Media blackout and mass shootings

slither12

Should this be the norm in the States? It's a well known fact that mass shootings are socially contagious and Columbine was the beginning of the "modern day" shooting phenomenon. While it is important to understand the psychology of these killers, I feel that a lot of the media just glamorizes them unintentionally.

I remember Elliot Rodger in Transition Year. I thought it was another lunatic and the story would die down. Well it didn't. Ten years later, that young man who was a nobody can be found with a Google Search, has countless YouTube videos on him, and even has a few references in a few TV shows (Criminal Minds). I'm pretty sure that many other murderers since then, incel or not have been inspired by such fame.

There was a judge in Canada who refuse to name an incel killer for fear of making him famous.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tronto-van-attack-incel-killer-murders-b1812114.html

Maybe start with stopping the guns before stopping news about the destruction they cause would be a better way to address the issue

Just a thought

Ham_Sandwich

ban guns no more shootings how is that even hard dfor them to understand

con747

Might have worked before social media, some chance stopping news spreading these days.

martingriff

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120386582#Comment_120386582

Not sure you thought that true. There still be shooting not as many but they will get them another way

In relation to guns it's not just ban them it's the mentality. Switzerland have more guns per capita then the US and Canada also have guns. Its the laws licences and as I said mentality around it needs to change.

Too many guns in America to be able to ban them outright IMO

TomTomTim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120386854#Comment_120386854

Have these lads been asleep the last 10 years or something? A lack of guns didn't stop any mass murders in Europe. If someone wants to kill many people they'll find away.

Dslatt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120387313#Comment_120387313

The likes of ISIS are a tad more organised and resourceful than some deranged yank teenager who can buy their guns in the supermarket and kill people because their crush wont give them a hand shandy

TomTomTim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120387323#Comment_120387323

I wouldn't say much more to be honest. Get a bomb made, go to a public place, BOOM. One of bigger killings, which killed 86 people, took little planning. They robbed a truck and ran over many people.

SnazzyPig

This wasn't a gun crimeand it wasn't in the USA.

slither12

To say that gun control doesn't work is false. Yest there are many factors that make the States vulnerable like poor mental health and a lack of a safety net but the accessibility of guns there is nothing compared to any European country.

ISIS terrorists have struggled to obtain a handgun or AK-47 in the UK unlike those in mainland Europe. None of the attacks in the last decade in London ever used a gun. It's easy to get a gun in France or Belgium because they can be smuggled through Eastern Europe or Turkey. The Schengen area means no border checks.

afatbollix

Ireland has Sunday papers that just sell papers on the crime lords of Ireland.

They even give them silly nicknames so that would just happen.

Sex and crime sells seemingly.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120387313#Comment_120387313

Myth.

Busted.

85603

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120387333#Comment_120387333

The govt, and the law agencies, can only do so much. Like a health dept, the aim is not perfection, it cant be obtained. Someone is going to go without an operation or appointment. There will be a failure.

Likewise, yes, if someone wants to kill enough they will find a way. The govts job is to make it as difficult as us flawed human beings can.

The building of a bomb, and the prior obtaining of bomb materials, is tricky. Although not beyond the abilities of the determined and intelligent individual, but still beyond the determination and intelligence of a great many. The law makes it as difficult as they reasonably can. Most who try will screw up, theyll set off alarm bells, or they'll blow a hand off, theyll leave a trail.

This however is not the case in the US when it comes to firearms. Which is why simply grabbing a firearm is the much prefered method. Little to no planning, grab and go.

iamstop

The gun lobbies have too much power for anything to change. They basically buy the legislation for gun control.

"I gets down like brothers are found duckin' from bullets (word)

Gun control means usin' both hands in my land"

---De La Soul - Stakes is High

Brussels Sprout

I'm all for a media blackout on the person's name. Yeah of course there's social media but if the big websites like the Daily Mail, CNN and the likes stopped running profiles of the killers that'd go a long way to stopping others from wanting to emulate them.

Actually even better than that was, probably one of the only things I admired Donald Trump for. I recall a mass shooting by some young man happened and Trump called him a "loser". That's so much better than calling them a "killer" or a "monster" or anything that could be seen by some idiots as bad ass. Absolutely nobody wants to be labelled as a loser. So yeah mockery and derision instead of intrigue and notoriety might be the way to cover them.

Hotblack Desiato

Cue death rampage by a Beck fan...

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120395357#Comment_120395357

These stats don't imply as much as you might think. While it logically follows that in a country where firearms are easily available would have more of its murders and suicides committed with a firearm, it says nothing about the rates of murder and suicide in said countries.

When you look at the overall picture, the US is not near the extremes in terms of rankings (e.g. deaths per 100,000 population) in either suicides or, to a lesser extent, murders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

In particular, you will find that countries like South Korea have higher suicide rates than the United States with Japan not far behind, which suggests that people intent on ending themselves simply use whatever they have to hand. To a lesser extent the same is true of murders.

nullzero

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120395357#Comment_120395357

They said a lack of guns didn't stop mass murders and you say "myth busted" and attach graphs titled "homicide rates from firearms 2017" and "gun related death rates in high income countries".

Not the rebuttal you had invisaged.

Manic Moran

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120385567#Comment_120385567

An impractical solution.

At least stopping giving the infamy to the murderers is more feasible from a practical perspective, less likely to run into Constitutional legal issues, and is also something which the psychologists have been saying we should be doing for years to hinder motivation.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120401519#Comment_120401519

From the first link, overall homicide rate in the US is just short of ten times ours. There is no doubt whatsoever that easy availability of guns is a large factor in that.

Overheal

The existence of this thread is funny because whenever we have a mass shooting thread it invariably gets replies in it complaining about how many mass shootings get discussed.

redlough

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058289184/media-blackout-and-mass-shootings

Ban the guns

Not the news about what guns do