[quote=paramount]From Morgan Freeman on the Sandy Hook Tragedy
“You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here’s why.
It’s because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he’ll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.
CNN’s article says that if the body count “holds up”, this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer’s face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer’s identity? None that I’ve seen yet. Because they don’t sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you’ve just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.
You can help by forgetting you ever read this man’s name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news.”[/quote]
Ding, ding, ding!!!!
All too often, these are people who are desperate for attention, and what better way to get attention than to kill innocent people, especially children. We need to stop making these stories bigger than they really are. Not trying to minimize it, but many more people die in car accidents **every day,** and they are missed every bit as much as those who die in high-profile homicide cases. We need to stop sensationalizing mass murders.
Top this off with our insane glorification of violence and the lack of empathy spawned by extremely violent video games and movies — especially when viewed/played by young people whose minds are still developing — and it’s easy to see how these violent episodes happen. I’d also suggest that the overuse of technology, as opposed to having more person-to-person contact, is leading to young people who are less and less empathetic as time goes by.
IMHO, it is the lack of empathy, which some would call a mental illness, that is responsible for these violent attacks. This is what we need to address.
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As for gun deaths in the U.S., we’re #1 in gun ownership, but other countries, some with much stricter gun laws, they have much higher gun homicide rates. FWIW, most gun deaths in this country are suicide-related.
