Quote of the Day
People complain that we shouldn’t need to have armed security everywhere. But we simply need to break the mass shooter fever. Make it undesirable to the nutcases.
If a series of these losers find not infamy, but rather a quick and humiliating end by armed guards or private citizens, they will stop trying and this dark “trend” will end.
Not unlike how serial killing isn’t much of a thing anymore due to improved strategies to counter them.
Kostas Moros @MorosKostas
Posted on X, September 28, 2025
I think there is another component required to “break the mass shooter fever.” If a person intent on committing a mass shooting (or mass murder by any means) is stopped after the first or second victim there isn’t much publicity and almost certainly no national or international reporting of the failed attempt. Hence, the “humiliating end by armed guards or private citizens” does not get the attention required to deter future criminal acts of similar nature.
I’m not sure what the solution to the restricted reporting is. Sure, there is some bias in the reporting. Major media outlets have a strong anti-gun bias and don’t want to “encourage more gun violence” by reporting death or injury by gun in a positive manner.
My guess is that just as big a component is that a story about 10 innocent people being murdered is more of a news event than one innocent murdered and one criminal put down. The first story gets more clicks/attention than the second. And that means more revenue when the first type of story is reported on than when the second type of story is reported on. The successful defensive gun use story has to compete for resources with other stories of wider interest such as “climate crisis”, “orange man bad”, and “defending democracy.”
My best stab at remediating the problem are the following ideas:
- Work at increasing the successful defensive gun use cases so that the total number is decreased. This results in fewer “heroes” for the copycats to emulate.
- Report successful defensive gun use events in social media.
- Encourage media outlets to report on successful defensive gun use. And to use the keywords “mass shooter” appropriately like, “probable mass shooter.” Even if the larger media outlets don’t respond appropriately the placement of the stories on the Internet will show up in search results and enable the copycats to find large numbers of alternate endings for their quests of notoriety.
- Encourage the justice system to treat mass murders in humiliating ways while respecting their rights. I’m thinking of pictures of suspects brought to trial in cuffs, chains, shackled, wearing clothes too big for them, hair messed up, and surrounding by extremely tall, muscular, law officers. This makes the suspect appear small and weak.
Does anyone else have other ideas?