Thoughts On Stopping Rampage Shootings Before They Happen
Both the Left and the Right are appalled by the recent rampage shootings and want to end them, but offer radically different solutions to the problem.
The Left, in general, proposes to limit access to weapons, increase access to mental health care, and increase mental screening.
The Right, in general, wants to increase the level of armament of law-abiding people and eliminate gun-free zones, and have official armed guards at schools.
Neither set of solutions will solve the problem.
Limiting access to weapons will merely be circumvented. Rampage shooters are not impulse shooters. They reach their decision to commit their deeds and then take weeks, sometimes months, to plan and prepare to strike. Since they are preparing for mass murder, they won’t care about any other laws they may break along the way. They will have the time to find the desired weapons. They often commit suicide as the final part of their act, so what have they to fear of punishment for breaking any other laws?
While improved access to any form of health care is a worthy goal in its own right it will not catch all those who will go on such a rampage. In a nation of over 310 million some will always slip through any system.
There aren’t enough mental health care professionals to be able to screen all who some would want to be screened. Besides, who screens the screeners? The Ft. Hood shooter was himself a psychiatrist.
The Right’s solutions don’t work either. There aren’t enough armed guards to be at every school, day care, shopping mall, or other potential target. CCW classes are oriented towards self-defense, not towards being a wannabe cop. The idea of having some teachers with concealed firearms among junior high school boys should be enough to send shivers down one’s spine.
BUT THERE IS A DIFFERENT SOLUTION THAT I THINK WILL WORK.
Almost all of the rampage shootings seem to have a common link. They are all a form of performance theater. The shooter wants the spotlight of history on them. They want their name, their full name, to be remembered for decades. They know that by committing such a horrible atrocity that they will have pages in books dedicated to them. I read somewhere that the Columbine killers speculated on which Hollywood stars would play them in the movie that was certain to be made about them. (I have no idea how that was known.)
Deny them that spotlight. I think it would be able to pass legislation that would also pass SCOTUS strict scrutiny Constitutional examination that would ban the publishing, in any media, of the name of a rampage killer. The legislation would need to be fairly simple so that any media could easily understand the difference between a rampage killer and an ordinary murderer. There would be penalties for violating such a law. Let such a killer be known as “killer number xx”. Let him become, in the language of Orwell, an unperson. Let the spotlight be entirely upon the victims, but let the killer be in deepest darkness.
If he knows that he won’t get the attention that he craves, even posthumously, then he will have to seek other means to that spotlight.
Such legislation could be quickly drawn up. I think that both left and right would support it.
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