From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Sun Jun 06 1999 - 18:52:39 MDT
At 08:05 PM 6/6/99 EDT, QueeneMUSE@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 6/6/99 4:00:43 PM, EVMick wrote:
>
>>Something to the effect that the media only reports the unusual ...if it's
>>commonplace it isn't news so it's not reported..
>
>Nobody put that thing about my nephew killing a neighbor boy accidentally on
>the news..
Of course not. Thousands of fatal accidents happen every day, and most due
to ignorance or carelessness. Accidentally shooting someone is a
combination of the two and not worth reporting.
*Nothing* is safe as long as ignorance and carelessness abound; fix these
and you've solved the problem. Deaths due to pathological individuals are
negligible when compared to deaths caused by ignorance and carelessness.
In this light, pretending that violent individuals are a major threat in
the bigger picture is ridiculous, particularly if you discount state
sponsored killing. Saying that violent people having guns is a major
contributing factor is even more ridiculous, since only a small fraction of
murders are commited with guns in the U.S. despite cheap availability on
the black market.
Perhaps intentional gun killings are news because they are (statistically)
an extremely unusual way to die for the average citizen. If you discount
violent criminals killing each other (e.g. drug cartels), the odds of you
being murdered with a gun are vanishingly small.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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