Suicides, Mass Shootings and the Media

Regarding the rate of suicide in the U.S., The American for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) presented the following:

1.) The annual age-adjusted suicide rate is 13.42 per 100,000 individuals. 2.) Men die by suicide 3.53 times more often than women. 3.) On average, there are 123 suicides per day.

Among other causes, depression to be the most common. In a world where the internal (or spiritual) needs is neglected for the external( or material), all goals are aimed only to satisfy the body rather the soul. When the expected is not attained, life loses its meaning – suicide becomes an option. When the soul is neglected, it lacks the necessary virtue or the mental to pull through lives difficulties. In other words, a positive religion gives life a meaning. The same can also be attributed to the mass shootings; For so long as the soul is neglected, stripped of all virtues and also being at the mercy of  the harmful suggestions from the media, surely there is bound to be an increase.

 The Campus Safety Magazine, with regards to mass shootings in the U.S. maintains that: 1.) In 2018, there were 82 school shooting incidents in the United States, the highest there have ever been since 1970. 2.) The K-12 school shooter statistics reveals that in 691 incidents, the shooter was a current student at the school. 3.) In 1,130 incidents, there was one shooter.

This is not just sad but also shocking. While every measure seems to have been taken to tackle the problem,  it is quite surprising that nothing is said or done to eradicated the “Bad Suggestions” in our media today. By “Bad Suggestions” I mean the wrong ideas, beliefs, opinions which has subtly been led into mind and unfortunately accepted by the soul lacking virtue supplied by religion. These harmful suggestions, over the years, has grown much worse that the bad suggestions of the 30’s and 40’s now appear to be nothing at all.

In the October (1938) issue of the Southern Cross, we read: “An American student of statistics has made investigation of 500 films. In them he counted 100 murders, 91 suicides, 103 adulteries, 38 seductions, 352 robberies, and 43 fraud or swindles. In these 500 films there was thus a more-or-less veiled defence or condemnation of 727 major crimes and immoralities.”  This was in 1938 – about EIGHTY YEARS ago! Within the same period, Professor Malhabec, a Swiss citizen, reported a similar investigation in Berne, where he found that out of 3,300 children of school years; 1,700 were more-or-less regular cinema – goers. In 1250 films presented for their entertainment there exhibited 1,163 seductions, 1,120 adulteries, 1224 homicides, 1170 robberies, 1171 shootings or various murders and 765 suicides.

Rev. Bernard Huss, explaining the psychological origin of crime wrote: “It would be strange if juvenile crime did not increase by leaps and bounds in an atmosphere overladen with all sorts of bad suggestions. The psychological origin of crime is the thought of a crime led into the mind or suggested by hearing, reading, or seeing the story of a crime. The future criminal thinks repeatedly of the story, he enters into it as a hero or chief actor, he then rehearses the crime repeatedly in his mind, until suddenly one day the show comes off with grim reality on the public stage of life exactly according to the mental programme, carefully elaborated in all details.”

The good Priest narrated the story of a boy of good family who came into prison on account of a crime he committed exactly as he had read it in “Stories of the Wild West.”

As long as the society is infested with bad suggestions, we should not expect a decrease in suicides and mass shootings.  Rev. Bernard Huss couldn’t have said it any better:

“Instead of punishing the criminal in the prisons we should begin at the other end and attack the evil at its source, by removing all harmful suggestions which are bad thoughts caused by idleness, which was always the beginning of all vice, bad conversation or indiscriminate talk in the presence of children, bad books and papers, had shows and various other undesirable things.”

. . Kyrie Eleison

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