What really scares me are the college-level shootings. These kids clearly are stable enough to go through high school, do well enough to be admitted into a college, and then go on to commit these atrocious acts. These aren’t just losers who work in bottom-rung positions (excluding the mall shooter form this past Christmas – he was just fired from McDonald’s). This means they can’t be picked out of a crowd – they aren’t always social misfits. They aren’t the “bad guys” you see in movies.

I think the deluge of coverage for the mall shooting was mainly because it was so different from the usual (it disgusts me to have to use that word) school shootings, but especially because millions of people could relate – going to the mall a lot in December is basically a part of our culture now.

I was surprised at the coverage as well, but I am weirdly happy that they aren’t covering it too much – it gives the shooter less notoriety.

Plus, the cynic in me says that technically, Obama winning over Hillary has a much larger affect on your everyday life – especially if it is somewhat guaranteed that a democrat will take the White House come January.

I too was struck by how small this story seemed in the way it was reported. But what about the Louisiana Technical College shootings that happened just a week ago February 8th, in which three people were killed. This event was even less of a blip on the media’s radar. IS it the lower death tolls?

What else could be at play? Is it that these two schools have less visibility than Virginia Tech, a well-known university and an athletic powerhouse? I wonder too if the media is responding to critiques that days of coverage gives the shooters’ recognition and the glorified notoriety they are looking for (Seung-Hui Cho, perpetrator of the Virginia Tech shootings, wrote about becoming famous and even sent his own writings to NBC News.)

One optimistic note: Despite the media coverage or lack there of, it does not seem that colleges have numbed to this tragic possibility. Syracuse University, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (two schools I know of personally) have both staged mock events within the past year to train and test emergency response teams.