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Terrorism is a meme - a true social contagion. Shooting into a random crowd is a popular meme in the US. Driving into one is popular in Germany [1]. Talking about a meme in the context of concern and apprehension is the vector. I think in the US, putting “assault rifles” in the news in perpetuity chiefly serves to remind individuals that the meme exists - it’s within the realm of possibilities for stuff to do and it’s easy/doable (quotidian). I acknowledge it’s somewhat ridiculous, but very clearly people couldn’t shoot masses without first considering it. I can enumerate any number of ridiculous things that no one is doing, benign or terrible. Naming and discussing them births them into the world.
Not naming the shooter is just the opposite. Not discussing the shooting is even better; no notoriety, no acknowledgment, no fame, no infamy, no victims, no crying mothers, no nothing. The extent to which Democrats rail against public shootings is the extent to which we will continue to have more. They communicate: “I’m so upset when you do this thing” which is received as a nine year old would: “do this to upset me”. The incentive is wrong for the media as defecting is directly rewarded with money/praise/concern! This is the lifecycle of the meme without which it would not exist.
Sometimes memes go out of style. Domestic bombings were all the rage in 1973 in the US (although those were not distributed in nature). In that case, they stopped when the perpetrators sorta blew themselves up, sorta got arrested, the news sorta stopped reporting it, and they sorta decided bombing police stations wasn’t changing the world, so they became Ivy League professors instead! So good luck to you. Planting bollards everywhere is a strong reminder that driving your car into people is a thing that you can do this weekend and telling people not to talk about it is worse!
1.https://old.reddit.com/r/2westerneurope4u/comments/1j2je9e/your_average_german_afternoon/
Most of the "hate crime" stuff follows this through line: treat every poorly-drawn swastika as a hate crime, and you will continue to get more poorly drawn swastikas.
More cynically, hate crimes and/or terrorism are political currency, so there's a supply and a demand. The demand vastly exceeds its supply; that's why the media (and the types of people who find themselves working for the media) would like to create more of them.
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