Sputnik: What can you say about this last shooting and this is the eighth this year in the US. What do you think is behind this?
Pete Blair: An event like this is a horrible thing, and what we worry about, oftentimes, in these events is a kind of copycat effect, when there is one attack and that encourages other people to launch similar types of attacks, particularly when there is a lot of media coverage and the person gets a lot of exposure and a lot of their life history gets shared.
Sputnik: So, do you think that is was a kind of some copycat attack, in this case?
Pete Blair: To some extent, it could be. We don't have the documents shared to know if he pointed to Parkland shooting or any other events like that beforehand. But very typically, when these events happen we do see they've researched to the previous attacks that have gone on and off and oftentimes tend to idolize people who launched those attacks.
Sputnik: [What are the factors behind this phenomenon?] This wasn't the case in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and even the 80s. We didn't have this.
Pete Blair: Yes, we've seen more of these attacks happening more recently and trying to explain that is obviously difficult to do because there are probably a lot of different factors and things. One of the big ones that I think we have is the way that media covers these events. And in particular we know that there are a number of these people who want to be glamorized, they want people to know them, they want to be notorious, so what we really encourage people to do, is to not do that.
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When there is an attack, it is covered obviously, but the focus should be on the community, should be on the heroes, where it's appropriate on the victims, and really not on the wall-to-wall coverage of the attacker, and the attackers' life, and what they did, and those sorts of things. Because that gives that person what they were looking for and in addition to that it also creates the possibility that somebody else sees that and says this is a way for me to get recognized, too.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.
