The question first: What is the solution to the spree of mass killings of innocent strangers?
Do you think there is an answer?
Experts describe what happened today as being related to the “Werther effect.” A spike of emulation suicides after a widely publicized suicide is known as the Werther effect, following Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, says Wikipedia. That book, whose main character killed himself spawning a rash of real-life copycats, was published in 1774. Scientifically, the link has been clearly established between mass murderers and highly publicized suicides and the copycats who follow. But to think events like Aurora and Columbine won’t be reported in the news media is naive at best.
However, some news reporting is completely unnecessary. Is it really important to know the name of the shooters? Televised sporting events refuse to show drunks who reel onto the field of play as a means of discouraging others who might seek a similar moment of fame. Shouldn’t the reports of mass murders exercise a far greater and more important restraint wherever possible?
Ditto for the immediate rankings of carnage: “This is now the second-worst school shooting in US history.” Given the proven Werther effect, publicized rankings hold the ominous possibility of motivating someone somewhere to go out and become #1, to go out in a blaze of “glory” at the top of the rankings. Do we really need to have mass murders ranked? Each one is equally terrible in its own way. If a loved one of yours was killed in an earlier spree ranked lower than today’s, would you feel less grief? Of course not.
Is gun control the answer? Not when legally registered guns are used. Are background checks the solution? Not when people with a squeaky clean record emerge from complete anonymity in a murderous hail of bullets. Are locked school doors the answer? A few years ago I visited the school near Padaucah, Kentucky where days before two kids had pulled the fire alarm in their own school, then ran out to nearby woods where they had hidden guns which they used to shoot kids exiting the building like it was target practice in a shooting gallery.
In the final analysis, no human has an effective answer to this problem. A book as old as the Bible says (in Jeremiah) that man is unable to guide his own steps. That seems more true today than ever before.