Doubtless those of us with kids gave them all a few extra hugs this weekend in the aftermath of the elementary school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. It’s one of those tragedies that knocks the wind out of parents.
The news media is all over Newtown this weekend, giving the public as much information as possible to help comprehend what happened and, possibly, why. A lone gunman walked into an elementary school with two handguns and a semi-automatic assault rifle and started firing. By the time he turned one of those guns on himself, he’d killed six adults and, stunningly, 20 young children.
How can a person so brutally extinguish such innocence?
As mentioned, coverage by the media is extensive. I wanted to send out kudos to CNN, and in particular anchor Don Lemon, whose coverage only rarely mentioned the killer by name, and, as Lemon stated, “only for the public record.”
When people tend to go on such a rampage, it seems they want to somehow be remembered for their hideous acts.
To hell with that.
It’s not so important as to who committed the atrocity, but rather why; what caused him to take such drastic actions?
It is believed the man may have suffered from some form of mental illness.
He killed his mother earlier in the day, and then took the guns, which were owned by his mom, and burst into the school.
We should never glorify such actions. Instead, we should remember the victims — especially some of the adults who stepped in front of children to take a bullet and spare a young life.
That is an action indeed worth remembering.
Personally I believe that showcasing acts like this on the media sources does more harm than good. I believe that the more we spotlight acts like this, the more ideas we give troubled people to try and commit “one better’s”. The media sources do not help in situations like this because they bombard us with the names of the person or group that commit such horrendous acts more than they spotlight the names of the victims, and in cases like this one where a teacher stepped in the path to save a child. I want to know more about the heroism of that teacher. That teacher is more worth remembering than the shooter.
Let’s put it this way. If we flip that entire story around from “A shooter went into a grade school and took many lives”, to ” A heroic teacher takes a bullet to save a child” then showcase the teacher’s life the shooter wouldn’t get the spotlight and possible wouldn’t get remembered at all.
I heard from a very wise man a long time ago that we are a product of the environment we subject ourselves to. If all we hear, read and watch is about how bad the world is getting, we’ll start believing that it is that way and nothing is going to change it. The opposite could be true as well. but the biggest problem that has going for it is, good news doesn’t sell newspapers, and it doesn’t get high ratings. This leads to lower sales of your media products, so media moguls run with the fear based stories and the terror on the streets runs wild. Not to mention the profits!
If a person already has the inclination that their life isn’t going to amount to anything, and they keep seeing all these stories about how someone gets remembered by doing something so horrifying, chances are that person may feel that doing something like this could be the way to get remembered, and all they see on television is stuff like this, they are going to do the same thing. Vicious circle, don’t you think?
It really is too bad we live in a society where people can commit such incredibly horrendous acts and get written about in the history books, and a person who commits acts of kindness never gets noticed.