We have failed you.
Again.
It has happened again.
An elementary school, this time.
So far, we have established the 'what.'
The post-massacre pattern is depressingly well-traveled.
Photos of stricken family members, eyewitness accounts, and a verified list of the
slain.
We demand this, and we get it.
But there is more.
We move on to 'how.'
Timelines are constructed, complete with maps and dotted
lines showing the path of the gunmen and icons indicating where the victims were
found.
And it is here that we compound our national misery. We
love our guns, surely-
but far more prevalent than firearms is our pornographic fascination with mass
murder.
It is a huge story, surely. Attention must be paid. The
public must understand what has happened in order to fashion a response. Yes.
However, I will say something equally obvious: the
coverage of these events is part of the problem.
Ask yourself: what do we gain from seeing the picture of
the gunman splashed on every newspaper in the country? What insight does a
captioned photo of the killer offer a policy maker?
In the case of a live, at-large person - their name is
supremely relevant. But do I need to know a dead man's name to damn them for
their crimes?
It is beyond fantasy to hope that the gunman's name would
never appear in print - but surely there is a point at which we and the media can
agree to minimize their celebrity. No photo, no bio, and most definitely no last
video message broadcast nationwide. When their death is established, they are
the gunman - and nothing else.
We must deny them the infamy they seek.
Nor is there any public value in splashing hi-res images
of the weapons used by the gunman. Is our understanding of the crime enhanced
by learning a gunman's specific choice of handgun or rifle?
More to the point, if this information is truly essential,
how is it we know precisely what weapons were used at Sandy Hook Elementary,
yet a professional football player can kill his girlfriend and himself with a pistol
that remains nameless?
Is it too much to dream that a question like "What kind
of semi-automatic rifle did the gunman use?" would be answered by "Does
it really matter?"
Once the deliberate nature of the crime is established
(numerous weapons, large reserves of ammunition) anything else is murder-porn.
We should not glorify the tools of mass murder.
Women and children were killed - with guns.
But the most patently offensive and ubiquitous aspect of
coverage is the leaderboard.
Any event like this begs for comparison and context. It
is the answer to the unspoken "how bad is it?" or "is it the
worst ever?"
Our media helpfully supplies this context, so future
killers can determine what level of bloodshed will assure them immortality.
I don't pretend that such comparisons will ever stop -
but their well-practiced delivery is one of the many things that is wrong with
our culture.
These are human beings who have been murdered - they are
not points on a scoreboard.
Finally, despite our need to know exactly what happened -
the you-are-there narratives supplied by eager journalists serve to supply future
gunmen with the training and inspiration they could not otherwise obtain.
A spree killer will almost certainly be a novice. We
should not help them prepare by illustrating what security measures they will
encounter - or how those measures can be bypassed.
The public will gain from news accounts that detail
security gaps and lessons learned - I do not advocate for censorship, only a
tactical level of restraint.
As we prepare for the next gunman, we should not ensure that
same gunman is forewarned.
There are countless aspects to the larger issue of
mass-killings.
We can expect school lockdown drills to become more rigorous. School doors that can be secured against gunfire and forced entry. These things will happen.
We can expect school lockdown drills to become more rigorous. School doors that can be secured against gunfire and forced entry. These things will happen.
And we should re-evaluate the need for private citizens
to access high capacity magazines.
But before all this - we should take a good look at how
we portray and elevate these events and those who commit them.
Gunmen are nothing - yet we make them famous. The same
nation that effortlessly recalls serial and spree killers cannot locate the memory
it owes a young woman named Rachel Scott.
We must do better.
Or there will be other schools in other towns that will
wish we had.
