90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Studies Show the Media Inspires Copycat School Shootings, Induces Mass Killings

Following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, CNN held a townhall. They invited the now-embattled Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, a known gun control activist, gun control-supporting members of the community and Dana Loesch, a spokesperson for the National Rifle Association (NRA).

The perpetrators name, which will not be mentioned here, was spoken aloud countless times. CNN put its political agenda first, and disguised it as a townhall meant to further the discussion on school safety.

Given the wealth of data collected by academics and law enforcement agencies studying the phenomena, it’s time for Americans to demand media outlets acknowledge their role in school shootings and mass killings. It’s time for Americans to demand they take responsibility and proactive measures to minimize the likelihood of a prior mass killing inducing another.

Before we get into the data, let’s first define what it is we’re talking about and set a few parameters.

A “mass shooting” is properly defined as a public shooting in which one or more perpetrators with a firearm murders at least 4 victims. Researchers in the field have argued the modern phenomenon of mass shootings began in 1966 with the tragic incident at the University of Texas.

It’s also important to first note that the data used in these studies may vary. For instance, one study may have isolated 18- to 29-year-olds, while others reviewed all age groups for potential copycats. Some studies included suicidal perpetrators, while others did not.

Nevertheless, the academic and law enforcement consensus is clear: the media inspires copycats in school shootings and induces mass murder events. The media is the contagion, not the solution — at least not yet.

That being said, not all media outlets have refused to take responsibility. Much to their credit, Mark Follman and Becca Andrews at Mother Jones have done great work documenting the “Columbine effect.”

On April 20, 1999, two teenage boys fatally shot 13 people and injured 24 others at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. The Mother Jones investigation found the shooting inspired at least 74 plots or attacks across 30 states.[1] In at least 14 cases, Columbine copycats plotted their attacks on the anniversary of the original massacre.

“Individuals in 13 cases indicated that their goal was to outdo the Columbine body count,” they wrote. “In at least 10 cases, the suspects and attackers referred to the pair who struck in 1999, [name redacted] and [name redacted], as heroes, idols, martyrs, or God. And at least three plotters made pilgrimages to Columbine High School from other states.”

Since Columbine, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been devoted to...

Morning Mistress

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This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

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Girls With Guns

Visage à trois #258

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UCF Forced to Reinstate Professor Fired After Writing About “Black Privilege”

We previously discussed about the effort to fire University of Central Florida Professor Charles Negy after he tweeted about “black privilege.” UCF President Alexander Cartwright abandoned any pretense of academic freedom or principle in falling to protect a colleague from an anti-free speech campaign. Now, after a major court ruling against the university, an arbitrator has awarded Negy all back pay and benefits from the time of his firing. That is good news. What is not good news is that, despite shredding core principles governing higher education, Cartwright remains the UCF president after seeking to curtail free speech and academic freedom at the university. To the contrary, the university issued a statement that indicated that it is undeterred by the adverse court rulings.Negy, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Central Florida, required police protection after he tweeted about what he views as “black privilege.” There was a petition demanding his termination with more than 30,000 signatures and, as we have seen in other schools, his colleagues were virtually silent as Negy was attacked for expressing his views. While classroom misconduct has been raised by some critics, most of the effort (and the focus of this posting) is on his statements on social media. That petition focused on Negy’s statements on social media as unacceptable and grounds for termination:

“We are calling on the University of Central Florida to dismiss psychology professor Charles Negy due to abhorrent racist comments he has made and continues to make on his personal Twitter account. In addition to racism, Negy has engaged in perverse transphobia and sexism on his account, which is just as reprehensible. While he has a right to free speech, he does not have a right to dehumanize students of color and other minority groups, which is a regular occurance [sic] in his classroom. By allowing him to continue in his position, UCF would simply be empowering another cog in the machine of systemic racism.”

Negy faced protests at his home and on campus, according to news reports after he explored the concept of “white shaming” as an academic, including his book “White Shaming: Bullying Based on Prejudice, Virtue-Signaling, and Ignorance.”

Negy’s work is highly controversial and his tweets have inflamed critics. In a now deleted tweet, he wrote “Black privilege is real: Besides affirm. action, special scholarships and other set asides, being shielded from legitimate criticism is a privilege. But as a group, they’re missing out on much needed feedback.”

He has also written, again on Twitter, “If Afr. Americans as a group, had the same behavioral profile as Asian Americans (on average, performing the best academically, having the highest income, committing the lowest crime, etc.), would we still be proclaiming ‘systematic racism’ exists?”

Again, the question is not the merits or tenor of such writings but the right of academics to express...

The United States is experiencing tribalism, collective poverty, soaring crime, an obliterated southern border, the destruction of constitutional norms, and roaring inflation. We are being led by a catastrophically bewildered, ill-tempered, incompetent president abetted by a left-wing ideologically driven Congress and bureaucracy.

It has taken the nation many decades to get to this stage. There are but two basic components in this evolution to the present fractured society. The first and foremost, has been the widespread submissive capitulation to the malicious exploitation of the nation’s racial past. The second, has been the lack of a viable opposition party to challenge the transformation of the nation’s institutions.

For nearly five decades, while the Republican Party and establishment conservatives reveled in their “civility” and “bipartisanship,” an increasingly socialist/Marxist Democrat party, media/entertainment complex, and education establishment has been conditioning two-plus generations of Americans to look to the federal government as the source of salvation, opportunity and rescue in times of difficulty. This has created an ever-growing mal-educated, susceptible and easily exploited segment of the citizenry that by the turn of the Twenty-First Century was large enough to impact the governance of the nation.

The next step was to inculcate guilt and societal animosity in what was once a tolerant multiracial nation that had overcome its past. Their success is undeniable as they have successfully manipulated and alienated the Black and minority populations by demonizing and scapegoating the white population.

In 2008 77% of Americans (60% of Blacks) thought race relations were good in their individual community In a shocking recent poll among Blacks, 75% now believe they or someone they love will be attacked by a white person. This is an easily disproven belief as government statistics from the Department of Justice reveal that Blacks were the attackers in 85% of violent crimes involving blacks and whites.

This same recent poll also showed that 70% of Blacks believe over half of all white people (or 110 million Americans) “hold white supremacy beliefs.” Any accurate estimate of the actual number of white supremacist is impossible to find as the definition of “white supremacy” has conveniently evolved with the political winds (e.g., all Trump voters have often been referred to as being sympathetic to white supremacy.) Over the years, by extrapolating the dubious and inflated data from the rabidly left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center, it has been estimated that there “could” be many as 500,000 believers or 0.2% of the overall white population.

It is little wonder that just 24% of whites, 27% of Blacks and 29% of other minorities believe the current state of American race relations are good or excellent.

After decades of improving race relations, America is rapidly regressing into a tribal society rife with acrimony, anxiety and suspicion spawned by a return to racism and bigotry.

Among the most important dates in...