Mass Murders in the Age of Social Media and Internet Fame: ‘You will never hear me say his name,’

Spread the love

Loading

151002-hanlin-0521_6e595bd756f8931845b86d8b1e467daf.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000

Exactly right:

“Let me be very clear: I will not name the shooter.” Sheriff John Hanlin said during a Thursday night briefing at a fire station near the Roseburg campus. “I will not give him credit for this horrific act of cowardice.”

He encouraged the news media and community to “avoid using it, repeating it, or engaging in any glorification and sensationalization of him.

“He in no way deserves it,” he said. “Focus your attention on the victims and their families and helping them to recover.”

Chris Mintz is the name we should know about. Not the other guy.

Giving so much sensationalist media attention and naming the killer is exactly what encouraged this attention-seeking loser to become a killer and glory-hound:

“On an interesting note, I have noticed that so many people like him are all alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are,” he wrote.

“A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.”

Same with the previous loser he referenced:

(CNN)When a gunman opened fire Wednesday on two Virginia journalists and the woman they were interviewing on live TV, he was influenced by a long history of public mass killings throughout the country. Shooter —— — ——– II said he admired mass shooters like those at Columbine High School in 1999 and Virginia Tech in 2007, and that he put down a deposit for a gun two days after the Charleston, South Carolina, church shooting in June.

This is what’s bringing out more such copycat mass shootings in recent times. While President Obama was quick on the draw to put down for more gun control, it should be noted that it was also guns that brought yesterday’s killing spree to a stop. Or more accurately, the white hats who used them to save lives.

So are guns the issue?

More from the CNN link, which was posted late August:

How U.S. shootings are different

Lankford combed through the records of every incident and found a few common factors that set the U.S. incidents apart from the rest of the world’s.

In the United States, people have a greater chance of dying in mass shootings if they’re at work or at school. Overseas, these incidents typically happen near military installations.

In more than half the American cases, the shooter had more than one firearm. In global incidents, the shooter typically had only one gun.

And in the United States, there are 6.87 victims on average per incident. In the other 171 countries Lankford studied, the average was 8.8 victims per incident.

Lankford said he thinks there are fewer people killed in these mass shootings in the United States because American police routinely train on how to deal with this kind of incident, even though it happens rarely compared with other kinds of crime. “Police were slower to respond in other countries and were more likely to be ill-prepared when they did respond,” Lankford said.

The copycat phenomenon

What’s behind all these mass slayings in the United States?

Many of the shooters in the United States are mentally ill, according to the data, but other studies have shown that the estimated number of cases of mental illness hasn’t gone up significantly, while the number of mass shootings has.

The incidents tripled from 2011 to 2014, according to a new analysis by the Harvard School of Public Health and Northeastern University. The Harvard research showed that public attacks in that time occurred every 64 days on average. During the previous 29 years, they happened every 200 days on average. In contrast, the overall U.S. homicide rate and rate of gun violence have dropped significantly over the past two decades.

Some researchers believe these mass killings can be contagious: One killing or shooting increases the chances that others will occur within about two weeks, an “infection” that lasts about 13 days, researchers found in another study this year.

The copycat phenomenon is more acute in the United States because guns are more accessible than in other countries. “(Access to) firearms (is) a significant predictor of these incidents,” Lankford said.

The United States has more guns than any other country in the world. There are an estimated 270 million to 310 million firearms in circulation in the United States. With the American population at 318.9 million, that breaks down to nearly one firearm for every American. But only slightly more than one-third of Americans say they or someone in their home owns a gun, according to the Pew Research Center. The country with the next-highest number of guns is India, with 46 million guns spread across a much larger population of more than 1.25 billion. India doesn’t even crack the top five among countries with the most mass shootings.

The numbers do show that more restrictive gun laws make a difference. Lankford points to Australia as an example. The country had four mass shootings between 1987 and 1996. After those incidents, public opinion turned against gun ownership and Parliament passed stricter gun laws. Australia hasn’t had a mass shooting since.

Is desire for fame a factor?

There is not, however, the same political will in the United States. With one exception, Pew polls taken after many of the high-profile mass shootings suggest that Americans typically favor more gun ownership after such incidents.

Lankford does have another theory that he plans to explore next with his research.

“It’s harder to quantify it, but I’ve been struck by research that shows that being famous is one of this generation’s most important goals,” Lankford said. “It seems like Americans are growing in their desire for fame, and there is no doubt that that there is an association between media coverage that these offenders get and the likelihood that they will act.”

0 0 votes
Article Rating
12 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

I place the blame for all this violence to the man in the White House and the previous Attorney General, who preach hate, envy and in-your-face attitudes?

Who was it that told a crowd that if the enemy brings a gun to a fight, we bring a gun?

bwax, you are nuts. Blame the party who is in the pockets of the gun lobbyists and refuse to enact sensible gun laws. The GOP is complicit in the thousands of deaths which have occurred due to the lack of these laws. Losers.

Although this shooter obsessed over the man who killed the reporter and her cameraman, he really has more in common with the Charleston Church shooter who picked out Christians to murder.
And then there’s those creeps in ISIS who murder based on religion, too.
It’s a good thing what’s-his-name is dead.

@Wordsmith: Obama’s response to Umpqua fails to grieve. He says, “We’ve become numb to this.” Well, clearly he is numb since it took him but minutes to make his speech, no grief, no sorrow, only his political point.

He probably already had what is only now leaking out about the shooter.
Sure we saw emphasis on his obsession with the IRA but we (not Obama) missed his two ”friends,” one of whom was a jihadi-leaning Muslim male…..Mahmoud Ali Ehsani.
We were shown how the shooter id’ed himself as a ”conservative, republican,” but were not shown that he was registered as an independent.
Obama wanted to get out in front of those facts.
He did so by coming across as mad at me, you and all Americans, as opposed to at the perp.
He also seemed mad at guns for existing in the USA at all.
Juan Williams expressed Obama’s view about shootings in Chicago: they wouldn’t be so bad if only No One could get guns anywhere in the country!
Great.
Now bring in the UN to police us.

@Reem:

Blame the party who is in the pockets of the gun lobbyists and refuse to enact sensible gun laws.

Why don’t you check on how the NRA operates? They grade representatives on how they support the 2nd Amendment and on that criteria only. They are harsh on Republicans that do not support the 2nd Amendment to their satisfaction just as they support Democrats that do.

But that does not promote the idiotic and dangerous left wing agenda of making Americans defenseless, does it?

The GOP is complicit in the thousands of deaths which have occurred due to the lack of these laws. Losers.

So, who is complicit in the thousands killed in liberal-governed cities where crime is rampant and the public is defenseless?

You think you’re a smart… whatever… what is the “common sense” gun regulation that we don’t already have that will cure this madness?

It will be interesting, if the media cooperates, to see what the effect of not publicizing this maniac’s name will be. It will also be interesting to see if the media will cooperate, as such tragedies benefits their agenda and the left does everything it can to promote such violence.

Here is the latest: Us refuses Russian terrorist list..lists Oregon shooter, info not PC here:
http://woundedamericanwarrior.com/oregon-mass-shooter-on-terror-list-obama-refused-to-take-from-russia/

via EU TIMES: The Federal Security Services (FSB) is reporting today that an American black-Islamist terror suspect, who yesterday committed an act of mass murder in the State of Oregon (United States), had been included on a list of 87,000 “known/suspected” Islamic terrorists that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) refused last month to accept from the Federation due to its not being “politically viable in the present atmosphere”.
According to this report, the black-Islamist terrorist who committed this act of terror, Chris Harper Mercer, had previously been identified by electronic intelligence specialists within the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) as being an Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) adherent after he had attempted to gain passage to Syria via Turkey during the first week of September, 2015.

By the Obama regime refusing to accept this terror list from the Federation, this report continues, Mercer was able to accomplish his terror act when yesterday he killed 9 people and wounded 7 others at the Umpqua Community College prior to his being shot and killed by local US police forces.

Most critical to note about this FSB report is that where it ends, the mysterious, and hugely read, Russian publication Reedus (Ridus.ru) continues—and to fully understand this information one must note that Russian intelligence agencies (SVR/FSB) frequently use Reedus to put information into the public sphere that otherwise would have serious international consequences should the government be found to be behind it—thus giving Reedus its current status known as “a Kremlin resource” and an “agency of Orthodox journalism”. [Русский]

And the information relating to the black-Islamist terrorist Mercer “leaked” into Reedus by the SVR/FSB is, to say the least, shocking and disturbing–including that immediately after the Oregon mass shooting, his Internet personal profile was changed from his true identity as an ISIS/ISIL terror supporter to one of his being a “white conservative Republican”. [Русский]

Also important to be noted was Mercer’s association with the ISIS/ISIL terrorist Mahmoud Ali Ehsani, who is banned in Russia [Русский], and was one of only two of Mercer’s MySpace “friends” and who praises the Islamic State, calls for the killing of Jews and glorifies in pictures on his MySpace page his rapture of these terrorists.

With the true knowledge of Mercer being known as the black-Islamic terrorist he truly was, information which the Obama regime refused to accept from Russia, his mass terror act in identifying and killing Christians becomes immediately understandable.

@Reem: You are a naive child if you think “Laws” protect you….consider yourself to be a “future victim”.

#2

Blame the party who is in the pockets of the gun lobbyists and refuse to enact sensible gun laws.

Isn’t it ironic that the cities with the toughest gun laws have the most crime, and the cities that allow concealed carry have fewer crimes. Isn’t it also ironic that the COUNTRIES with the toughest gun laws have high crime rates, while the countries that allow their citizens to have guns have lower crime rates.

Pretend that you are a crook. You are near two areas, one that bans guns, and one that allows guns, and concealed carry. Which one are you going to do your crooking in? All of the mass shootings have been in gun free zones, and it turns out that either the shooters were on mind-altering drugs, liberal democrats, or muslim extremists.

Another problem is the courts that don’t enforce existing gun laws. What good are laws if the judges are allowed to ignore them? One city, that I forget the name, enacted a MANDATORY 5 year prison sentence for using a gun to commit a crime. This was ADDED ON TO ANY OTHER SENTENCE. The crooks didn’t want to do the MANDATORY 5 years, so they quit using guns.

ENFORCING EXISTING GUN LAWS WILL END A LOG OF CRIME

For many years I have thought that too much attention is given to the ones who do violence to get attention. The propaganda media even prints the shooter’s manifesto, video, or anything else the killer has. It is then up to the next killer to try to top the last one. It wouldn’t surprise me if the propaganda media starts rating the shootings so it will be easier to pick the, SHOOTER OF THE YEAR, SHOOTER OF THE DECADE, and SHOOTER OF THE CENTURY.

Imagine how the propaganda media would cover the story of a war vet who was on the same mind-altering drugs as other mass shooters, and killed just one person. How much different do you think they would cover that story?

@mary:

If there is a thing worse than Islamist terrorists, it is only terroRussians pretending to be “partners”.

One of the results of Breaking News is that I channel surf.
As a result I saw the photoshop of Chris Harper-Mercer’s face on CNN when it was first shown in conjunction with the ”story” that he was a ”white supremicist.”
A good comparison of the original that Chris was so OK with he posted it on social media VS the CNN version is here:

CNN Refutes Rumor That They Altered Photo of Umpqua Killer Chris Harper-Mercer

Note that CNN didn’t stop with merely making Chris’ skin look white.
They also changed his lips, cheekbones, eyebrows, nose width, and even hair color!

So we might have some in media pretending he didn’t have a name while others are taking advantage of their power to frame a narrative with out-&-out visual lies.

@Smorgasbord: The propaganda media even prints the shooter’s manifesto, video, or anything else the killer has.

Had you noted, in THIS case, Chris let one person live to deliver his papers, but the media has not shared any of them with the public?
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/harper-685947-mercer-told.html
Authorities have not disclosed whether they have an envelope or package from Harper-Mercer. However, a law enforcement official said a manifesto of several pages had been recovered.