The Newtown shooting makes us feel helpless. We don't need to be - Charlie Brooker...

A rare serious article by my favourite writer.

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'Over the past few days a fair few people have retweeted an excerpt from a show I made in 2009 in which a psychologist urged news organisations not to sensationalise their coverage of massacres, on the basis that this had the potential to inspire further tragedies. That may well be true, and there's no harm pursuing it. But the best way to improve media coverage of massacres is to prevent massacres. And try as I might, I can't think of a better way to prevent massacres than reducing the number of guns in circulation.

Twenty children shot at close range with an assault rifle. You could argue that the choice of weapon is irrelevant; that a truly unhinged individual would still find the means to kill. Maybe that's true; I don't know. All I know is that 20 children were shot at close range with an assault rifle, and that only a lunatic nation wouldn't try everything it could think of to make that less likely to happen again.

America, don't be helpless. Look at the faces. Feel how much it hurts. Try to stop it happening again.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/17/newtown-shooting-helpless-charlie-brooker