I am sure everybody heard about the tragic shooting that took place yesterday morning in an Oregon Community college. 10 people are dead, about a dozen are injured, and hundreds of people had their lives changed for the worse. This has opened up again the gun-control debate, just like a few months ago with the Charleston shooting, or before that during the Aurora or Sandy Hook massacres. However, there is an issue that hasn't been discussed: media attention and its influence. I, along with many others, have noticed a pattern in many of the shooters.
1. They were usually outcasts or bullied, leading to depression and desperation.
2. Anger brews inside of them and they start becoming erratic.
3. THEY ACT ON THEIR ANGER IN A WAY THAT DRAWS ATTENTION(in the worst way possible.)
Think about it, why didn't Elliot Rodgers, Adam Lanza, Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, or yesterday's shooter commit suicide, but rather killed innocent people? Because of attention. If they had just commited suicide in their mind they feel they would just go down as another young person who took his own life, maybe get a few days of attention from people who know them, then that would be it. In their twisted mind, the killing was their way of getting their "15 minutes of fame".
This is the video Elliot Rodgers posted before his rampage. He fits my example above. 1. He feels like an outcast and is sexually frustrated, as a result he is growing depressed. 2. He is obviously angry, wants to exact revenge on the girls who rejected him. He can be seen in this video acting erratically, as well as his last videos(he had a youtube channel, his first videos were actually relatively normal, however, as time went on it was evident his mental health was deteriorating. 3. Everything he did was meant to draw people's attention.
Normal people wouldn't announce he is about to do something illegal. He, on the other hand, posted about it hours before the event, detailed his plan, knowing the rampage would buy him infamy. Another factor to notice is that after murdering his roommates, he went to the sorority house and shot at 3 girls who were walking by, only one survived. The survivor said they not know Elliot. Another male student was killed when Elliot was shooting at people randomly on the street. My point being, Rodgers wasn't trying to exact revenge against a specific person for something that they did to him. In his twisted mind, he was going to prove he was "The alpha male"(as he says in the video) by going on the rampage, and he saw the people as "animals" to slaughter. If those students had been sick and stayed home someone else would have died.
In a similar fashion, I read the Oregon shooter posted on 4chan about wanting to do the shooting, obviously getting the people who read it engaged(some criticizing him, while others egging him on, unaware of everything.) I feel that as a society we need to giving those killers the media coverage a celebrity would get. Think about it: Most people probably don't know the name of the Charleston victims, or the UCSB victims, or the teacher who got shot by Adam Lanza while trying to hide her kids during the shooting. However, we hear so much about Dylan Roof, Adam Lanza and the such. I don't think it is too far fetched to think that if we would let the killers banish and be forgotten(obviously know what went down for psychiatric studies purposes and to prevent future incidents), while remembering the victims and giving attention to people like the vet who jumped at the Oregon shooter yesterday, we would take away a huge incentive for would be shooters.
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