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Shared From The Claw News- Having to "Narrow Down" News Reports About the Mass Shooting of Children. [1]

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Date: 2023-03-27

I don’t usually do this, however I can’t be heard, and we can’t therefore amplify each other, without some help. Optics aside, I am republishing a piece from my newsletter on gun violence affecting children.

I can be respectful and quiet in the moment. Or I can do something. If now is not the time, when is?

The number made me pause.

82 since 1996. That is how many people have died due to mass gun violence in Australia. As I have said previously in the United States, we call that, January.

Or February.

Or March. And on and on it goes. But this emphasis of mine started because I was trying to find a story about the case in Utah where a father allegedly murdered his entire family, including multiple children. I was working on my newsletter and wanted to write about the case.

It is true there are many factors involved in the makings of a mass shooter, and means is obviously one of them. But as a journalist, I am trying to investigate other root problems, such as undiagnosed illnesses of the mind, stressors, drug abuse, and so forth.

As you might have guessed, I Googled the appropriate subject heading. Now you might think, and I would have thought you would be right, that the tragedy in Utah would be the first to pop up. I was not so optimistic as to think that just Googling “mass shootings” would pull up the information I was looking for.

I figured, it has been five days, so not narrowing it down to children would pull up a lot of results. This realization is chilling.

However, imagine if you will a world so depraved, scratch that, a nation so depraved, that in the first week of the year, while searching for the term “child mass shooting” I was served up several results.

The. First. Week. of. the. Year. These were not headlines accumulated in the search engine over time.

These were recent headlines.

So my thought process went like this:

If I Google reports about mass shootings I get about ten results. If I Google it with the qualifier of “child” in front I still get multiple results. So my brain goes:

We have now reached the “online car buying” stage of gun violence statistical analysis in this country.

What do I mean by that? Say you want to research a car, and we will say car= researching gun violence.

A sedan? That is a subcategory, so we will equate that to researching mass shootings.

Color of sedan?

What transmission?

Sunroof?

Do you see where I am going with this?

Gun violence

-mass shootings

-mass shootings of children

-mass shootings of children by family member (home)

-mass shootings of children by a family member of victim or victims, (school)

-mass shootings of children in school, non-family perpetrator

And on it goes.

When I have to sit down and sort through multiple examples of mass murder of children by firearms, we have long since leapt off the rails and are now in full “Hope this train secretly flies” mode.

That I had to do it based upon the events of the first week in January?

The first week of 52?

There were so many mass shootings in less than seven days there were applicable subcategories?

Are you kidding me?

Year to date, there have been more mass shootings, (general) than days in the year in the United States of America. Here is another way to look at this, and this is for those who stumble upon this who might be more neutral on the gun issue. In 2022, approximately 44,000 people died due to firearms.

From Part 1 in The Claw News-

Would any of these happened with a knife? Yes, mass stabbings happen. It happened in Idaho. Are they nearly as likely? Not at all. You will live a long time before you hear about a drive-by stabbing. Every day, dozens of Americans fall victim to a preventable plague: gun violence. And every year, the infinite thoughts and prayers keep flowing, almost as much as the NRA money to campaign coffers. So this is not really a story about a single episode of gun violence. This is a story about a reporter, me, trying to get information on a single story had to sift through literal mounds of other similar stories just to get the information. Past the point when a citizen is queried “Did you hear about the mass shooting?” and the response is “Which one?” somebody with authority should have engaged in some deep reflection and stepped up. “Which one?” is a question that should be reserved for a piece of jewelry, or a uniform, or a selection of cupcakes. We should not have to “narrow down” the subject matter. By the end of this calendar week, we are on statistical course to have had more mass shootings than the entire nation of Australia since 1996, the Port Arthur, Tasmania, Massacre. Since the implementation of gun control, 82 people have died due to mass shootings in Australia. 82. In 26 years. In the United States, there is a term for that: January.

Not a sword. Not a knife. Not a Chinese star, gun violence. I make this point to explain that a gun makes the process of taking life more efficient. Now let’s say, that there are 330,000,001 people in the country. This means one in 7,500 died in 2022 because of gun violence. Ok that does not get your attention. You don’t go out much, or you “know how to handle yourself.” Fine.

Ever heard of Russian Roulette? You know, when someone loads the chamber of a gun with one round and spins it?

Sure, projected outcomes can’t exactly be randomized. There are obvious socio-economic, and psychological factors making some more vulnerable to gun violence than others. Nevertheless, it is never far from my mind that living in this country forces me to play a game of 1 in 7,500 Russian Roulette.

I am not choosing to play it. I am forced to just by the act of buying groceries. Or watching a movie.

Yet only about half of us even own a gun. Most of us rarely use them. I am not one of them. I despise firearms. Now most of us do have cars, and use them daily. And yet, even with a higher frequency of use, and to be honest, a more complicated operating procedure, we find this number from 2021, courtesy of the CDC:

Motor vehicle traffic deaths Number of deaths: 45,404

Deaths per 100,000 population: 13.7 Source: National Vital Statistics System – Mortality Data (2021) via CDC WONDER All firearm deaths Number of deaths: 48,830

Deaths per 100,000 population: 14.7

Out of an average year as measured in 2019, Americans spend about 18 days in some form of motor vehicle transportation. 18 days.

We do not spend 18 days around weapons. And yet, even with about five percent of our lives being spent in a car, the rate of gun violence death is higher. But as I close, let’s return to the original focus of this story, which is children.

And what is the leading cause of death among children in the United States of America?

Child and Teen Firearm Mortality in the U.S. and Peer Countries Firearms recently became the number one cause of death for children in the United States, surpassing motor vehicle deaths and those caused by other injuries. We examine how gun violence and other types of firearm deaths among children and teens in the United States compares to rates in similarly large and wealthy countries. We select comparable large and wealthy countries by identifying Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member nations with above median GDP and above median GDP per capita in at least one year from 2010-2020. Using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Wonder database and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study data, we compare fatality rates and disability estimates for people ages 1 through 19. (Since estimates were not available for children ages 1-17 alone, young adults ages 18 and 19 are grouped with children for the purposes of this brief).

Compared to similar countries, a child in the United States is roughly 19 times more likely to die by gun violence.

19 times. That is not a nation as much as a warzone.

We have become the kind of nation Fodor’s used to warn us about traveling to.

And even if that train that left the rails can fly, there is nowhere in my own country where it feels safe to land.

-ROC

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If you enjoy my writing, please consider joining my newsletter. It helps provide for my family as I try to regain my health, and we are building a progressive army for change, one subscriber at a time! We can be the change we seek! Join The Claw News by clicking here!

Love,

-ROC

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