There's a saying in the news business: "If it bleeds, it leads."

Horrifying stories, terrible tragedies, and other awful news gets made into national stories, in part because that's what audiences respond to. Everyone says they want happy news but as a one-time publisher of a local newspaper, I can tell you that they really don't.

Then there are the potential political ramifications of a story, and in this era of a very politically-motivated mainstream media, that matters a great deal as well.

So I'm not surprised so few of us heard about the mass shooting that didn't happen.

Luckily, over at our sister site RedState, Jennifer Oliver O’Connell did hear about it.

Ontario Christian High School in Ontario, California, narrowly averted a mass shooting incident. Eighteen-year-old Sebastian Villaseñor was charged on Wednesday with one count of attempted criminal threat and five counts of attempted murder. He was arraigned on Thursday and is being held without bail.

An 18-year-old student at Ontario Christian High School has been arrested and charged after investigators learned that he planned to shoot five students at his school and had researched police response times and tactical supplies, Ontario Police Chief Michael Lorenz said Wednesday, Feb. 14.

Investigators learned that Sebastian Bailey Villaseñor “was fixated on school shootings and had access to weapons,” Lorenz said.

One of his potential victims went to Ontario High School Principal Benjamin Dykhouse to report their suspicions. To Dykhouse's credit, he took the threat seriously and alerted the Ontario Police.. 

...

The criminal complaint said he targeted five “Jane Doe” students at the school.

Villaseñor was being held without bail at West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga. The county jail log shows he was arrested at a home in Eastvale.

Ontario Police Chief Michael Lorenz said, at the Thursday press conference outlining the incident and the charges, that Villaseñor had an obsession with the Columbine shooting, and law enforcement surmised that Villaseñor planned to mount his attack on April 20, the anniversary of the Columbine massacre.

Part of why we didn't hear anything about it was that the shooter didn't fit the narrative. He wasn't an angry, MAGA-voting white male who hated literally everyone.

Granted, that didn't stop some people from trying to make it out to be just that.

Update on school shooting plot averted by tip from a student this week.

An 18-year-old Ontario Christian High School (CA) student who was plotting to shoot five fellow students developed his hate-based and neo-nazi ideologies online.

High school senior “was fixated on school… pic.twitter.com/ghy7rdgHf5

— K-12 School Shooting Database (@K12ssdb) February 17, 2024

Only here's a better pic of the kid.

Like for example this post says white supremacy and white supremacy struff about this guy, but here’s a better picture and it kinda makes me think he ain’t so white 👈just sayin…. pic.twitter.com/KD10V9XbNX

— NIGHT WATCHMAN (@wastatecrime) February 17, 2024

That's right. Not a white dude, so while he might have had an issue with LGBT folks and minorities, he was a minority himself. And he apparently was targeting five female students, none of whom are known to the media. How did the K-12 Shooting Database figure they were LGBT and minority students in the first place?

Or did they just pull all of that out of their posteriors?

Additionally, this was in heavily gun-controlled California. That AR-15 doesn't exactly look like it meets the state's assault weapon ban restrictions, so that suggests gun control didn't work like it's supposed to work.

Shocking, I know.

But the big takeaway, at least for me, is how this was prevented.

Someone realized what was happening and contacted the principal. He took the threat seriously and acted, thus saving whoever these "five Jane Does" actually were. He ended the threat with no casualties or even the trauma of a shooting thwarted in the act. Not a lick of gun control was needed.

Which has got to be a big reason why most of us never heard of it.