In the aftermath of the shooting massacre at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Democrats have set a one-week deadline for the United States Senate to reach a compromise on legislative action. With the country reeling from two consecutive rampages by teenage gunmen in just ten days, the public is clamoring for Congress to “do something!”

The mainstream media is, per usual, unhelpfully generating more heat than light. James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University who has tracked mass gun violence for decades, tells City Journal, “There is not an epidemic of mass shootings. What’s increasing, and is out of control, is the epidemic of fear.” Kentucky State University political scientist Wilfred Reilly points out that while the media stereotype of the typical perpetrator “is almost certainly a mentally troubled white, conservative young man… the demographics of the crazed mass-murderer ‘population’ roughly match those of the US overall.” Kevin Williamson, a senior correspondent for National Review, dispels the persistent myth that American homes are bristling with weapons. In fact, guns are less common in US households, now, than in the hippy era. By 2014, almost two thirds of Americans did not live under a roof with a firearm compared to less than half in 1973.

As the public gropes for solutions to the confounding problem of mass shooters, the media could help by giving these malicious malcontents less of the attention they crave.