Umpqua shooting too close for comfort

This seems to be a habitual problem now. A study in the online academic journal PLOS ONE found that a school shooting happens, on average, every month in America. I think we all know just how dangerously close to home this is becoming, with the shootings that happened at Reynolds High School and Clackamas Town Center, in recent years, and now this, at a sister community college in Oregon. And every time it happens, the Advocate and media organizations everywhere face the same problem: How, exactly, do we cover this?

We know from the same study that national coverage of shootings increases the likelihood of another shooting by 30 percent within the first few weeks following the incident.  Hopefully no one would do such a thing purely for the media coverage, but it seems to be the last-minute “push” it takes for someone to do it, often as not.

The media does glamorize shooters. It’s much easier to publicize one name instead of those of the victims, and the more victims there are, the more perceived fame the shooter gets. We not only inadvertently encourage a higher probability of another shooting, but likely the intended severity, as well.

The next issues that inevitably comes up are gun control and mental illness. And to be fair, if there were ever a platform on which to build new legislation, one of these incidents would be it. Yes, these victims need our sympathy first, but that feels a little empty if we don’t actually change the conditions that are causing this (and the incidents keep happening, so we know we haven’t yet). America is  the only developed country that has this problem; to quote President Obama’s first press conference concerning the shooting: “This is something we should politicize.”

But now is not the time. These people were leading lives eerily similar to ours. Everyone should be questioning other people’s roles in their own lives right now, and, hopefully, the answer that comes up is simply paying it forward. The quickest thing we can all do is to show each other kindness, not only to heal our wounds, but to help prevent this in the future. Not just to our immediate communities, but to humanity as a whole.

This is why the Advocate will be covering the Umpqua shooting without mentioning the shooter’s name, and without devolving into larger discussions on how we can fix this. Right now, our goal is to get objective information out to students, namely MHCC’s own in-case-of-emergency information, and to act as a middle-man for students to connect with each other.

Yes, there is a scenario where changing gun control or mental illness laws would help, but the only way that happens is through faith in our community first.

Advocate Staff