Letter: Media should not feed mass killers' craving for publicity

Randall Milan-Williams, Fort Pierce

Letter: Media should not feed mass killers' craving for publicity

It is beyond imagining how anyone can commit so heinous a crime as the mass execution of children as at Sandy Hook. The shooter's brother described him as "possibly mentally ill." Ya think?

We really haven't evolved a sufficient vocabulary to adequately describe the visceral emotions we feel when hearing about fiendish acts like this. Massacre is too mild, murder too overused to be meaningful, diabolical thought to be clever; butchery and slaughter might be more accurate.

Cowardly used to mean something, but that was when we actually held standards of behavior in this country, long past. For what could be more cowardly than gunning down society's innocents and then killing yourself to avoid retribution? Demonic is more appropriate, but that also harkens back to days when we acknowledged good and evil, God and the devil, times also long banished from our society.

It feels insufficient to simply say prayers for the victims.

Is it any wonder that most slaughters happen in places where the shooter is guaranteed, by law, to meet the minimum of resistance — locations where legal gun possession is banned?

Many believe the deed itself must be some form of self-aggrandizement, the ultimate act for fame and notoriety. So why do the media fuel these destructive ends? This paper, like many other media, offered the shooter's life and times in minutiae then even went on to laundry-list those who have failed to be quite as reprehensible.