DON'T Say Their Name

Active shooters have one thing in common--they want to go down in an infamous blaze of glory with their names plastered across the news. Not only does the news media grant their dying wish and encourage others to do the same, but some news agencies try to look into the psychology of the person doing the shooting and empathize with them. Yes, when sociopaths and those with untreated mental illness attack others, those of us who are sane question why they would do that. The answer is simple: They are insane. Never should a news agency use mental illness as an excuse for what these people do--hundreds of millions of people suffer with mental illness every day and most who get treatment are still suffering due to the trial and error process that no scientist has been tasked with resolving. Poverty or abusive families is also not the answer--again hundreds of millions of children suffer abuse and poverty and do not shoot anyone. 

The Tennessee shooting, where we have evidence the shooter wanted to both die and to make it on the news--the real motives of this evil person, shows us that our media needs to be more discrete in granting these shooters wishes. Imagine if all news agencies stopped printing shooter names and pictures and solely focused on the victims. Imagine if all news agencies simply referred to the perpetrators as "the evil shooter" and solely stated the person did it because s/he was evil. Some shooters wouldn't care that they were considered evil, but all of them want their names and images in the press. 

I would love to say that people can fix this by simply not clicking on the articles, but unfortunately, you don't always know if an article is going to talk about the shooter or the brave souls who confronted the shooter and the victims. Everyone can complain to news agencies and block them for a month if they use shooter names or try to empathize with mass shooters. It is time for our society to stop making bad people seem justified in their action. Scientists have long realized that people who don't suffer any negative consequences for their bad actions continue doing bad actions. 

Unfortunately, bad scientists who grouped abusive practices in with spanking on the butt convinced parents they don't need to discipline their children. Worse scientists convinced everyone involved in children's lives to give them unearned rewards and praise that was not earned and to downplay half-hearted efforts. These humanists did what they could to push a lie: People are inherently good. Real science shows that people left to their own means will inherently do bad things (although the level of bad varies among them). People need to suffer consequences for their bad choices and putting a killer's name and image all over the news when that is exactly what they want is encouraging others to make the same bad choices.