Social-emotional learning and anti-bullying programs don’t reduce the risk of school violence, says a leading researcher. What’s remarkable, writes Hechinger’s Jill Barshay, is that Ron Avi Astor, a UCLA professor, spent years advocating for policies he now thinks are ineffective, and is willing to say so. “We were wrong,” he said at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
On the advice of Astor and others, schools have invested heavily “in social-emotional learning, restorative justice, trauma-informed care, counseling and other efforts to make schools safer and more welcoming,” Barshay writes. Since the Columbine massacre in 1999, fewer students are bringing weapons to school. But school shootings have increased.
School shooters aren’t responding to bullying or trauma, Astor told Barshay. They crave notoriety. “Most of them are suicidal, and they decided to be homicidal so that they would be remembered,” he said.
“The more media attention a shooter gets, the more likely the event will inspire a future mass shooter,” warns the National Center for Health Research.
Trying to make schools safe and supportive places is important, Astor says. But preventing school shootings requires working with the media. He hopes to persuade journalists and social media companies to “adopt guidelines that reduce attention on perpetrators, delay publication of manifestos and videos, and focus more coverage on victims,” writes Barshay.
He’s not sure it’s possible or that it will work. “But it’s worth a try.”
— Joanne Jacobs in It’s not about bullying: School shooters want notoriety
Dropping the shooter DRT and posting pictures of his crumbled body and piss stained pajama pants would be a good alternative the current way these things are handled by the press.
“Trying to make schools safe and supportive places is important, Astor says. But preventing school shootings requires working with the media. He hopes to persuade journalists and social media companies to ‘adopt guidelines that reduce attention on perpetrators, delay publication of manifestos and videos, and focus more coverage on victims,’ writes Barshay.
He’s not sure it’s possible or that it will work. ‘But it’s worth a try.’ ”
NO! NO! NO!
Astor spent years with anti-gun orgs and left wing media and the left wing so called ‘teachers organizations’ pushing his BS. Him and the anti-gun orgs and democrat politicians and left wing media and the left wing so called ‘teachers organizations did nothing but experiment on Americas children with that BS all to push a left wing and democrat politician anti-gun agenda. Astor and all those others have the blood of these victims on their hands. Instead of using the money these got to beef up security in schools, putting trained fire armed armed deterrence and response in schools with school staff and increasing SRO’s, these are things that would have saved lives – all of them sensationalized these mentally ill killers, and used the money to further an agenda of gun-control over law abiding citizens who did nothing wrong. Astor and all those others have the blood of these victims on their hands.
And now that this experiment failed so obviously, even though years ago and since we in the gun community were screaming out that it would fail, Astor wants to do the experiment all over again just with different wording this time. NO! NO! NO!
Americas school children are not suppose to be ‘ideology majors’, they are not suppose to be ‘lab rats’ for your ‘social’ experiments and crack-pot ‘social’ theories. KEEP YOUR LEFTIST HANDS AND IDEOLOGY AND EXPERIMENTS AWAY FROM AMERICAS SCHOOL CHILDREN!
You left wingers have had your way on this long enough, too long, and many died or were injured doing it your way and their blood is on your hands – you are as mentally ill as these killers only you do your killing indirectly by intentionally not doing anything to stop these killers in favor of your ‘social experiment’ BS. We could have prevented many school shooters from shooting up a school, we could have saved many lives – you left wingers were always in the way, stopping us when you could in favor of your agenda instead of in favor of the school kids.
And no, it does not require working with the media. It requires stopping these mentally ill killers when they show up, it requires putting firearm armed deterrence in place so distributed in the school and so strong these mentally ill killers will not show up for fear of being stopped easily (which happens to be one of the things they will avoid, an armed environment with armed resistance) – in short it requires this threat to be treated like a ‘terrorist-enemy combatant’ for that is how they act with their mental illness driving them, they probe and scout and plan and execute just like an ‘terrorist-enemy combatant’ would so treat them like it.
But you spent years sensationalizing them, creating more ‘gun free zones’ and gun prohibitions in places and they are specifically attracted to those environments so you advocated for these ‘guaranteed kill zones for school shooters’ by law for mentally ill mass-killers . You flipped their switch for each and every one who followed the talk and words and videos and articles you and the rest of your left wing morons spouted trying to treat them like something to be studied and talked about in articles and get clicks and grants for, instead of them being stopped cold and hard and definitively which is where your attention should have been. Its too late to tame the left wing media to fall into line with your new version of your experiment, they got very used to gorging on the blood of the innocent just like anti-gun orgs do and the sensationalism got them money.
We know how to solve the school shooter problem, we make it go away when they show up and it make it too risky for them to show up – we treat them like terrorist-enemy combatants to be killed, or severely wounded enough, to stop them when they show up and get active and deterred from showing up by the use of firearm armed force and not some BS ‘social’ program and media coverage that delays reporting on it.
and this…
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‘He [Astor] hopes to persuade journalists and social media companies to ‘adopt guidelines that reduce attention on perpetrators, delay publication of manifestos and videos, and focus more coverage on victims,’ …
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He’s [Astor] not sure it’s possible or that it will work. [Astor] ‘But it’s worth a try.’ ”
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Aside from the fantasy that left wing media will some way or another ‘adopt guidelines that reduce attention on perpetrators, delay publication of manifestos and videos, and focus more coverage on victims,’ – its not going to happen. These thrive on bloodshed and misery and depravity and horror, its the sensationalism of these that pays the bills and salaries and bonuses and the more quickly they can get it into print or on a news-cast or as a ‘interview’ or any other coverage they are going to run with it and that means an ‘as it happens’ approach and that means not really a delay or shift in focus or attention – ‘if it bleeds it leads’ is the motto the ‘guideline’ they go by still as true today as it was when it was coined.
1. The phrase ‘the internet is forever’ comes to mind, and these killers will simply study what’s already happened.
2. Astor obviously does not understand this threat or subject. Although these mentally ill killers study and idolize these killers, this is not the motivation for their heinous acts. Their motivation is the mental illness driving them, the ‘infamy’ they will gain to be remembered. Remember, these mentally ill killers expect to die and it part of their plans and they will even commit suicide to achieve that – so they would not live to see how they are written about and do not expect to, but its the others that read about them that are inspired. But here is where Astor obviously does not understand this threat or subject – delaying reporting still means reporting later and the same future killers would still read about it – a focus shift to the victims in just what these killers want as its the exact thing they did in their focus on the victims, in fact one of the most ‘favored’ things these mentally ill killers looked for was the body count of those killers before them and they all wanted to top what previous killers had done.
Its true that media coverage had its effect and emboldened them and fed their fascination with past killers, but its not what motivated them. These monsters are driven by a mental illness need to kill and that is what is driving and motivating them. Its true that such coverage can give them a push then to act on their impulse to kill, but even without the coverage they would have still eventually done it anyway – you can read it in the writings they leave behind, phrases such as ‘I can’t resist this any longer, my plans are made.’ and them citing the ‘driving obsession’ to kill they could not resist, with one writing in his final entry of using the very last bit of will power that he fought to summon for weeks and in the final minutes before he was to set out to attack a school using that remaining bit of will power to end his own life before the ‘darkness’ he wrote ‘completely took over’. For example, the Minneapolis trans school-shooter, Robin Westman, was obsessed with the idea of killing children and had a deranged fascination with previous mass shootings, with no clear ideological motive beyond seeking notoriety but he killed himself and would never live to read about his heinous acts so he was leaving behind what would be read about by others but its not what motivated him as it was his mental illness obsession with the idea of killing christian children that motivated him (the same basic obsession the Nashville trans school shooter Audry Hale had) and he indicates in his writings he could not longer resist doing it and even without reading coverage of past killers he still would have done it.
(note: Tim Walz helped Robin Westman do it by signing into law a bill that said trans mental health records could not be used to deny them ‘stuff’. And one of this ‘stuff’ is ‘official proceedings’ and one of those ‘official proceedings’ was the issue of a firearms purchase permit so although the issuing official knew of the mental illness issues with the trans killer Robin Westman they could not deny him a purchase permit because the mental health records were prohibited from being used thus having no other disqualifying ‘prohibited person’ background he was able to purchase firearms. The trans ‘mental health records also can’t be used to invoke ‘official proceeding’ ‘mental health’ based preventative measures to keep them from harming their self or even others so its basically a ‘red flag’ exemption for trans in Minnesota and indeed it worked for Westman because police were called to the home in the past for what would have been a ‘red flag’ situation for a non-trans person yet they could not take the firearms or do anything because of the law that Walz had signed into existence because the mental health records could not be used in such an ‘official proceeding’. Yet, at no point did anyone ever simply report this guy as a ticking time bomb threat waiting to go off – he was telling of his obsession on line, his left winger ‘mental health professional’ knew about it like the one for Nashville trans school shooter Audrey Hale did, like all of the left winger ‘mental health professionals’ knew about it for each and every trans mass-killers (which includes mass and school shooters) in the last 20 years – and all these left winger ‘mental health professionals’ did was throw pills at them and falsely ‘affirm’ their trans as ‘real’ instead of treating the underlying mental illness issues which are many and manifest collectively as ‘gender dysphoria’. ]
So no, “adopt guidelines that reduce attention on perpetrators, delay publication of manifestos and videos, and focus more coverage on victims,” for the media does not stop future mentally ill school-shooters. Such might not embolden them then to act then but its still going to be eventually reported and articles will be written – and these do not rely on that for motivation anyway because they are being driven by a mental illness obsession and need to kill.
What stops these mentally ill killers is stopping them cold and hard and decisively by treating them as terrorist-enemy combatants to be killed, or severely wounded enough, to stop them when they show up and get active or deterred from showing up, by the use of firearm armed force. The number one and only thing 99.99% of these school shooters fear, a number one theme in all of their writings (including on line), is being stopped before they could carry out their killings or kill enough. They are not afraid of signs, or words, or that police will show up, or of drones bumping into them or shooting pepper spray at them, or targets physically fighting back with what ever they can get their hands on, they are not affected by ‘run-hide-fight’ tactics, they do not care that you call 911 or try to barricade or hide in a room someplace, they do not even care that they are being shot and will still try to continue to target victims while still able. But what they do care about and want to avoid is being stopped cold and hard and decisively – and aside from some type of physical barrier they can not get through or shoot through or use of hand grenades against them, the only thing that’s pretty much a guarantee to stop them cold and hard and decisively is a good guy with a gun.
We know how to solve the school shooter problem, we make it go away when they show up and/or make it too risky for them to show up – we treat them like terrorist-enemy combatants to be killed, or severely wounded enough, to stop them when they show up and get active and deterred from showing up, by the use of firearm armed force and not some BS ‘social’ program and media coverage that delays reporting on it.
[note: “If it bleeds, it leads” means that news involving violence, conflict, or death gets the most prominent coverage because it grabs attention. The phrase is often credited as being ‘coined’ by William Randolph Hearst Jr at some point in the late 1890s].
Hi,
I’d like to pitch an article exploring the growing debate around media coverage and its potential role in influencing school shootings.
The piece will examine recent research suggesting that perpetrators often seek notoriety, and how extensive media attention may unintentionally contribute to copycat incidents. I will also discuss whether shifting coverage focus toward victims, delaying sensitive content, and limiting perpetrator exposure could help reduce future risks.
Additionally, the article will present multiple perspectives — including critics who argue that deeper issues like mental health, security measures, and policy failures play a more significant role than media influence alone.
This will be a balanced, fact-driven piece aimed at informing readers without promoting sensationalism, aligning with responsible journalism practices.
I can deliver a well-researched, engaging article tailored to your audience.
Looking forward to your feedback.
Best regards,
Elyce