Sound the P.R. Retreat.

• Author: McKissack, Fred
• Position: Public relations for the firearms industry - Brief Article

On the same morning a Georgia sophomore shot six of his fellow students, the Senate approved a bill calling for background checks on gun buyers at pawn shops and gun shows and the use of safety devices on guns. "We are all just elated over this victory," declared Vice President Al Gore, who cast the tiebreaking vote. "Finally, the majority is turning the corner and helping to protect the children and families of this country."

The bill is a good thing. It's forward-thinking. And yet, neither Congress, nor the gun advocates who lobby there, nor the much-maligned entertainment industry, nor, for that matter, the media seem very interested in a deep analysis of what drives teenagers to shoot their classmates. Instead, we have relentless, almost nauseating coverage of the weeping friends and family members of the deceased, plus a lot of glib talk about our violent culture that doesn't lead us anywhere. Forget about Marilyn Manson--the endless media coverage of the mass grieving over the school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, may have contributed more to the shooting by that fifteen-year-old Georgia boy. After carrying out his copycat crime, he put a gun in his mouth, but minutes later, he laid down his weapons and began to cry. A witness heard the boy say, "Oh, my God! I'm so scared, I'm so scared."

Clearly, he can't explain what he was doing. Can we?

The response to the school shootings has been pretty thin. Schools reacted by sending home kids who wear black trench coats or other "menacing" clothes. And purveyors of violent entertainment--Hollywood as well as gun manufacturers--were quick to embrace a similarly superficial fix.

Take two articles in The Wall Street Journal that appeared the same day as the Georgia shooting but dealt with the aftermath of Littleton, Colorado. Both stories show why it's so hard to find honest debate on difficult issues. GUN INDUSTRY CANCELS ADS, CITING CONCERNS OVER TIMING was the headline on the far-right column of the B section of the Journal. Apparently, six weeks into a new ad campaign, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) pulled the plug. The ads, which appeared in upscale publications such as The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Book Review, were canceled because the organization's leaders didn't want to offend anyone after the Columbine shooting.

"We decided the campaign would be seen as inappropriate and insensitive at this time," Robert Delfay, the group's head, told the Journal. THE...