Good news everyone! You’re not going to be killed by a spree-killer! Despite what the media loves to convince us of, homicidal psychopaths are not something any of us should be worried about. I ask you to consider this fact in light of the obsessive spotlighting of mass-murdering maniacs by the bloodlusting news organizations in recent years. I, in the spirit of rational optimism feel obligated to remind you that the odds of a deadly rampage affecting you or anyone you know are essentially zero.
Now look, I understand this is one of those touchy subjects, and for good reason. The idea of innocent people, especially children, being randomly murdered without warming and for no reason is indeed beyond tragic. I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like for those who are affected and I have no intention to mock or belittle their plight. I do however, as your rational optimist, feel obligated to remind you of the utter rarity of such occurrences and the relative safety of our age… and of course toss in a little shaming of mainstream media for their role in this particular mass-panic.
“YOU ARE NEXT”… actually, you’re probably not. Photo courtesy of Maekju
The main thing to remember in this or any other media scare tactic involving murder is that America’s homicide rate is on the decline . Yes, believe it or not your great-grandfather was far more likely to be “given a dirt nap” during the roaring 20’s than you are today. Though, the U.S. does have a depressingly bad homicide rate for a wealthy democracy, it has been improving, especially in the last twenty years where we have seen murder rates halve in frequency (somehow the news always forgets to mention this fact while reporting on whatever latest bloodbath they are gawking over).
The second thing to consider is that, of the homicides that do still occur, very few of them are by crazed psychopaths out for the blood of the innocent. The vast majority of American homicides involve impoverished males aged 15 to 30, and are retaliatory, not random. Of course, the media has little interest in reporting the daily gun deaths of poor, African-American males (94% of victims), instead choosing to comb the nation for the most horrifying and morbid instances of frenzied violence, involving affluent, white, victims. Thus, though gun violence is something Americans should be concerned about, the news gives you a distorted view of the issue, because it gets better ratings.
If I have failed with these two facts to put the spree-shooter phenomenon into perspective, and you still believe it’s an issue that needs to be addressed with a serious asking of the question, “what can we do to prevent further tragedies?,” I have an answer for you: stop tuning into the media coverage. The weirdest thing about this whole issue, is that the very organizations so concerned about this “epidemic” are the very reason why one isolated event turns into several. The “copycat” phenomenon is very real, and though many factors go into these extremely rare events, news coverage easily correlates with their frequency. As forensic psychiatrist and criminologist Dr. Park Dietz, has stated, “every time we have intense saturation coverage of a mass murder, we expect to see one or two more within a week.”
The spree-killer panic is an example of tabloid-exploitation mixed into mainstream news reporting. These events are awful for the people involved but only directly affect a tiny percentage of the population. It’s important to remember that it’s the job of the news to riffle through the daily lives of 300 million Americans and pick out the most morbid and depressing events to report, ignoring most of the great things people are doing. To quote the great skeptic, Michael Shermer “For every random act of violence that makes the evening news, there are 10,000 non-random acts of kindness that go unrecorded every day.”
If you’re worried about dying from anything other than old age, including murder, you can relax; the odds are overwhelmingly on your side.
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