1 dead at university shooting, gunman tackled by students

Oh, I guess I haven't been listening to the news. I think I heard something about it though from my brother as I was doing something else in another room. I live in WA, and that's about 30 minutes away. As always, this is sad news, but it's great the guy was brave enough to take an opportune time to make it so this didn't get even worse. Reading this seems awkward, because it feels like reading something that happened far away, and yet it isn't.

It is what happens when people are more interested in letting teachers carry weapons in school instead of hiring more staff (teachers and councilors) for school to help kids avoid going bonkers. Cause you know it is way more expensive to deal with evil pension collecting teachers than it is to just visit a store and start buying weaponry.

a student stopped him. Wow, that's amazing

obama rightly should take actual widespread gamechanging action to at least severely restrict firearm ownership in the us, but then everyone would then finally feel justified in labeling him a nightmare baby-eating foreign terrorcommunist.

No one has forgotten that they are mentally ill murderers. Letting the stated will of mentally ill murderers determine the course of public discussion is, of course, absolutely NOT the most reasonable thing to do.

However, an argument was being made which stated that mass killers have no intention of achieving fame because they end up killing themselves. That simply isn't true; several of these killers explicitly intend to become famous through memory and examination in the public sphere, and they do, because that is the nature of media. I don't condone it, but the fact that I do remember them is the direct result of the media's willingness to oblige the wishes of these killers. They see a country that gives them access to weaponry, that is willing to report extensively on those who use it, and they take that opportunity.

If I were responsible for media coverage of Elliot Roger's murders, I would have shredded his pathetic manifesto, which can be read in its 140 page entirety on just about any major news outlet, and would not have linked to his YouTube clips, but I'm not in charge. I am instead an unwilling observer of this coverage - which I see without ever visiting a news website, mind you - and now, against my own will, I remember his name.

@kcin: Thing is, I don't know if blaming the media for overindulging here is even accurate any longer. The coverage of recent shooting massacres has to me seemed to be apathetic and rote, if anything. Like they're getting this one out of the way ASAP in preparation for the one they'll have to cover in a couple weeks' time. I'd bet they'd much rather return to peddling the unchallenging pablum they trade in on a day-to-day basis. Their viewership may find comfort in occasionally sympathizing with the victims of some horrifying tragedy, or reminding themselves how different their beliefs are from those of a killer, but perpetual despair won't keep those people coming back. That'd be why we're getting so much emotional disengagement along the lines of "well, this sure sucks, it's a shame none of us can do anything (and thus should not feel responsible when it inevitably occurs again)."