As We Celebrate Blowing Things Up

Shootings and Mass Murders Seem to Be Contagious

Data spanning decades shows how high-profile events can cause outbreaks of similar killings that mirror the spread of disease

 . . . Previous research suggests that other types of crime and violence may also be contagious. It appears that suicides, for example, can sometimes cause other vulnerable people to take their own lives.

“In many big cities they don't publish much information about suicides that might occur on a bridge, for instance, because it's been noticed that suicide can be contagious, so they don't give them a lot of coverage to try to help suppress that,” Towers notes.

The authors believe that nonstop news coverage of high-profile killings and the people who perpetrate them likely plays a role in any contagion effect that does exist. Details of these events more easily reach the relatively small number of people disturbed enough to consider committing more, the authors note. This idea is supported by the fact that contagion doesn't appear to exist for crimes that don't get as much national attention. The team's examination of mass shootings involving three or more victims but not necessarily any deaths found no evidence of contagion.

The SOME of All Fears

"We want to stop glorifying when some asshole kills a dozen people. Then it dawned on us: You call him Some Asshole. No name, no picture, no 44-minute retrospective of his hometown. He's just 'Some Asshole.'"

"You suggest we use this . . . pseudonym for the killer. For every killer."

"Just calling an asshole spade a spade.  Whenever some Lee Harvey Jackoff murders a public school or church, you geniuses put his name in lights for two weeks. Instead of making dicksacks into anti-hero role models, you can show communities moving forward."

"But how else can we make people aware of his age, race, or ethnicity?"

"It saves you the trouble of deciding for us whether he's a terrorist, a thug or a troubled loner. He's just . . . Some Asshole."

Okay, So, Guns

You may have noticed that I waited quite a while before sharing these thoughts, and that in doing so I haven't mentioned any names or particulars about the "recent events" I referenced at the start.  That's because I thoroughly believe these things happen because the culprits want attention.  They have given up on life and feel the only thing left for them is to at least go out in a blaze of glory.  To feel like their existence has mattered by making themselves significant in some way, and the only way they know how is to become notorious by causing so much harm and hurt that they become infamous.  So every single time one of these people gets mentioned in the news, on blogs, in social media, in any way noticeable, we are validating the tactic for the next person who might contemplate it.  We are rewarding them with exactly what they want and encouraging others to make sure it happens again.  If we want this to stop, then we must stop glorifying it with attention.  Otherwise, we're just feeding the beast.