Sword and Scale - Episode 156

Episode Date: March 1, 2020

The United States has experienced a slew of mass murders in recent years, but the two mass shootings that occurred within 14 hours of each other in August of 2019 have made a big impact on a society that is becoming more complacent by the day. The 24-hour news cycle consistently seems to have a negative effect on the frequency of these mass shootings as well as the continued desensitization of our society.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Breaking news from Dayton, Ohio, a second mass shooting in the United States in less than 24 hours. Welcome to season 7 episode 156 of Sword and Scale, a show that reveals that the war sponsors are real. Well today we have the somber task of examining a horror, which has become all too common in the US, mass shootings. But unlike the news media's particular flavor of coverage, we'll examine this phenomenon

with the goal of uncovering the responsibility that the media has in how it reports what it chooses to report. A particular incident, or set of incidents just this past year, brought this topic to light. Two mass shootings, taking place within hours of each other, both covered or not covered in completely different ways by the same news outlets, which pretty much exposed the apparent biases inherent in each major news network. If it wasn't obvious before, this set of incidents shined a light on what each network decided was newsworthy and what they decided was not.

We'll take a look at each and give you all of the information and the respect to make your own choices on just exactly what happened. We're joined by clinical psychologist Dr. Michelle Carcell. Stay with us. In an era where most of us barely needed to move our heads to locate a digital screen of some sort, media has more of a massive impact than ever before. When we think of the news media in particular, the term no longer encompasses just the newspaper, radio, and news stations on television.

It has expanded to include social media like Facebook and Twitter, where many in the younger generations absorb the bulk of their news. It can include apps that aren't even quite considered social media like Buzzfeed, Reddit, and Shockingly even Snapchat, none of which were ever created with the intention of spreading national and international news stories to the masses, yet they've unfortunately evolved into news media outlets. New stations are playing on a non-stop cycle in doctors offices, diners, bars, and the workplace break room.

Legally scrolling through Facebook has become impossible without encountering a political video or news story. Many modern households no longer even have cable television or bothered to watch the news on TV, but that doesn't mean a lowered intake of news media in general. Unless you live under a rock, you'll hear about the big stories happening in the news every day. Try as you might, it is virtually unavoidable. The balance between America's free press and the responsibility of the press to report

with good ethics has always been a struggle. The 24-hour news cycle has essentially become a money-making enterprise. What did we expect it to become after all? News outlets are businesses, and they report what makes them the most money. Actual journalism has given way to opinionated pieces. Information is now infotainment. And once the news has caught wind of a money-making story, there are other favorite things to do is to politicize the event in some way, solidifying their base of listeners and ostracizing anyone else

that may disagree. and ostracizing anyone else that made this agree. The weekend of August 3rd and August 4th, 2019, seemed to be a whirlwind of inexplicable violence. Around 10.30 a.m. that Saturday, 21-year-old Patrick Krushus opened fire at a store full of shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. He killed a whopping 22 people, with 24 others injured, and many more surely scarred for life. One woman filmed part of her experience while cowering under furnishings with her elderly mother as the shooter took out shoppers around them. Those not lucky enough to have found a good hiding spot. Using a semi-automatic rifle,

crucious gun down unsuspecting shoppers half an hour after posting a long manifesto on 8chan. Why is it when anything bad happens? We always hear about 8chan or 4chan. With several lengthy parts, the manifesto expresses the shooter's support for the Christchurch shooter in New Zealand and his manifesto. shooter in New Zealand and his manifesto. He claims to be carrying out these plans in the name of protecting America from immigrants, though he specifically mentions Hispanic immigrants a number of times. Coming straight from the original manifesto, Crucia States. This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me.

I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion. My whole life I have been preparing for a future that currently doesn't exist. The job of my dreams will likely be automated. Hispanics will take control of the local and state government of my beloved Texas, changing policy to better suit their needs. If you take nothing else from this document, remember this, inaction is a choice. I can no longer bear the shame of inaction, knowing that our founding fathers have endowed me with the rights needed to save our country from the brink of destruction.

Krushas goes into detail about the weapon he chose to use and why he selected it. He explains that the rifle he would use is not designated to shoot rounds quickly, so it overheats and would require him to wear heat-resistant gloves, which he did, along with hearing protection. It's easy for the media to pick and choose what they want to highlight about a particular case so that it fits the mold of their political polarization. This case seemed to be clear-cut. This was a far-right-wing, nut job who hated Mexicans and drove many hours so he could kill

as many of them as he could. He was angry about their so-called invasion of America and felt that mixing races would muddy the human race as a whole. He didn't want that. Patrick Crucious didn't want Hispanic people to become lawmakers in America and didn't want his spanic people to become lawmakers in America, and didn't want them changing policies. The media, however, saw this blatant racism as an opportunity to insinuate and even flat out state, in some cases, that Krushius was a Trump supporter and a supporter of the

current Republican administration. His manifesto says otherwise. It was in the media's best interest to put him in a category, and they chose far right because of the obvious racial prejudice that fueled this murderous act. Cruises however clearly states in his manifesto that he feels all of our country's leaders, Republican and Democrat have been failing us for decades. Krish has also included a few large paragraphs speaking of his concern on the state of our environment. He says,

Our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country. The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations. Corporations are heading the destruction of our environment by shamelessly over-harvesting resources. This has been a problem for decades. For example, this phenomenon is brilliantly portrayed in the decades-old classic The Lorax. Water sheds around the country, especially in agricultural areas, are being depleted. Fresh water is being polluted from farming and oil drilling operations. Crucia cites the government's part to play in the continuation of this environmental

destruction, saying that they are unwilling to tackle these issues. He argued that killing non-whites would effectively decrease our surplus population and make our America way of life a bit more sustainable. It's clear that these parts of his manifesto made it difficult for the media to throw crucious into the far right wing camp. So they conveniently left a lot of his thoughts out of the news coverage. So they conveniently left a lot of his thoughts out of the news coverage. Alden Hall was a shopper perusing the produce-style when he heard the first gunshots. The man next to him was hit and Alden bolted for the exit. He saw crucious and the facial expression on the shooter's face he claims will stay

with him forever. I knew was a soul rifle or automatic weapon. So at that point, that's what I became fragile to the situation, low frantic. Yes, I was a scene of Massey aimed a soul rifle AK-47 towards me as he entered the store. For probably experience, I kind of knew it took him a couple of seconds for him to raise his gun to aim towards me directly. So I had enough time to duck down with the person next to me and then take cover and then run off and take cover again.

At first, when he entered the store, it gave me a smirk, so I knew he's an aim directly towards me. So it was directly to me. And then he hit the person next to me. They were on the floor and then after that, I kind of feel like I was still targeted so I kept moving and then after I lost the person the shooter then apparently after that he was just shooting generally to everybody towards everybody. One woman that was injured by crucious says that he seemed very calm not at all nervous. All of a sudden in the middle of us laughing and having a good time talking. They just started shooting but we didn't know there were shots. It sounded like somebody threw black cats at the street. Then we noticed that no there were gunshots. So I just yelled, they're shooting through itself on the floor. We all threw ourselves on the floor. We had

nowhere to run. There was nowhere. No way we could have ran out of there. I hid behind the SUV. That was there. I'm gonna be behind the tire. And I looked to the front. This guy was too far away from us, just shooting at us. And I saw him reload his gun and walk towards us a vehicle. And he just called bloody kill straight at us and shot us. He shot eight rounds.

I had to be 10 hours dead. And he was right next to me. And he shot eight more rounds. You know, I could say he's, please take care of my children. And please don't let them do anything to my daughter or any of the girls in our team. And it's not fair that somebody from God knows where to show up and did something so ugly to us. He was so much hatred. I felt in my next video. He would write next to me.

He wasn't breathing hard. He was the calmest person ever. He didn't say anything. Just plain hatred and just anger. Patrick Crucious was brought into custody unharmed by police when he surrendered. Helling authorities, quote, I am the shooter.

He admitted to targeting Mexican shoppers inside the El Paso Walmart. There are several looming commonalities between those who planned and execute mass shootings. These similarities in personality, upbringing, and life experiences have been studied ad nauseam and in even more depth by a study launched by the FBI and released this summer. We all want to know what causes someone to plan such a horrific act, rachiosinate the planned actions and finally carry them out. So after the break, we'll talk to someone who may be able to answer that question. Stay with us.

My name is Michelle Carcell. I am a clinical psychologist in Hawaii, California. So as a psychologist, I'm more into clinical work, but I have a fascination with mass shootings. Actually, ironically, I've been talking about this for several years, and we actually had one, right in my alleyway, so right outside my home. So I literally witnessed the aftermath when outside, heard the gunshots, was a part of kind of the whole ordeal. So this is a topic that when outside, heard the gunshots was a part

of kind of the whole ordeal. So this is a topic that's very close to home for me. It's definitely something that I feel we need to do some serious discussion and intervention. And I do have some ideas and I've researched enough about it. But yes, I have a specialties of across the board, but this is one that's kind of when you're in dear to my heart. Dr. Carcell is very familiar with the several studies conducted over the last decades on this topic. The one released this past summer shows a thread of similarities between the Columbine shooters all the way up to the most recent mass tragedies we have heard about on the news. So yeah, this was

a wonderful meta-analysis of previous history of mass shootings. And it was conducted by the National Institute of Justice. And it analyzed basically mass shootings from 1966 all the way to 2018. So it was quite extensive, included criteria like socioeconomic factors, familial trauma, relationship status, all types of factors

to really kind of come up with a comprehensive way to understand this population, and to find out ways to intervention, or intervene, I should say, and help our community, basically. So basically what we found was four common traits. While there were some subjective things that were different among people who were mass shooters.

The four big things that they found was the first being early childhood trauma or exposure to violence at a young age. So this is quite significant because knowing that children who have exposure to this, whether it's parental abuse, whether it's sexual abuse, whether it's severe bullying, witnessing apparent suicide or knowing apparent suicide, any form of severe trauma really sets the tone for this event. It leads also to depression, other mental health concerns, PTSD, anxiety. And this is kind of the first piece of really this big, you know, the situation that tends to unravel. Then the second component, which then goes a step further,

basically is an identifiable crisis, something that happens a triggering event for the person. So here, if you think about the child developing with this trauma, if no intervention occurs, and they're festering with these emotions, don't know what to do with them. They end up getting into maybe young adulthood, teenage years, lots of emotions, lots of volatility, then what you see here, that there's a triggering event and that kind of sets situations in motion. One major aspect that sticks out among mass shooters is that they all seem to have studied

other mass shooters. Like we mentioned before, these massacres tend to be socially contagious and occur in clusters. Someone with the idea to carry out a mass shooting will begin to study others who have done it before them and may even find themselves inside online community niches where they are further radicalized. Their plans begin to turn to reality when their extreme views and ideas are supported by others in these communities. So that's where we kind of see, you know, the next step where they study to research. So the copycats in terms of to speak, they start researching this, they look up other perpetrators, other mass shooters, you know, how did they do it?

They start formulating because they have this anger. Sometimes they're suicidal and they think about taking themselves out while taking out of their people because they're just so much built in. And then the last is means. So being able to find a lethal way to go forward with their project, what they're thinking is actually something that is productive, which unfortunately is actually not the situation. So that's kind of the four things that they found in this meta analysis, which is incredibly useful and very good for us as psychologists, but also for the community to understand.

Another crucially important thing to understand is that these people have a desire for notoriety, and yearn for those few moments of omnipotent power. The weapon of choice for 24-year-old Connor Betts was an AR-15-style firearm. He too had been planning a mass annihilation, unbeknownst to his friends and family. He sat on Twitter the night after the El Paso shooting, carried out by Patrick Krushes and liked several tweets referencing the incident. Betz described himself in his Twitter bio by listing the he slash him pronouns he preferred, proclaiming that he was an anime fan,

a leftist, and a meathead followed by quote, I'm going to hell and I'm not coming back. He had a way of looking at people, glaring at people. He's always loved violence and he's always loved guns. And even outside of myself personally and before, I think his behavior started with the girls in Belbrook. He always loved to imitate guns and shooting people.

And he would look at people and imitate shooting or other violent acts. He was somebody who made me feel afraid when I knew him as a teenager. He did threaten me. They found the list of girls' names. As somebody who was, I was on his list, I was spoken to about it. I was never told anything specifically about what types of plans he had in it. I know there's a lot going around right now about whether or not it was a rape list or shooting list. And I don't know if there's anything to substantiate that. I was never told anything specific just that there were detailed enough plans on hurting

people that it was enough to have him removed from the school. And I know that everyone that I know of on that list was someone that he had expressed romantic feelings for. He wrote the shooting list, I think, on the bathroom wall. And that was found. And I think that had the names on it. And then the right list wasn't a notebook. Yes, you heard that correctly.

Conor Betts had a hit list of some kind. With an abundance of not only the names of female classmates, but many male classmates as well. He had inscribed the list onto a bathroom wall inside his high school, and was suspended later on when a rapist he brought to school was also discovered. His classmates were deeply fearful of him. Many remember vividly his odd personality and threatening demeanor. We all thought he was expelled. We thought that he was gone. And so it was very shocking

when he came back. Believe people and they speak up about things, believe survivors, believe children, believe women. So many of these things get brushed under the rug either as not real or even if they're real, they're not taken seriously. Like if you just don't give him the attention that he wants it will go away. And now we have learned through so much pain that it does not just go away, but especially since this horrible thing has happened, I can't help but think about how this is what he's always wanted. I think he should have been institutionalized from the get go.

I got joy out of making people scared. He did make threats often, like, just on a dime. It was like it didn't phase him. These hit lists were taken so seriously by the students that many skipped school when they were made aware of it. Those who were directly targeted on these lists had a real fear that the plans might be carried out,

given that they knew Connor Betts and knew the kind of person he was. Imagine being 16 or 17 years old attending high school, where you hope you'll be safe each and every day, and discovering you're on the hit list of another angry, scary student. Now imagine that this school allows the student back into the classroom after just a short suspension. Maybe he even ends up sitting right next to you. Iuffer one would be deeply unnerved. Connor Betts was also part of what the media referred to as a pornogrammed metal band called Menstrual Monchies, which featured sexually violent lyrics. He liked the shock factor of the genre.

Like many of us, Betts surrounded himself with those who shared similar views and struggles. One of these friends, Ethan Colley, has admitted to purchasing body armor ammunition, the upper receiver and the ammunition drum for the gun Bets would later use for his malicious plans. Colley further assisted by keeping the purchased items in his own apartment away from Bets family. He denies that he ever knew anything about his friends plans for the early morning of August 4th.

Then later that week on Thursday August 8th FBI agents re-interviewed Mr. Colley this time at his place of work. And Mr. Colley indicated to the agents at that time that he was a concealed carry. He told them during the second interview that he had done, quote unquotequote hard drugs with conor bets as well as marijuana and acid four or five times a week in from 2014 to 2015 and Then when the agents asked Kali how often he used drugs Kali indicated that he smoked marijuana every day and

Had been doing so for about ten years. It seems that often in the search for answers surrounding massacres like the one in El Paso and the one Connor Betts was planning. The media likes to throw in little details like this one to allow listeners and viewers to come to their own conclusions. They don't directly state maybe Connor Betts turned out to be a murderer because he had a severe drug addiction, or maybe his violent and dark taste in music led him to commit atrocities.

They just dig up these little tidbits and throw them into the news, sprinkling them in to the story, so that the public can grasp onto whatever they'd like to blame. On August 3, 2019, at about 11 pm, Connor Betts and his little sister Megan arrived with another friend at Blind Bobs, a bar in the historic Oregon District neighborhood of Dayton, Ohio. About an hour later, at midnight, the group moved on to another bar in the historic Oregon District neighborhood of Dayton, Ohio. About an hour later, at midnight, the group moved onto another bar in the area, one called Ned Peppers. The three spent about half an hour in the crowded bar when bets snuck out around Ned Peppers. This is a video from actually a hole in the wall, which is right adjacent to Ned Peppers. The front of this is the police cruiser.

This is where the police are. They're very visible at this point. So the shooter actually comes out of Ned Peppers and walks right in front of that police cruiser. He's aware where they were. Or you'd think it hadn't seen them. The Dayton police continued to review surveillance footage that tracked most of Connor Betts' movements

throughout the night. This is him and the alley. This is video that was caught from the rear of this witty tumbleweed. We know the tent because of the timing. You'll see in the next couple slides where it's very clearly. This is video next door. This is from Hartmergan-Post. The alley that the shooter is not walking to the alley. Bare barely see it. He's walking eastbound. He's walking back towards the car at this

point. You'll know he's still wearing a t-shirt. He's still in shorts. There's no backpack. It's 12.45 right now. It appears that he's walking around the car. It appears that the trunk let's come in open shut. He's there for about eight minutes. When he walks out, you're going to notice the key thing here is he's no longer wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt, and he's now wearing a dark hoodie, and he has a backpack. Donning is new attire. Black long sleeves, a bulletproof vest, a mask, hearing protection, and his heavy-looking. Connor Betts made his way over to the heavily populated bar area. He did not interact with anyone else in the empty alleyways. The surveillance cameras lost him for about nine minutes, while he was behind a building, presumably readying his weapon, before darting back out from behind the building rapidly,

where cameras could once again see him. We have a pretty good idea of what he was doing there because as he shoots up this alley, we know that he was probably charging his weapon, loading the weapon up because the next day, as we're processing scene, a process where the highlight is started, or where this flag here is. There is an unspent ground. It's damaged like it had to be ejected because he didn't charge properly. So that was recovered.

It was one of a 2-3 round matching what the shooter had. At 104 AM, that's began to open fire in an alley near the first bar he visited with his sister and friend. His AR-15 style firearm held 100 rounds. A-R15 style firearm held a hundred rounds. What the f***? Then the first 911 calls began to come in. Clear the speed of this vehicle. Okay, this is the fire detection.

I don't let you go, it's right outside. Uh, over the wall. Okay, right outside. Boss guy. Dylan Arnold was hanging out inside Ned Pepers, filming on his phone right before the shots rang out. And he caught the entire thing on camera as he crouched with other bargoers huddled together on the ground. His phone was pointed towards the entrance of the dead peppers. We obtained this audio from his public Instagram account, DH Arnold. The first clip he features on his Instagram story is captioned, I'm going to get a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a At 104am, 32 seconds after he began shooting, Cotterbats was killed by police, right at the entrance of Ned Pepers. Dylan Arnold's cell phone footage shows Betts' lifeless body based down on the floor. Surviving the shooting, Gavin Ivy remembers the night clearly. It will understandably remain a traumatic memory in his mind forever.

He had just celebrated his 21st birthday, and this experience was his first time out at a bar. All I can hear is the screams of those people, and I'll never forget that. There was a shot that went about three feet to the left of my head, by being like my heart's bang, like I was sad that I was gonna die.

I just still don't get it. Bad things don't really happen in Dayton, Ohio. You see things on the news when something happens in your own town, it hits hard. We often hear people say things like, awful things like this don't happen in my town. But the unfortunate reality is that bad things happen everywhere.

There is no safe place. Connor Betts saw the police cruisers in the Oregon District as he left net peppers and retrieved his weapon from the car. He knew that he would have to mow down as many people as he could in a short amount of time before police swooped in to stop him. If the six officers who took him down hadn't arrived on the scene as quickly as they did, Conor Betts surely would have killed dozens more innocent people, just trying to relax and have a good time that Saturday night. The mayor of Dayton, Ohio, Nan Waley, was very vocal throughout the entire investigation

of the shooting. If police had not stopped him, and he made it into that establishment, where hundreds of people were dancing and enjoying, yeah, we would have had hundreds of people die. That's a safe area. Super safe. You had police all over the place. Please, President.

Is the takeaway that this could happen anytime, anywhere? Absolutely. You know, and we have to ask why. When is enough enough. That's killed 10 early that Sunday morning, ranging in age from 22 to 57. 27 more people were injured. 17 of those people having been directly shot. He killed many strangers, people he didn't know and had never spoken to. But he also killed his own

sibling, Megan Betts, who, according to his friends, went by the name of Jordan. Friends and family swear that they seemed to get along. They were remembered as being very close. If there's any doubt in your mind about whether Connor Betts intended to even planned to end his own siblings' life that night. That feeling will soon dissipate. Evidence later showed through cell phone correspondents records that Connor Betts knew the location of his younger sibling and the friend they brought with them to the Oregon District that night. Megan and the friend were near Taco Stand outside of blind Bob's, the first bar the trio visited. The Dayton Police Chief stated in a press conference, quote,

there was a communication from his companion that they were going to the Taco Stand. And that was about seven minutes or so before the shooting occurred. This was the first area that's open fire on. His only sibling is presumed to be one of his very first victims. When horrible mass killings like this happen, and are plastered all over the evening news, it's rare that you'll find someone making excuses for the killer, or having outright sympathy

towards a person who just murdered so many innocent lives. Before he executed the shooting in the Oregon District, Connor Betts and Adalia Johnson had a short relationship and subsequently broke up. They broke up just months before he went on his murderous rampage. When I first heard that it was a Connor Betts, I was like, there's got to be another Connor Betts. It's like it not a common name, but it's got to be another one. And then it was 24-year-old from Bellbrook, and it was definitely him.

And then I didn't really have a whole lot of thoughts. I just started crying. And my first real thought that I remember was I need to do something, I need to do something, I need to talk to the police. And so I called the tip line, talked to them, and I'm still working through the shock. I'm sure I'll eventually feel it in full force at some point. But right now I don't think my body can handle all these emotions. Adeleau remembers Betts in a very different way than his high school classmates

remembers personality and behavior. He was super nice to me. Super nice to everyone that I saw him interact with. He was never mean to anyone. That's very you. Apparently he had that in him, so. I didn't think that he would ever go to like some random place and just shoot random people. Obviously his sister wasn't random, or maybe she was. She just got cost and cost hairs.

I don't know, But I wasn't entirely surprised that he did something bad, that he ended up in the news. I just didn't think it would be for this. Adalia knew there was something off about Conor Petz. They met in a psychology class and bonded over their mutual experiences struggling with mental illness. Despite her deeply concerning personal recollection of red flags she witnessed in bets, she never went to any authorities prior to his attack. Listen to how she glosses over these red flags and seemingly justifies this disturbed individuals' behavior. The first one was our very first date when he showed me the shooting of the synagogue,

which was in the news. And then the second one was when he got super drunk and told me he wanted to hurt people and then just overall his daily drinking. On the outside looking in, it would normally look like red flags, but given the fact that he was a psychology student, and he always talked about it from a psychological standpoint, it was like weird, because I'm not into that,

but it wasn't that scary or creepy. Half of our class was into serial killers. If you're in the psychology, you often want to know what makes terrible people do terrible things. By no means is Adelia calling Connor a terrible person. Now, instead, she feels awful that he was dealt a bad hand. Her unique perspective on why he may have committed such an awful crime has rubbed many the wrong way.

It feels like I'm in an alternate universe. What a weird sentence. My ex-boyfriend was a mass murderer. What? He's not a monster. He just did a monster's thing. He wanted to be good. He really did. And if he saw what he did now, he would know how horrible it was and not in a proud way. I'm not shocked he did something horrific because he had untreated problems and there are so many things and there

are so many things that people aren't going to know. This isn't about race, this isn't about religion, it's none of those things. This is a man who is in pain and then get the help that he needed. People go every day being perfectly fine, having a mental illness. Me included. And he just, he got the short end of the stick, no support system. Connor Betts, someone who just got the short end of the stick, didn't he?

Someone who according to Adelia Johnson, didn't have the capacity to premeditate an elaborate plan like this one. Unlike that other shooter. She insists that his unforgettable and unforgivable act was not race-motivated, not politically fueled, and had to have been spur of the moment in the heat of his anger over something. Despite the fact she even says she agreed with his calls to take more extreme action, she insists that his crimes were personal. The similarities between the two shootings that happened less than 12 hours apart are vast, but so are the differences. As were the differences,

in the way both massacres were portrayed in the media, one shooter was labeled a far-right extremist, while the other was only partially labeled a leftist, and only by certain media outlets. When Conor Betts tweeted under his Twitter handle, I am the spookster, an out-suspended account, it's hard to believe that the massacre he carried out was simply personal. Many of the tweets made by his account were obviously pro-antifa, and even when as far as

to demand that those who were passionate about an issue should escalate their protests beyond yelling with signs. The tweets instead directly suggested executing terroristic actions. He talked to me about how people needed to take more action and maybe start a little ruckus. He never mentioned anything to the scale or wanting to do anything extreme, just that why it protests weren't enough. There needs to be more direct action.

And at that core, I believe, to his extreme, not at all. Two locations, a 22 and a half hour drive from each other, each carried out by a single mass shooter within less than 15 hours of one another. 32 people killed between the two massacres with 51 more injured. The six officers who responded almost immediately on scene at the date and shooting were awarded medals of valor for their bravery. Their job was to walk toward the gunfire

while everyone else was running away. I think this all brings into question one major issue. Should we be publicizing the details of these mass shootings right down to the killer's name and motive? An organization called No Noteriety feels that the United States should align more with the way many other countries do things. The slogan is No Name, no photo, no notoriety. It's a matter of public safety.

It seems that many of the mass shooters have been inspired by previous shootings. So this has given rise to what's being called the no notoriety movement. The Sanders been looking into the details. Can tell us what she'd think. What was started, first of all, in 2012, by the parents of young man who was killed in the war

movie theater shooting. And it came out of just their personal experience in which they happened to be in Hawaii when this happened. They turned on the TV, trying to figure out, learn what happened, what's going on. And as the mother said, all we kept seeing was the shooter, the shooter, the shooter. And from this, their son was one of those killed. And they started something called a variety that the news media, other than one time, to say the name of the killer would

mention him and then they would not keep saying the name again. Opposers of this opinion worry that these kinds of restrictions on the media could be a direct infringement on First Amendment rights. I don't think we've all thought through the consequences of making such a big deal out of not naming people that we give them even more power. If you won't say, well, the more it's named, you know, create this mythical, you know, you must not be named and that becomes its own, that becomes its own thing. I worry what happens, what happens next.

Yeah, but I think that the consequences of over-sensationalizing, which let's face it, is what a lot of cable news stations do for ratings, for eyeballs, can be worse. The cable news, they have hours and hours to fill. What do you expect? I mean, that's it. That's a red butter. So, it sounds like we don't want anyone telling us or other news organizations how they should do their business, but we acknowledge that there is a glorification problem here and a

certain amount of self-restraint is appropriate. It's the issue that we're naming the shooters or that we're giving weight in which coverage to the stuff to the gunman. I mean, in my book, you know, shooting in Oregon, even a mass shooting, is an 8-paragraph story inside. I mean, it doesn't affect, it doesn't affect 99.999999 percent of the public, you know, it's an unfortunate event, but a lot more people died that day in car fatalities than were shot in work. How do we prevent the overcoverage and sensationalism of awful events like these? When the news media's job is to actually report on what's happened, not to mention these

are corporate entities intent on making as much money as possible by pandering to their particular audience, creating political division, and cherry picking the details they want to report about. Does the act of reporting a story like this perpetuate violence or does informing the masses of the horrors of the final outcome create a preventative measure. I don't think we glorified killers here. We're in the business of satisfying and caring us, and we're in the business of saying,

wait a second, here's a guy who did something absolutely heinous that none of us could ever imagine doing what makes him tick. This is our job. This is important. If we ever want to to stop these things the more we know about the people who do them would help I'm not sure you ever will but it's a fighting chance so the idea that we self-sensor to the point of saying we're not going to mention it we can't do that I think that's wrong in a state for a sentence not what we do the couple who founded the the No No D'Ariety Organization lost their son in the Aurora Colorado

movie theater shooting back in 2012. They have a simple request of journalists. But how feasible is it for news media companies to adhere to this request without legislation? What we're asking is for responsible journalism. We are asking that the First Amendment be kept intact, the why, the where, the how, even the who, but to report on the who in a responsible manner. And what we're asking is to just mention the name once. And then you subsequent descriptors such as the shooter, the individual, that sort of thing. Yeah, the interesting thing, well, obviously we get calls unfortunately, and that shooting that just happened

in Canada where somebody came in and shot to Muslim folks. Couple reporters called me and said, when do we stop naming them? And I said, well, no one's ever telling you to stop naming them. Is he in custody? And I said, yeah, yeah, we caught him. Honestly, you know, I was like the day after I didn't know if they caught him or not. And I said, well, you need to stop now. If he's not in custody, by what means put his picture everywhere, you know, keep the public safe. But once he's in custody,

stop being gratuitous about it. We've had, we've actually called writers, and this isn't about you, but we've called writers, and this was four or five years ago before we started all this, or right after we started it. You'd have a six paragraph story about the Aurora shooting,

and they'd have his name in there, literally we counted one 41 times in six paragraphs. It's just, it's honestly, I don't even think it's creative. If I was you, if I was your teacher and journalism, go ahead and say this a bit redundant. Dr. Michelle Carsell supports the No Noteriety Organization and feels that the changes they are requesting of the news media may have a big impact on prevention efforts. Yeah, that is a fantastic organization and actually that is also part of this analysis

that was conducted. There is a part of kind of the 15 seconds of fame, so to speak, in this whole process and plan. Well, that might not be the absolute objective. There is something to be expressed by the perpetrators. And if we don't give them that credence, if we don't give them that exposure, it really does limit the desire to make this an elaborate scheme. You know, we're still learning a lot about this, but there is definitely, I think, an appropriate response, as we were talking earlier about

social media and media in general, limiting the amount of details that you're giving of what is happening. Talk about it, report it, but maybe we can talk more about how to intervene. Maybe we can have more discussions in the media about how to do preventive measures, versus exposure and talking in such detail

about what this perpetrator has done. That might be a better solution, and I'm in complete support of that organization and what they're doing. I think it's great. We know that mass shooters like this crave notoriety, but is the no notoriety movement actually effective in any way? Does not naming the shooter have any impact, or does it just limit information to the general public unnecessarily? We simply don't have any actual evidence that it does.

In fact, if you go by statistics of gun violence, it would seem that there is no correlation whatsoever. In terms of how we can recognize the signs of a troubled person who fits the mold of a mass shooter early on, Dr. Carsell emphasizes the importance of early intervention. There were several instances in Conurbats life where the people around him could have and should have intervened to make sure his mental health was on track. Of course, in the current system we have, if the sick person doesn't want to get help, they won't. And there's nothing anyone else can do about it. Social media and media is exposing and discussing and frankly giving a lot of credence.

And you know, rightfully so there's some story here that we want to understand, but they're also describing how this stuff is happening. So what ends up happening too? And this is very important. If we look at the demographics, we do see some commonalities to engender, which I've seen males that are going to engage and become the perpetrator of these events. But usually at these younger ages, when we see them in their teenage years, the brain has not fully developed at this

point. This is a fantastic time, actually much earlier than that to do early intervention treatment, but what ends up happening there is kind of it sets this wave in motion and if that triggering event is at that time, whether in their teenage years or in an early adult code or adult code, then you kind of see that spiral. One of the biggest things is to fund early intervention treatments. So one of the things that we see again with the first criteria is childhood trauma, exposure to trauma. At that point, having as much resources as we can to help the child develop in a healthy way with effective treatment and learning how to cope with the emotions and the sadness and all of the things that come from post traumatic stress. So this is an essential stage.

You know, people say to me, Michelle, but they're crazy. You know, there's mental health issue. This is very different. Everybody at some point in your life or our lives, we're going to have something something happen t depression, anxiety, even what makes the difference who has mental health con or all the criteria that as oh, this is a person w issues where they're cra such thing is crazy. We

have to work through. But if we don't know how and all we've seen is violence or ways to engage in violence or how abuse conducted to us, that's what we're going to know. So that pattern of behavior, if we don't intervene early, we're going to end up seeing, you know, these next steps kind of follow through. So education, early intervention, I think funding with the FBI and these projects, really so they can see what's going on, training teachers, training caregivers, training community to really see,

oh, this child is suffering something happened in their household, let us help them, let us go forward and make sure that we take care of our kids. The frequency of mass violence we've seen in America in recent years has resulted in mass desensitization. It's clear and has been for a very long time that we need more support for those suffering from mental illness.

The 24-hour news cycle reporting on these acts of violence in a money-grabbing manner is simply exacerbating the crisis in this country. You know, on a personal note, this is a very emotional situation and these things that keep happening, it's exhausting. A lot of us are starting to feel just a general sense of exhaustion and, you know, my concern is that there's also a complacency where we're getting used to seeing them so often, we're getting used to being exposed to them so often that it becomes kind of part of the norm. I really hope that we work on breaking that and

really focusing on yes, I'm emotional about this, yes this is difficult and how do we make a change? We should not accept this, this is unacceptable and we should take care of each other in this process. A repetitive and vicious cycle is hard to break when a business like the media stands to make a buck. But can we really place all of the blame there? After all, as we've said before, the impact of the 24-hour news cycle and cable news has been diminishing over the last decade or so. Giving way to apps like Facebook and Twitter and Snapchat, Anderson Cooper refusing to say the name of a shooter doesn't really do much

when you can go online and look it up yourself in a matter of seconds. Helen, most cases, you can even look up the killer's Facebook page or Twitter account within seconds of a shooting. The notoriety isn't going away. And those that identify with mass killers have an endless pool of inspiration to draw from. Whether we like it or not, there is no simple answer. There is no one-size-fits-all.

The media not doing its job and not reporting parts of the story, then cherry picking the parts it wants to fit their particular political narrative only causes more division, more anger, more hate in those on the extremes of the political spectrum, those that think more has to be done to perpetuate their particular brand of politics. In the end, the news media may in fact be perpetuating violence, but probably not by not naming the killer, but instead manufacturing an endless supply of hate. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it.

I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. That does it for this episode of Sword and Scale.

We thank you for joining us. We hope you've had a good time with us this week. By the way, if you enjoy the show, there's a whole store of merch available. Get yourself a nice t-shirt or a mug or a water bottle. Go to store.swordandscale.com to see all of the goodies we have available. And if you want more Sword and Scale, there is always plus. Our Premium Service, available at Sword and Scale.com slash plus. Starting at just five bucks a month, you can get over 60

plus episodes that you won't hear on the regular feed. Early commercial free access to all regular shows, a 320 kilobyte high bandwidth high quality feed, store discounts, merchandise perks for higher tiers, and all sorts of additional bonus content. Go check it out right now if you like the show Sword and Scale dot com slash plus. That's going to do it for this episode. Thank you very much and until next time, stay safe. ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ Hi, I'm a huge fan of your show. I just want to throw something out there that mental health and civil liberties go hand in hand. I have personally stood inside of a mental health facility while my sister was the patient. She's a very professional woman and she was

asking just not normal. Her mental health was not okay. I took all the right steps. I begged the doctor to keep her in the facility because she was being so crazy. I didn't think she was gonna hurt anybody, but she did try to let herself out of the car on the freeway. The doctor looked at me, helped both his hands up in the air, and started doing the way he motioned. He said,

in one of these hands is your sister's civil liberties, and the other is her mental health care. I have to wait both. At this point, I don't think your sister is going to hurt anybody. If she wants to stay here, we'll try and encourage that. But if not, there is no way I can keep her here based on the statements between you and her. So everybody agrees that my sister was crazy, and everybody agreed that my sister needed medicine. But there was just nothing that anybody could do because we live in this great country.

We have wonderful civil liberties and it's really, really, really hard for any doctor to take those away. So those that want to blame people who knew their loved ones had mental health issues and did nothing about it, that's not always the case. Thank you so much. Love your show. Bye. you