Every time a shooting occurs, from the Columbine and Virginia Tech to Aurora and Sandy Hook, all major news networks plaster the names, pictures, and stories of the shooters all over television for several weeks, and even longer if the shooter lives to face trial. This process makes all such shooters into anti-heroes, individuals who are burned into our cultural memory. No one remembers the names of the victims, yet news coverage ensures that we will never forget the shooter. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the perpetrators of the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre, are household names. Everyone knows who they are, what they did, how they did it, their claimed reasons for doing it, and even what video game (Doom) they liked to play.

Such romanticization of shooters can have, and has had, dire consequences. Seung-Hui Co, the perpetrator of the 2007 Virginia Tech Massacre, the single most deadly shooting spree by a single gunman in U.S. history, referred to Harris and Klebold as "martyrs".

Glorifying shooters only inspires others to act in a similar fashion, and it has come to the point that now one of the easiest ways for a person to get his or her name forever carved into history is to pick up a gun and mercilessly slaughter as many people as possible before taking their own life. Such lives should be mere footnotes in police reports hidden away in a drawer, not the stuff of legend.

Coverage of shootings ought to focus on the victims and facts, and, even then, should not be "breaking news" for weeks to follow. The shooter's identity should be irrelevant to the media, and news anchors should stop asking "why" every single time such a travesty occurs, because we all know why: it's because the shooter knew you'd ask that question repeatedly for weeks while waving the body count around like a bloody flag.

In the end, a heightened awareness of mental illness is the best response. Sensationalism just perpetuates the cycle.