Much as many of us dislike the press, it's fair to say we like mass shooters even less.
Maniacs, (some of them terrorists), have shot up newsrooms, as well as classrooms, bureaucrat offices, shopping malls, cafes, churches, concerts, and other places.
Most recently, one of them on the loose shot up a Maryland newspaper, The Gazette, and murdered five innocent people, terrorizing at least hundreds more.
Now we have another arrest, of some other revolting maniac, this one who also had some thing against a Texas media outlet, threatening to burn it down, and calling a particular reporter he didn't like 'dead man walking' alongside other violent threats. Good riddance. The only place such a thing can even exist is in jail, not out on the streets making threats. I saw the story highlighted in red letters (since pulled) on Drudge. But here's the news, Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports:
Another case of violent threats made toward journalists will play itself out in the court system, less than a week after a gunman entered the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Md. and killed five people.
Jason Eric Bewley, of Bryan, Texas, was arrested last week in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, near Charlotte. He's been charged with transmitting threats through interstate communications, a federal crime, according to jail records.
According to his federal indictment, which came down April 11 and was only recently unsealed by the courts, Bewley threatened to burn down a Texas TV station in a telephone tirade after harassing the station's general manager Mike Wright through email, and calling him "a dead man walking."
He spent nearly the next three months on the run, the Houston Chronicle reported, until authorities found him in North Carolina.
Now, the story is carefully worded to show that the maniac had been making threats well before the Maryland shooting, and his arrest was the result of an unsealed indictment.
But what leaps out is that authorities acted now, within what experts say is the critical "12-day window," to keep this maniac from doing what he keeps threatening to do. What it suggests is that they know all about the 12-day window and how it triggers copycat massacres, and they acted expeditiously. They didn't wait around on that one.
There also was Drudge, who pulled the highlighted story from his far-reaching news aggregation site, which suggests he understands something just as important: Publicity is what excites these murder-minded losers. They get their rocks off on getting their names in the paper. No name, no copycat incentives.
It seems to be true. A Miami Herald report in the wake of the Parkland school shooting in February says it triggered 12 additional threats within the window (they used 13 days, researcher Jaclyn Schildkraut, said the figure was 12). In the wake of the Santa Fe, Texas shooting last May, another maniac shot up an Indiana high school seven days after the incident in Texas.
Schildkraut spoke at a recent conference on gun violence and the failure of gun control, put on by the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles last May, called "School Shootings: Facts, Fallacies, Freedom and the Future." Showing lots of evidence, Schildkraut said it was worth it to keep shooters' names out of the paper. "There's a 12-day window, when we are most likely to see copycats," she said. "She wasn't the only one who thought this, either. AFA linked to a Mother Jones (of all places) article that explored the same proposal, which in any case is a more workable than actual gun control. Schildkraut's proposal, while it seemed farfetched to many, didn't sound much different from the press routinely keeping rape victims' names out of the paper. Schildkraut was so convinced of the importance of this she leds a group called 'No Notoriety' which advocates that the media not publish the names of these maniacs as a means of keeping other killers from activating themselves. According to one study, as many as 30% of mass shootings are copycats triggered by these two factors ... fame prospects, and the 12-day window.
Schildkraut explained that mass shooters are often motivated by the 'notoriety' element and love the "wall to wall coverage" which magnifies the perception of a threat. For a zero such as a mass shooter, it's thrilling to go from zero to hero so instantly. Then, once jailed, they get mooning letters from lovestruck girls and women, who have some fixation on the creepy, revolting convict, which excites them even more.
Oh what a disgusting picture. Makes one glad the cops moved quickly on this Fort Worth case, and Drudge pulled back to keep the maniac himself - and those unhinged characters watching him and thinking of doing one of their own - from fame. Maybe we will be hearing a bit less about mass shootings following this year's continuous hysteria. Given the stakes, it doesn't seem like a bad idea.
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