Dear media and politicians,
You are screaming, "FIRE!" at the top of your lungs every time you give publicity to a mass shooter.
And we get another high profile shooting in my former home town moments after President Mumbles granted the Uvalde shooter their fondest desire.
Recognition.
It's time the media became good citizens and adopted the "Some Asshole" protocol to mass shooting.
In a nut shell they don't report the name or the motive; just "some asshole did something for some reason." And leave it there.
It gives the copycat nothing to emulate. It give the perpetrator no recognition for their malfeasance. It robs them of their very reason for doing their act of violence.
I am not suggesting there be a law forcing the media to do so. I am asking them to do the right thing and do this voluntarily.
What's the worst that could happen?
Well, this idea being effective is the worst thing that could happen to the media and politicians, it robs them of a bully pulpit to excoriate innocent gun owners.
PS: I did not come up with the "Some Asshole" theory of reporting, but I cannot find where I first bumped into it. If you know where it came from, leave me a comment and I will add a link!
PPS: I am going to predict that the shooting in Ames was a run of the mill murder because the shooter shot two women and then themselves. I'm guessing a crime of passion deal and spurned advances rather than something we're going to see a manifesto and FBI assistance for.
I ask the same question over and over no one ever asks. Have any of these weapons ever stood up and fired themselves?
ReplyDeleteThey tried doing something like that in Ancient Greece. An asshole named Herostratus burned down one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and when asked why he dunnit, he said he wanted to be famous forever. They sentenced him to death and passed a decree that nobody was to mention or record his name. Unfortunately, it didn't take.
ReplyDeleteA blanket statement that you can't yell "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater is false anyway. If the theater is in fact on fire, you'd actually be negligent not to inform people of that.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to say whether liberals are just not very bright and don't understand such obvious things or whether they are intentionally trying to mislead people with these old cliches.
I think it is actually both.
FWIW, updated news reports from Ames confirm that the gunman who I will not name was previously in a relationship with one of the female victims and had prior police contact for harassment charges. I can tell you from my family's experience that Iowa's laws related to protective orders are incredibly lame and that enforcement and prosecution thereof in Story County in particular is pathetic.
The first reference I’ve seen to the “Some Asshole Initiative” was here
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H/T. Justin Pierce
DWW
Possibly here? https://nonadventures.com/2015/06/20/the-some-of-all-fears/
ReplyDeleteVery Proper Charlies (novella), expanded into Soft Targets (novel, 1979), by Dean Ing. I want to say the strategy was to not name the (terrorist) actors, but I've not read that book in 20 years or so; certainly "present them as idiots or incompetent" was the major idea.
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