Mass Shootings: After We “Do Something,” Let’s Try to Do Something That Actually Works

With two more mass shootings, in El Paso and Dayton, we are told we must “do something.”  Generally, that means gun control, though it now also seems to include “red flag” laws, as well as more spending for mental health and doing something about violent video games. Okay, let’s do it, subject of course to the Constitution.  Not only the Second Amendment, but also the other ones: the First, Fourth, Fifth, etc.

But after we “do something,” let’s also try to do something that works.  Megan McArdle, at The Washington Post, has a couple of ideas on this subject (here and here).  Aggressive stop-and-frisk policing has seemed to reduce murder rates in places like New York City, but many people don’t like what they see as police harassment of minorities.  Also, given the distrust of the police by many people in places like Chicago, you wonder how it would work there.  Plus, these kinds of tactics wouldn’t stop mass shootings, though reducing day-to-day murders might save more lives than reducing mass shootings over a whole year.

Another idea is to deny the killers the publicity they seek, which also, by reducing the media coverage, might reduce the number of copy-cat shootings.  The First Amendment wouldn’t allow the government to do this, which I think most people, upon reflection, would agree is a good thing.  Democrats wouldn’t want the Trump administration to have this kind of power, and non-Democrats wouldn’t want progressives to censor them.

Which leaves us with media self-control.  Sigh.  After the Christchurch killings in March, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she would not name the killer.  And in New Zealand, the media didn’t.  The media controlled themselves.  (They also don’t have a First Amendment in New Zealand).  But here, The New York Times named him, as did many others.  They apparently couldn’t control themselves.  The wall-to-wall coverage that the killer wanted, the Times (and much of the rest of the media in the U.S.) gave him.  The Times, et al, would probably justify their coverage on the basis that publicizing the shooting would boost the cause of “doing something.”  But it also boosts the cause of getting more readership for the media.  The former hasn’t worked so far.  The latter probably did.

In other words, it is easy to call on people to “do something.”  And this time we may “do something.”  But whether the “something” we do will actually work is a different question.  And the “somethings” that might work probably won’t be done – because they require self-control and that is the hardest thing of all.