Every time a new school shooting shows up on the news channel I cringe. The main reason being the shooter tends to get a lot more publicity then his/her victims and chances are that was one of the main reasons why this person chose to inflict their plan of chaos.
When your fighting a mental illness especially on a severe level you feel very alone and believe the world is ignoring you. Unfortunately some people decide to take their lives but at the same time want to send a message to the world that they did exist and the easiest way is to gain national attention is through a mass tragedy. This might not make sense in a brain that is nice and stable but when your world is full of delusions and screwed up perspectives it makes a lot of sense.
The media is to blame for a lot of this phenomenon as they tend to put the shooter on the front page of every newspaper and the main story on the telecasts. They dig through the shooters past looking for reasons why this person took such a route which is understandable as we all want to know why but at the same time they just made the person famous or infamous. Think back to the last two big school shooting in the United States and chances are you are able to name the two shooters but how many of the victims can you name.
Remember back to the Columbine High School tragedy and the number of similar school situations that followed it. Almost all of the shooters felt that they were being mistreated and ignored by their peers so they put into play an event where everyone would know who they are. I have this sick feeling that being famous was part of their reasoning and that is exactly what happened. Every search on school shootings bring up the name of the shooters, the number of victims and eventually who the victims were which to me is wrong on all sorts of levels.
I wonder what would happen if the shooter’s name(s) were never made public. The media can still do all of their normal story lines but the shooters name is never mentioned. The media can talk about their upbringing, possible mental health problems and all of the missed warning signs but never actually say the shooters name. Will this stop all future school shootings? No but I believe it may cut the actual number of tragedies down as in a lot of cases getting any kind of recognition either positive or negative is at the core of a human psyche.
As for the media try to focus on the victims as they are the ones who deserve the attention and should be remembered not a person who made a really bad decision that makes them famous or at least infamous.
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