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Yet another school shooting with lethal outcome, and before the bodies are cold, radical leftists exploit the tragedy to push their political agenda of disarming innocent Americans. Meanwhile, they show no interest in doing anything with the real causes of mass shootings. And no, in case you wondered, it is not guns.
A well-established fact
It is a well-established fact – and has been for a long time – that there is no relationship between the availability of guns and murder or mass shootings, or that stricter gun laws prevent mass shootings.
Fifty years ago, there were guns everywhere. You could walk into any hardware store to buy them with little or no hassle. However, mass shootings were virtually unknown. Something has changed, but what?
The media contagion
There are multiple factors at play, but a recent study identifies the media coverage as a significant and triggering causal factor. Psychological profiles of shooters show that they are often suffering from “rampant depression, social isolation and pathological narcissism.” According to the lead author of the study Jennifer B. Johnston, PhD, of Western New Mexico University, “a cross-cutting trait among many profiles of mass shooters is desire for fame.”
To illustrate the contagion effect, the Parkland-shooter – who will remain unnamed and undepicted in this article – made a chilling comment after a mass shooting in New York recently: “Man, I could do so much better.”
The media could do some good
Rather than making demands of more gun laws in Washington, protesters should demand media to stop showing the faces and names of mass shooters. Reporting of these incidents should be at a minimum: no body count, no flaring images, no inflammatory details. Google, YouTube and the left-wing media have been censoring peaceful conservatives for a long time, so we know that they are capable of suppressing information. Why not instead put that superpower to some good use and prevent mass shootings?
Other factors
However, media coverage is only a triggering cause. The deeper causes are the roots of depression and narcissism. Here there is also a large body of politically incorrect science. A major contributing factor to depression and personality issues in children, particularly in males, is single motherhood and broken families.
According to Child Trends:
“Multiple studies have shown that children with depressed mothers are more likely to have behavior problems, poor academic performance, and delays in cognitive and social development.”
Just think back to some of the recent well-covered mass shootings. How many of the shooters came from broken homes? Disturbingly many.
Promote the nuclear family
Leftists are not going to talk about this underlying cause, because it places a significant portion of the blame on the left’s war against the nuclear family. The facts, however, align in a surprisingly clear conclusion: if you want to do something about mass shootings, child depression, low academic performance, obesity, early teenage pregnancy, juvenile delinquency and an adult life of crime, promote the nuclear family.
