We must stop giving mass killers what they want

“Just look at how many fans you can find for all different types of mass murderers,” observed the Sandy Hook gunman.

“A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone,” the gunman who attacked an Oregon community college observed. Writing admiringly of yet another homicidal enigma he had seen on television, the Oregon gunman continued, “His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems like the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.”

And so it continues, new sickos stimulated by the images of the ones before, staking their own claims to a news cycle or two, their own faces flashed repeatedly on the screen, and their motives pronounced unknown. On the car radio this morning, there it was again: The reporter said the man in Toronto was a fan of the mass killer in Santa Barbara, Calif., who summed it up this way: “Infamy is better than total obscurity.”