By Jacob Derin
The United States experienced its second mass shooting in a week on Monday at a supermarket in Colorado. Ten people were killed, including a police officer. Unlike many other similar incidents, the perpetrator was captured alive, kicking off intense and familiar political debates. However, I think it’s time to stop placing mass shooters in the media spotlight.
Meena Harris, Kamala Harris’ niece, was subjected to online criticism after deleting a tweet in which she assumed, from this fact, that the shooter was white. The NRA has faced criticism for challenging an assault weapons ban in Colorado, allowing the shooter access to the weapon he used to carry out the attack.
It almost feels like the country is simply going through the political motions this week, hitting all the familiar notes, sounding the familiar rallying cries. However, underneath it all is the ominous feeling that nothing will come of it this time either.
Mass shootings are arguably the most tragic site of American political division. If there’s anything that should transcend politics, one would think it would be the desire to protect the innocent from wanton violence. And yet, it’s entirely unsurprising that there’s no political consensus on what kind of response is appropriate.
The controversy over the shooter’s Syrian background is a perfect example of how unproductive our conversations are after these atrocities. The shooter’s race became a political flashpoint, eating up oxygen in an already politically tense battleground, and for what purpose?
Had the shooter actually been white, what would this have proven? For that matter, what does the shooter’s Syrian background prove? Whatever substantive policy changes we need to implement to prevent this sort of violence, it has little to nothing to do with the particular racial characteristics of this individual shooter.
In fact, I think it’s a mistake that we even know what race the shooter was.
I’ve long thought that journalistic ethics need to be adjusted in this area. It’s been long-established among journalists that reporting on the details of suicide is dangerous due to the phenomenon of suicide contagion. It’s time to embrace a similar ethic around mass shootings.
There’s a perverse psychology behind this sort of violence that is difficult for most people to understand. Many mass shooters see themselves as part of a competition, with body count and infamy as the point of comparison.
The Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold planned their attack as a grandiose bombing, hoping to destroy their school and the first responders rendering aid. They saw themselves as explicitly in competition with Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing.
Though they ultimately failed in this aim (their explosive devices misfired), they did achieve lasting infamy. Why do we continually reward mass shooters with this infamy? We should treat reporting mass shootings like we treat suicides, carefully reporting only the most relevant details and withholding personal information like the shooter’s name.
An excellent article published a few years ago in The New Yorker argued that mass shootings could be thought of like a decentralized, slowly evolving riot. People have a “threshold” for when they will join in on a riot, depending on how many other people are already participating. The more people who join in, the more people have their threshold met.
Reaffirming the humanity of the victims is a much better use of journalistic power than aggrandizing mass murderers. Changing the way we report on these events might not stop the riot entirely, but if it stops even one incident of mass violence, it will have been worth it.
Jacob Derin is a third-year English and Philosophy major at UC Davis.
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That doesn’t surprise me, given the current political environment.
But in Colorado, I pretty much (automatically) assume that most shooters and victims are probably “white”. (In other words, most people in general.) Maybe not as white as Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, though. And really, throw in Oregon and Washington, as well.
“Regular” murder statistics say “hold my beer” – in comparison to mass shootings.
Approximately 15,500 in 2018.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#:~:text=In%202018%2C%20the%20US%20murder,a%20total%20of%2015%2C498%20murders.
Because we (as a society) are fascinated by them, and it therefore “sells”.
We also know more about Jon-Benet Ramsey than seems to merit.
And of course, Charles Manson is an “all-star”, regarding this. But honestly, there’s a reason for that, in that he’s intriguing to watch. (That is, when they used to allow interviews of him to be broadcast.)