In Defense Of Politicizing Tragedies

Yesterday, another school shooting took place — this time in the state of Texas. The details are still coming in about who did it and why it happened, so I will not be talking about those in this article. However, before we knew anything, many in the media decided to make one thing very clear: Whatever we do, we should not politicize it.

Take this tweet from Kyle Kashuv — who people only know of because he was at the 2018 school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida:

A horrific tragedy in Texas today. Praying for the students and families of Robb Elementary School. I know the feeling all too well. Shame on the profiteers and bad actors who instantly politicize such a tragedy. These are people not political pawns.

In another tweet from that same day, Kashuv says the issue is that we’re too informed about mass shooters, and that maybe if we were more ignorant on the topic, less school shootings would occur:

For 5 years I’ve been banging the drums against the media sharing the faces and names of mass shooters. We know there’s a contagion effect. The media gets clicks while giving these monsters notoriety which only spurs more shootings. We all agree it’s wrong to do this. Enough.

For the record, over the course of those five years, nobody has been able to…