Nicholas Scott Brown, a 19-year-old resident of Liberty, Mo., was arrested and charged for making terrorist threats in the first degree in mid-August. 

On Aug. 12, the FBI contacted the Clay County Sheriff’s Office about a terrorist threat Brown allegedly made on the social media app Snapchat. 

In the video Brown had allegedly posted, a white man waved a gun at the camera while threatening to go on a shooting rampage. “”I’m really f***ing half tempted to to think about running up in all these f***ing stores and just shooting everybody,” Brown allegedly said. 

When contacted by the police, Brown was in possession of two loaded guns: a semi-automatic pistol and a 12-gauge shotgun. Court documents also say that Brown stated he was “very protective of his guns and if an officer pointed a weapon at him, he would point one back.” Brown is currently being held on a $100,000 bond in the Clay County Detention Center. 

The incident with Brown is one of three such incidents of terrorist threats that occurred in Missouri in August.  Early in the month, a 20-year-old man in Springfield, Mo. was arrested and charged after walking into a Walmart carrying a loaded rifle and wearing body armor.

The man, Dmitriy Andreychenko, is quoted in a police statement as saying he “wanted to know if that Walmart honored the 2nd Amendment”. Andreychenko is being charged with making terrorist threats in the second degree and could face four years in prison or a fine of $10,000, according to NPR. 

On Aug. 17th in Jefferson City,Mo., 26-year-old Brian Groner was charged with making a terrorist threat. Groner allegedly posted “Your Next Mass Shooter. Columbine won’t have (expletive) on me,” on his Facebook page and it was seen by over 10 people. The post was set to be visible to the general public.

Groner also allegedly stated “The Columbine shooters were lame because they only killed 12 people. I could do better and kill more than 12.” 

Although no one has been arrested or charged, in early August the Kansas City Police Department stated that they were investigating a potential threat, posted on Reddit, to an area Walmart. No further updates on the case have been given. 

According to the Pew Research Center, active shooter incidents have become more common in recent years. After the recent El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio shootings, threats of mass killings have been on the rise. 

There have been 292 mass shootings this year, A mass shooting is defined as a shooting where four or more people are injured or killed. Mass shootings have still only accounted for 0.75 percent of all gun-related violent incidents this year. 

It is very unlikely to be caught in an active shooter situation, but if you find yourself in such a situation and hear gunfire, attempt to escape first. Be familiar with the emergency exits in places you frequent, and do not pull the fire alarm. If escape is not an option, hide and stay quiet. Call 911 if it is safe to do so and you have your phone with you. If you absolutely must fight, throw or use whatever you can against the attacker. 

The first bomb detonated March 2 on the front porch of Anthony Stephan House, who was killed in the explosion. This first death was initially believed to be related to gang violence in the area before later being investigated as suspicious.

On March 12, the second and third bombs detonated, prompting police to investigate the three bombings as related incidents. The second bombing killed 17-year-old Draylen Mason when his mother brought the package into their kitchen. His mother was also injured in the explosion. The third bomb exploded about 15 minutes from the location of the second bomb. A 75-year-old lady was injured and taken to the hospital after handling the bomb.

After the third bomb, law enforcement began reaching out to the bomber through media channels.

On March 18, the fourth bomb exploded and injured two men walking on a sidewalk in an Austin neighborhood. The explosion was triggered by a tripwire. The two men, 22- and 23-years-old, sustained “significant injuries” but were reported to be in stable condition in the hospital.

The fourth bombing prompted the police to increase the reward for information on the bomber to $100,000. The fourth bomb was later reported by Austin Police Chief Brian Manley to indicate a higher level of sophistication than previously thought. Additional law enforcement officers came to Austin to aid the investigation.

On March 20, a fifth package exploded at a FedEx sorting facility in Schertz, Texas. The package was delivered from and addressed to addresses in Austin yet was at the sorting facility outside of the city. One person sustained a small injury but was not taken to the hospital.

Later that day, another package was identified at a different FedEx sorting facility near the Austin airport. The suspicious package was determined by law enforcement to contain an explosive and was subsequently removed. FedEx confirmed that the two packages were sent by the same individual.

On March 21, law enforcement identified a suspect and traced him to a hotel parking lot in Round Rock, Texas. The suspect’s car was followed from the parking lot, but it was driven into a ditch where it exploded. The suspect, Mark Anthony Conditt, 23, died from the explosion.   

At a press conference that evening, Manley says that Conditt left a video confessing to the bombings. He claimed to have made seven bombs. Including the bomb that detonated Conditt’s car, all seven were identified.

After criticism of the police department for their handling of the investigation, Manley called Conditt a domestic terrorist during a press conference March 29. Some of this criticism was due to a perceived lack of police and media attention regarding the initial bombings believed to be because the first victims of the bombings were black and Hispanic. The first victims were prominent members of the African American and Hispanic communities, so this interpreted lack of attention has been especially criticized. It was only once a bomb exploded in a prominent, white neighborhood that the bombings received national attention.

Critics speculated that Manley hesitated to call Conditt a domestic terrorist because he was white. Manley attributes his hesitancy to use the term to “domestic terrorist” having a legal definition Manley was not comfortable with using without more information.

Despite speculation about the bombings being hate crimes, due to the racial makeup of the victims, or politically motivated crimes, Conditt’s confession did not mention a motive. Manley claimed the bomber’s motives may never be known.

Photo credits to CNN.

Leading up to this assassination attempt, Hinckley was obsessed with the 1976 film “Taxi Driver.” The action film centers around Travis Bickle, a clearly deranged man who, after attempting to assassinate a presidential candidate, saves a child prostitute (played by Jodie Foster) by killing her pimp and a few others in a gloriously gory scene. Hinckley, impressed by Foster’s performance, became unhealthily infatuated with her, going so far as to stalk her at Yale. In effort to get her attention and prove his worthiness, Hinckley decided to follow the example of Foster’s hero, Bickle, in “Taxi Driver” and attempted to kill the president. Unsurprisingly, Foster was not impressed.

April 20, 1999: Columbine High School seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold enter their school on a Tuesday morning carrying pipe bombs concealed in duffel bags. They leave them in the cafeteria, set to detonate during the busiest lunch hour, and return to Klebold’s car to watch the chaos unfold. When the time comes but no bombs have detonated, they grab their sawed-off shotguns and begin a rampage that starts in the school’s front lawn and ends with their suicides in the library. Twelve students and one teacher are killed. Twenty-four others withstand severe but non-fatal injuries. A countless number of people remain psychologically scarred by the day’s events.

Though the attack was frequently described as a lashing out in initial reports, Harris and Klebold spent over a year formulating their plan to be like “the LA riots, the Oklahoma bombing, WWII, Vietnam, Duke and Doom all mixed together.” They saw the massacre as a “mission,” retribution for the injustice they experienced at the hands of school bullies. They wished to reenact the shooting video games they played obsessively. They matched the theatricality of their video games with knee-length trench coats covering plain shirts with custom messages. Klebold’s shirt read “WRATH” Harris’s, “NATURAL SELECTION.”  

May 23, 2014: After sending a 107,000-word manifesto to his therapist, family and a few acquaintances, University of California, Santa Barbara student Elliot Rodger kills his three roommates before driving to the campus sorority houses and shooting three sorority members, killing the first two and injuring the third. He gets back in his car and drives to a deli, where he shoots and kills another student. He drives away from the scene, injuring several pedestrians with his car, until he crashes at an intersection. In the wreckage, he turns the gun on himself and dies.

Rodger spent his life blaming others for everything bad in his life. The reason that no girls liked him or that no one wanted to be his friend or that he failed in school was always other people. So, he abandoned reality, escaping into violent video games where he could control the fate of others. The massacre, inspired by “Diablo II” and “Halo,” was Rodger’s transfer of the control he felt in video games to the real world. Unfortunately, in real life, killing people does not have the same appeal and almost always results in death or prison.

There are several obvious commonalities among these examples. Guns? Sure. Mental illness? Maybe. Although these violent events are multi-causal, I emphasize the role of the glorification of violence.

First and foremost, I think it is tremendously important to maintain a nuanced and balanced view of these events. It is not the sensationalization of violence in media nor poor mental health services nor bad parenting nor gun (de)regulation nor any of the millions of reasons alone that provokes tragedies of this caliber. In every case, a blend of unfortunate circumstances pushes unstable individuals to horrific actions. The blend is not the same in every case. In some, mental illness plays a dominant role. In others, a video game addiction may desensitize an already unstable individual to the point that he believes extreme violence is an appropriate response to a perceived injustice.

However, it is negligent to refuse to delve into a probable cause simply because it is “not the only reason.” A good understanding of every contributing factor is necessary to prevent attacks like these, especially as the rate of massacres in the U.S. increases.

Whether it be in the formative pubescent years or volatile young adulthood, the media possess an enormously powerful stronghold. The thrall of media can imprint patterns incongruous with reality on impressionable minds. A multitude of studies have found that violent TV shows, movies and video games lead to aggressive behavior.

Excessive intake of media can dissociate the consumer from the real world. Especially for unstable individuals, these violent media can enchant to the point of superseding reality. John Hinckley Jr. was plagued with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder that denied him a firm concept of reality or personal identity. He was so enthralled by “Taxi Driver” that, after watching it fourteen times in theaters, he virtually assumed the identity of the main character, ultimately believing that he must kill the president to win Jodie Foster’s love.

Similarly, Elliot Rodger spent entire days in cyber cafés, playing first-person killing games, like “Halo” and “Diablo II,” or “World of Warcraft,” a fantasy role-playing game. Eventually his worldview adopted the offensive elements of these games. He began to frame life as him against the world, and he was intent on winning.

Violent video games are particularly dangerous because they enable the player to commit unspeakable acts without consequence. In his diary, Harris wrote that the massacre at Columbine will be just like “Doom,” a first-person shooter game. He also remarked that he intended to achieve a body count higher than the Oklahoma City bombing. Through a steady flow of video games and movies that conflated violence with entertainment, Harris began to think of tragic events as competitions in which the more profound tragedy wins.

Avid video gamers may be reading this with indignation, presumably thinking, “I’ve played all sorts of violent video games and haven’t committed or even considered carrying out an action similar these.” Perhaps not. But simply because most have not been inspired to commit violent acts because of violent media does not mean no one has. Furthermore, just because you have not noticed any changes in behavior does not mean that violent media has not changed you implicitly.

This argument isn’t meant to advocate a limitation of artistic license in media. Rather, it argues the opposite. Since the 1970s, violence in media has skyrocketed. Scriptwriters have forgone intricate storytelling for fantastic scenes of gore and savagery. Creators have realized that the best-selling content contains two things: sex and violence. Some of the most influential media combine the two to create an even more attention-grabbing and potentially dangerous breed of content. Take “Taxi Driver” or “Grand Theft Auto,” for example.

While I believe mental health is the number one priority in cultivating safety, universal mental health is not a realistic prospect and its imperfection is subject to a number of uncontrollable variables. By no means does mental instability automatically correlate to violence, but violent media can have much more profound effects on mentally vulnerable individuals. Unstable viewers of violent media like Hinckley or Rodger may be so entranced that the content becomes reality. How do we prevent media-born seeds of violence from being planted in their minds?

Many advocate increased government regulation of media, but federal regulation does not seem like an appropriate response. The Brady Bill, named after Reagan’s press secretary James Brady, who was shot during Hinckley’s assassination attempt, was passed by President Bill Clinton in 1994. The bill mandated background checks and required a waiting period after the purchase of a handgun. Has this piece of legislation affected conspicuous change in the rate of violence? Not evidently.

The prevalence of violent media has only increased. The difference between efforts like gun control or increased mental health awareness and the discouragement of violent media is that, while the U.S. government and NGOs have made efforts to ensure the former, the prevalence of violent media has been left essentially unregulated. Left unchecked, violent media could eventually ingrain itself into American culture.

Though incredibly idealistic, an industry-and culture-wide commitment to move away from media that glorify violence is needed to prevent the proliferation and normalization of violence. A more manageable approach is to provide fact-based data proving the connection between violent media and aggression to schools and parents, who influence what media kids consume. If we bring attention to this correlation and it is appropriately addressed, perhaps we will finally see a downward trend in violence in the U.S.

Photo courtesy of New York Times.

*Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to “Grand Theft Auto.” It should have referred to “Halo” and “Diablo II.”