CSotD: Protecting The Public’s Right To Click
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Let's go back 33 years, with this Jim Mazzotta commentary on the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan.
John Hinckley was not a massacre shooter, but he operated in something of the same arena: Attempting a grand public gesture, at which, as Mazzotta's cartoon suggests, he succeeded.
He only wanted to attract the attention of one person, but that still puts him in a different category than, say, Mark David Chapman, who shot John Lennon to redress a particular issue within his delusional universe.
In the wake of the Santa Barbara shootings, someone posted this year-old article from the Wall Street Journal about massacre shooters and media coverage. Here's the critical passage, but the entire thing is well worth reading:
Whereas serial killers are driven by long-standing sadistic and sexual pleasure in inflicting pain, massacre killers usually have no prior history of violence. Instead, writes Eric W. Hickey, dean of the California School of Forensic Studies, in his 2009 book "Serial Murderers and Their Victims," massacre killers commit a single and final act in which violence becomes a "medium" to make a " 'final statement' in or about life." Fantasy, public expression and messaging are central to what motivates and defines massacre killings.
Mass shooters aim to tell a story through their actions. They create a narrative about how the world has forced them to act, and then must persuade themselves to believe it. The final step is crafting the story for others and telling it through spoken warnings beforehand, taunting words to victims or manifestos created for public airing.
I was in Denver the weekend of the Dark Knight shootings and got to see close up, and reflect upon, the media circus that dominated the next several days, as part of which I included this Ruben Bolling commentary which he also resurrected for the occasion:
Granted, people want to know what happened. And they deserve to know something.
I went to the mat — and nearly to jail — with the Maine State Police over a murder in which they wanted to release no details and I wanted to let readers know if it was something that could happen again tomorrow, as opposed to, for instance, "disgruntled former employee."
Similarly, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, people needed to know if it was a one-off event or if things around them were going to start blowing up.
But at Columbine, at Newtown, at Santa Barbara, it was quickly clear that the killing was over, so the immediate "public safety" issue was a non-starter.
The long-term public safety question remains, but, if the answer to "Why did he do it?" is "Because he was crazy," we don't need a whole lot of detail.
Meanwhile, that WSJ article suggests that giving the killer his time in the spotlight, and, in particular, publishing his manifesto, provides an impetus for the next person with a similar goal.
Someone said that it was important to air the manifesto so we'd know just how crazy he was.
How crazy was he? He was shooting people at random. That's how crazy he was.
There are laws to exclude people with serious mental illnesses from purchasing firearms.
However:
1. Massacre killers do not necessarily have a history of the level of psychosis that would prevent them from legally purchasing guns. And it's not reasonable to say that anyone who has gone to a shrink for any reason may never be permitted to own a hunting rifle, so where do you draw the line?
2. The NRA and its Congressional flunkeys do not give a damn.
After Newtown, they all said the problem wasn't guns, it was mental illness. But what's changed? A parent or spouse who tries to get in-patient treatment for someone who is potentially a danger to himself or others will still run into "take two aspirin and call us after he kills seven and wounds six."
3. A background check should turn up evidence of serious mental illness, but the federal system is handicapped by states that refuse to provide that information.
I live in one of them. In the current New Hampshire state session, a bill was introduced, to wit:
This bill requires the name of a person who has been adjudicated as not mentally competent to be reported to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System for the purpose of conducting a background check to determine eligibility to possess a firearm. The bill also establishes a procedure for such person to have his or her name removed from the NICS Index.
It has since been amended, to wit:
This bill establishes a procedure to annul a mental health record and to have such record removed from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and establishes a commission to study firearms and mental health.
To be fair, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, based in Newtown, Connecticut, is supporting legislation to require more complete reporting.
But they're not the NRA and they don't have the NRA's pull, or, for that matter, spin.
I believe Clay Jones has this problem pretty well covered.
The bottom line is that we cannot count on lawmakers to make any serious attempt to resolve the issue.
And, if you still want to base your hope on people who have no intention of helping, let's get back to that desperate desire to be heard that massacre killers have, and, specifically, the Wall Street Journal article:
In 1984, a rash of suicides broke out on the subway system in Vienna. As the death toll climbed, a group of researchers at the Austrian Association for Suicide Prevention theorized that sensational reporting was inadvertently glorifying the suicides. Three years into the epidemic, the researchers persuaded local media to change their coverage by minimizing details and photos, avoiding romantic language and simplistic explanations of motives, moving the stories from the front page and keeping the word "suicide" out of the headlines. Subway suicides promptly dropped by 75%.
And it's not just Austria: A large number of US media outlets have, in the past decade, taken a more sensitive approach to covering suicides (which, one could argue, massacre shootings are).
When I was a reporter, the rule of thumb was that a person who died at home was not news, but if traffic over Ausable Chasm was snarled for several hours at the bridge, we had to at least explain what happened.
Trying to explain the deeper "why?" is another matter, however, and responsible outlets have quit hauling out the cliches, interviewing the weeping friends and running front-page pictures of flowers left at the site.
Whether you consider it common human decency or an effort to avoid romanticizing the act, it's good policy.
Though expecting human decency and concern for the public good to triumph over the chance to post some sure-fire click-bait is kind of silly, don't you think?
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