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If we're going to impinge on one of the fundamental amendments of the Constitution, we should pick the right one. It can be argued that the first amendment is the one whose altering would lead to the biggest change in gun violence. Many of the cries of the gun control crowd can, in essence, be applied to the first amendment.
--Why do we NEED a military-type firearm that holds 30+ rounds in the magazine? Well, why does anyone NEED 24 hours news coverage?
--The founding fathers were not envisioning what firearms would be developed when they wrote the second amendment. Well, they darn sure had no way of knowing about the technology that would arise for the press - the telegraph, radio, voice recorders, typewriters, TV, 24 hour news, the internet, etc., etc., etc. Guns honestly haven't changed that much since they were designed - you load powder and projectile, pull the trigger, it shoots. The manner in which news is collected and distributed has truly undergone a revolution.
Let's look at a (brief and limited) timeline of the history of school and mass shootings, the AR15, and 24 hour news.
July 26, 1764 - the Enoch Brown School Massacre occurred during the Pontiac War. This incident involved the shooting of the school master and beating deaths of 9 school children by four Lenape Indian warriors.
November 12, 1840 - Joseph Semmes shot law professor John Anthony Gardner Davis in Charlottesville, VA, and Davis died three days later.
December 13, 1898 - a fight broke out at a school exhibition in Charleston, WV. Shots were fired, and 6 people died. This is the earliest event I found where numerous people died at a school or school function as a result of gun violence.
September 5, 1949 - Howard Unruh guns down 13 people in Camden, NJ.
1963 - ads for the AR15 as a sporting rifle start to show up in magazines.
August 1, 1966 - the University of Texas massacre occurs, in which Charles Whitman killed 17 and wounded 31 others.
June 1, 1980 - CNN launches as the world's first 24 hour news channel. Between August 1, 1966, and June 1, 1980, I found records of about 57 people being killed in "school shootings."
July 18, 1984 - 21 people are killed at McDonald's in San Ysidro, CA.
August 20, 1986 - a man kills 14 people at a post office and then kills himself in Edmond, OK.
October 16, 1991 - a man in Killeen, TX, kills 20 people, wounds 20 more, then kills himself.
November 1, 1991 - a man killed 5, injured 1, then killed himself on the University of Iowa campus.
April 20, 1999 - the Columbine school shooting happens. This is probably the most highly publicized mass/school shooting in history, at this point.
Since this date, there have been countless mass shootings and school shootings. An article I found from October 7, 2014, cited more than 50 plots and enacted shootings had been inspired by Columbine, in barely 15 years since the massacre occurred.
I think it's clear what I'm trying to say here. Since the media circus surrounding the Columbine events, every single one of these tragedies gets 24 hour coverage for days. The perpetrators often end up being disturbed people describes as loners, and perpetrating these acts gets them the attention they're seeking. This timeline shows that people have been killing people in schools since before America was a country. People have been killing people since the dawn of the race. The will and intent has always been there. But this relatively new mass exposure is what is new. The rise of mass shootings and school shootings mirror the rise of 24 hour media coverage more closely than they do the sale of the AR-15 or any other gun-related metric.
What I stumbled on that was really groundbreaking to me was the way the media changed how it reported suicides, and the effect that had on suicide rates. Basically, the suicide rate skyrocketed, the media were reporting on many of them, and then the way the reports were made/worded changed, and the suicide rate dropped. There are many research papers out there showing the link between media coverage of suicides and copycat events.
So, if the media covers suicides in a dramatic fashion, there is a rise in copycat suicides. How in the world can this link not be drawn, and the same concept applied to mass shootings? Many sociologists and epidemiologists suspect a similar change in the reporting of mass shootings would lead to a similar response in the rate of copycat offenses. There is a lot of debate about whether gun control would work. There are numerous accounts where gun control has failed, and none (that I know of) where it worked. However, there is significant evidence that media control would work. So, as the title says, they're coming after the wrong amendment.
--Why do we NEED a military-type firearm that holds 30+ rounds in the magazine? Well, why does anyone NEED 24 hours news coverage?
--The founding fathers were not envisioning what firearms would be developed when they wrote the second amendment. Well, they darn sure had no way of knowing about the technology that would arise for the press - the telegraph, radio, voice recorders, typewriters, TV, 24 hour news, the internet, etc., etc., etc. Guns honestly haven't changed that much since they were designed - you load powder and projectile, pull the trigger, it shoots. The manner in which news is collected and distributed has truly undergone a revolution.
Let's look at a (brief and limited) timeline of the history of school and mass shootings, the AR15, and 24 hour news.
July 26, 1764 - the Enoch Brown School Massacre occurred during the Pontiac War. This incident involved the shooting of the school master and beating deaths of 9 school children by four Lenape Indian warriors.
November 12, 1840 - Joseph Semmes shot law professor John Anthony Gardner Davis in Charlottesville, VA, and Davis died three days later.
December 13, 1898 - a fight broke out at a school exhibition in Charleston, WV. Shots were fired, and 6 people died. This is the earliest event I found where numerous people died at a school or school function as a result of gun violence.
September 5, 1949 - Howard Unruh guns down 13 people in Camden, NJ.
1963 - ads for the AR15 as a sporting rifle start to show up in magazines.
August 1, 1966 - the University of Texas massacre occurs, in which Charles Whitman killed 17 and wounded 31 others.
June 1, 1980 - CNN launches as the world's first 24 hour news channel. Between August 1, 1966, and June 1, 1980, I found records of about 57 people being killed in "school shootings."
July 18, 1984 - 21 people are killed at McDonald's in San Ysidro, CA.
August 20, 1986 - a man kills 14 people at a post office and then kills himself in Edmond, OK.
October 16, 1991 - a man in Killeen, TX, kills 20 people, wounds 20 more, then kills himself.
November 1, 1991 - a man killed 5, injured 1, then killed himself on the University of Iowa campus.
April 20, 1999 - the Columbine school shooting happens. This is probably the most highly publicized mass/school shooting in history, at this point.
Since this date, there have been countless mass shootings and school shootings. An article I found from October 7, 2014, cited more than 50 plots and enacted shootings had been inspired by Columbine, in barely 15 years since the massacre occurred.
I think it's clear what I'm trying to say here. Since the media circus surrounding the Columbine events, every single one of these tragedies gets 24 hour coverage for days. The perpetrators often end up being disturbed people describes as loners, and perpetrating these acts gets them the attention they're seeking. This timeline shows that people have been killing people in schools since before America was a country. People have been killing people since the dawn of the race. The will and intent has always been there. But this relatively new mass exposure is what is new. The rise of mass shootings and school shootings mirror the rise of 24 hour media coverage more closely than they do the sale of the AR-15 or any other gun-related metric.
What I stumbled on that was really groundbreaking to me was the way the media changed how it reported suicides, and the effect that had on suicide rates. Basically, the suicide rate skyrocketed, the media were reporting on many of them, and then the way the reports were made/worded changed, and the suicide rate dropped. There are many research papers out there showing the link between media coverage of suicides and copycat events.
So, if the media covers suicides in a dramatic fashion, there is a rise in copycat suicides. How in the world can this link not be drawn, and the same concept applied to mass shootings? Many sociologists and epidemiologists suspect a similar change in the reporting of mass shootings would lead to a similar response in the rate of copycat offenses. There is a lot of debate about whether gun control would work. There are numerous accounts where gun control has failed, and none (that I know of) where it worked. However, there is significant evidence that media control would work. So, as the title says, they're coming after the wrong amendment.
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