Media Speculation around the Connecticut Shooting

The media speculation surrounding the shooter's motives is getting out of hand.

I have an abnormally high IQ and was skipped a year at school; I also had mental health difficulties as a teenager (predominantly due to severe abuse as a child) and social difficulties of an as yet undetermined cause (it has been suggested that I may be on the Autistic spectrum, but testing as a child seemed to point otherwise, yet more recently the suggestion has been revived) my entire life. I am quiet and shy with strangers, and incredibly outgoing with friends. I appear strange due to my eccentric dress sense and unusual interests and hobbies. I even like weaponry (swords, and bows specifically).

I have not, and will not, murder anyone.

I should not have to point that out!

All the press is doing is making it worse for young people who are, for one reason or another, different and find it hard to fit in. In several cases of school shootings, the perpetrators have felt outcast and bullied and the shootings have been their (terribly cruel and unproductive) way of railing against the word. Promoting this distrust of those who are different is more likely to fuel another shooting than prevent one. Yes, it is important if an individual is showing signs of being an immediate danger to themselves or others that they get the suitable help, but being different is not in and of itself such a sign.

I would like the speculation to end until whatever the actual reasons for the shooter's behaviour are revealed. It is understandable that in the wake of what happened, that people scramble to find some kind of explanation, something to answer the "why?", but in the vacuum of knowledge left by the perpetrator's suicide, it is not right for the press to be promoting hearsay rather than fact.

I am especially upset by the suggestion that the shooter was Goth. There has so far been no evidence to substantiate such a claim, and after what happened with Columbine, I am concerned about misidentification of the individual as a member of a subculture they are not part of, and the repercussions against Goths that might occur (such as the incidents I have heard of people being called in for interrogation based on their sense of dress, and of heightened bullying). There are already a lot of misinformed people when it comes to the Goth subculture. It may turn out that the perpetrator was a member of the subculture, but even him being Goth will not have been the reason he did this; violence is not part of our subculture, and pointing out any subcultural affiliation is sensationalism, and harmful sensationalism based on existing negative misinformation about the nature of Goth.

The incident is being used as a platform upon which various political ideologies are debated, from the nature of mental health care in the United States of America to whether there should fewer guns or more guns there, and the details of gun control (which I gather varies significantly between states.) to the role of the media and the internet in the glorification of violence, and in this debate, I think something very important is being lost:

A tragedy has unfolded in which 20 children and 7 adults have died, many families are grieving, many mothers and fathers have now outlived their sons and daughters. People have died, people are hurting. That is the important thing. I do not wish to name the shooter because I feel that in naming him, he is getting posthumous infamy, and becoming the centre of media attention, when the centre of our attention should focus on those who have been hurt. That includes the shooter's family - his brother, his father, as they have to deal with the fact that the shooter killed his own mother first