing phenomenon? A big part of the puzzle is the Columbine Massacre.
While there were school shootings before Columbine, the media frenzy, the live coverage, was a sea change, and police have often found that school shooters studied the Columbine psychos and wanted to be like them.
We know mass shooters imitate each other and inspire copycat attacks. That’s why school shootings continue to pop up.
In the month that followed, 400 related incidents were reported across the country. Students called in bomb threats and praised the shooters’ actions. Some schools feared additional shootings and shut down temporarily.
In 2007, a Virginia Tech student killed 32 students and faculty at the university. Prior to the shooting, he expressed a desire in writing to repeat the shooting at Columbine. Since then, many shooters have cited the Virginia Tech gunman as an inspiration and others have threatened to kill more than the 32 victims killed.
Studies indicate that the more media attention a shooter gets, the more likely the event will inspire a future mass shooter. For example, a 2015 study found that after a mass shooting, there was an increased chance of another one occurring in the next 13 days. A 2017 study found that media coverage of a mass shooting may increase the frequency and lethality of future shootings for much longer than two weeks.
The media knows perfectly well the impact that it has.
Suicides spike after front page coverage of a suicide. After Marilyn Monroe’s death, 197 more people killed themselves than the statistical norm. Suicides rise even after fictional suicides on soap operas. And murders are also influenced by the coverage of real and fictional murders.
The internet makes the genie harder to put back in the bottle, but the media doesn’t even try.
Columbine broke the unspoken rule about covering teenage suicides to avoid the copycat effect. The media breaks it every time since while blaming Republicans for not abolishing the Bill of Rights. The media understands perfectly well that it’s promoting similar mass killings and it wants that to happen because it helps its agenda.
Rarely says
DG
It is remarkably irresponsible and clearly incorrect to assert that the media is “promoting similar mass killings and it WANTS THAT TO HAPPEN because it helps its agenda”.
If you have PROOF of that lets see it. If not you are just speculating and promoting a new conspiracy theory. By doing so you lose your overall credibility.
mortimer says
No ‘theory’ is involved. The media has been promoting leftist rioting and the defunding of police. They are neo-Marxists hoping to promote chaos, then they will swoop in to take over. In preparation, they want to demonize and caluniate their political opposition, all dissenters and remove their ability to communicate their dissenting ideas in the public forum. The calumny of ‘racism’ is the main tool in their kit to accomplish all the above.
They promote ‘safety’ in order to confiscate guns, but is defunding police promoting SAFETY?
Defunding the police is promoting political revolution.
Savvy Kafir says
Well said, Mortimer!
JimJFox says
Absolute truth, well presented.
Daniel Greenfield is producing ever more disingenuous posts that minimise or obfuscate the facts that guns are the issue, easy to obtain in large numbers by anyone, with very little control.
How else can massacres happen? How many innocents can be killed by other means, apart from bombs?
mortimer says
Agree. The media feeding frenzy for such events is causing COPY-CAT KILLERS to emerge from the woodwork.
The mainly Dem-supporting media are using the shootings to promote the Dem policy of strict gun-control and the repeal of the 2nd Amendment.
In so doing, the Dem-supporting media are in effect causing more shootings and loss of innocent life … all in the name of a political party.
somehistory says
It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out.
Advertising works. the half-dressed shapely blond sitting on a car… or her counterpart in a sports magazine …cause people, esp males to buy the car or at the least, the magazine.
I recall one newscaster saying, “Thank God for Natalee Holloway.” The young woman was murdered in Aruba and it gave *news” people something to talk…endlessly…about and gain in the ratings.
It’s ratings that cause the money to roll in and it’s **big and sensational* stories that bring in the ratings.
That is why some reporters ask such stupid and insensitive questions of those who are clearly grieving. They want to “sensationalize” the story and get a scoop.
and the people listening to all of this blood and gore include those who would like to see their name in the paper, spoken on television, even if it’s just in their imagination as they believe they will die by cop. They will go down in history as killing the greatest number of little kids and no one will forget them or their names.
some years ago, two girls were kidnapped and thankfully, rescued. When the parents were being interviewed afterward, asked about their “feelings,” one of the fathers said, grinning broadly, “Fifteen minutes of fame, baby!”
That says it.
Lorensacho says
Statistics reveal that there was a huge increase in mass shooting after assault weapons’ were legalized. Blaming the media is a dishonest ploy used by gun people take the heat off their homicidal hobby.
Chess says
t’s not about guns, politics or the police. We are so fortunate to have those men in blue at least until Holder and Obama changed them.
Mothers need to tell their children how much they are loved. Parental psychological abuse is the reason for the hate. AMEN.
JimJFox says
Nonsense
gravenimage says
Chess, your claim that all murderers are that way because their mothers didn’t love them is clearly not the case.
Then there are many who were not loved by their parents who are not violent people. I have first hand experience with this.
JimJFox says
ZERO GUN CONTROL
Allowing mentally ill people, gang members, psychopaths and others easy access to military weapons is utter insanity.
The NRA has blood on its hands & should be proscribed & made illegal. Federal action is needed & 2nd Amendment must be updated because it cannot be applied to weapons the writers could never imagine.
Since Australia made new rules after Port Arthur there has been nothing near that magnitude of slaughter.
Similarly UK gun laws prevented mass killing after Dunblane.
Does USA NEVER learn? Rhetorical question… NO, of course not.
somehistory says
when you come to be a citizen of the U.S., you can vote for those who want to destroy the Rights God gave us and the Constitution guaranteed.
gravenimage says
+1
tgusa says
The USA is not an island like Australia, New Zealand, UK.
We here in North and South America are two continents. Both being easily accessible to the other through land sea or air. We here in the USA don’t take advise from small islands that were and have always been just a tiny part of the now gone British Empire.
tgusa says
Make our schools and young ones as safe as.. Congress, Courts, Airports, Train Stations. Banks, Bus Depots, etc and on and on. Make them as safe as, no matter where it was…my house. Our kids are the most important asset we have.
No one inside the school had a gun. Therefore, lets ban guns! Yeah, that’s the ticket! That will work out just as well as the banning alcohol or drugs did in the past.
somehistory says
I read a report that said that hands, feet, etc. killed more people than rifles. and the writer said, “ban limbs.” In jest of course