When there's any mass shooting, especially when it conforms to the more technical definition, we all end up learning the killers' names. They become household topics of conversation.
And, unsurprisingly, at least one would-be mass killer decided to murder as many people as possible because of fame.
That's right, a school shooter in Iowa was motivated to murder people because he wanted to be famous:
The 17-year-old boy suspected of opening fire at Perry High School in Iowa earlier this year did so because he wanted notoriety, the state's Department of Public Safety announced Friday.
The suspect, [killer's name redacted], a student at the school, took his own life four minutes and 21 seconds after he initially opened fire in the school cafeteria on Jan. 4.
"He desired to be famous," the IowaDepartment of Public Safety said during a media briefing.Authorities said [he] was armed with a pump-action shotgun and a small-caliber handgun when he shot and killed the school principal and 11-year-old boy, as well as and hurt seven other people. [The killer] died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
He wanted to be famous and he wanted to die.
I understand wanting your death to be particularly meaningful, but this is sick and demented.
There's a reason I don't use shooters' names. The only reason I'll use one is if they're at-large and people who may know them need to be on the alert that this individual is running around after being suspected of murdering people. In most cases, though, I don't use them because I don't want to encourage this sort of thing.
For some reason, this looks like a viable path toward fame for a small segment of the population. There are websites apparently dedicated to treating some of these twerps like martyrs, particularly the Columbine killers.
I can't help but notice this in parallel with the rise of social media influencers.
Now, hear me out for a second. I understand that correlation doesn't equal causation, but we know that at least some of these mass murderers are obsessed with being famous as killers. They want to be known and potentially want to be feared.
Prior to 2000, the worst year of public mass shootings where four or more people were killed in a single attack was 1999, which saw five such attacks. That was also the year of Columbine, which many point out as the catalyst for these things.
The problem with that explanation is that the next year to equal that many mass murders by firearm is 2013. If Columbine sparked this outpouring of mass slaughter, why did it take nearly a decade and a half?
Instead, what happened starting in the mid-2000s? The rise of the social media influencer.
We started seeing people become famous with what looked to many as having absolutely no talent. Kim Kardashian was probably the poster girl for this sort of thing, but we saw tons of people start making serious money for being idiots on platforms like YouTube.
So you've got an enraged young man angry at the world watching people he likely feels superior to becoming celebrities. What do you think is going to happen?
Of course, that's just speculation on my part, but since so many of these knuckleheads want to be famous, it's something to think about.
I'm also inclined to argue that instead of treating them seriously after such a shooting, they should be mocked. Don't use their real names. Use mean nicknames like Lil Pee-Pee McGee or whatever juvenile insults strike our fancy. If they want fame, we should give them the exact brand they don't want. We know their face, we just know it in the most embarrassing context possible.
Anything is better than the typical leftist knee-jerk reaction to restrict guns for the tens of millions of gun owners who did nothing wrong.