Dave Kopel has an editorial in the Rocky Mountain News this week which echoes some of the sentiments I talked about in this post, back before the shooting in Colorado. Dave Hardy points to Loren Coleman, who has studied these things. I think there’s little doubt that media coverage of these events encourages future killers.
One thing I noticed about the Colorado shootings is that the courageous actions of Jeanne Assam shifted some of the media attention away from the killer and onto her.  I’m hoping that her willingness to talk to the media, and tell her story, will put these sociopaths on notice that churches aren’t the soft targets they imagine. I am hoping that the publicity Assam’s actions have gotten will mean we won’t see a mass shooting in another church for quite some time.
This reiterates the importance of carrying wherever you go. The life you save may not be just your own, and the people around you. It may also serve to shatter the fantasy of these deranged people by shifting the attention away from them, and onto you, the person who stopped them, and to let them know their intended prey might not be so helpless as they think. That kind of attention might be unwelcome, but I find the idea of a copycat killer more upsetting.
To Reverend Donald Spitz, whose comment I deleted:
You sir, can go to hell, and take your completely insane and hardly Christian views with you. I will not publish something on this site that condones murder. No matter what one’s views on abortion are, it is a legal practice, and there is no legal or moral right to become jury, judge and executioner, and take the life of another in retribution for a perceived wrong. If you want to condone those who are vigilantes, who take the law into their own hands, because you think they do the work of your god, you certainly have a right to do so in our society, but you’re not going to do it here.