Overall gun deaths and mass shootings
have very little to do with each other. I personally would favor
stronger gun laws -- but not based on mass shooting incidents.
<This graphic> from 538.com describes the situation quite well.
Mass shootings are a fraction of one
slender column in this big array of gun deaths. To be fair, if we
restricted our attention to "clearly unjust gun deaths"
then it would be a somewhat bigger piece. Two-thirds of the gun
deaths are suicides. It's a good guess that a majority of the deaths
from police shooting civilians are justified -- armed people who were
threatening the police or others. And not all but many of the young
men killed by guns are in gangs and have signed up for this
possibility by joining gangs.
But with all that removed, and allowing
for a few more mass deaths since 2016, it's still maybe 2% of the
total for a year? The way to address the other 98% as well as that 2%
might be with gun ownership restrictions. But the world's outrage is
all focused on the 2%.
What we have is a media phenomenon.
They are irresistibly drawn to dramatic stories of this kind, even
though they will leave unreported a thousand simple one-person gun
homicides. The media are drawn to it because people are drawn to
watch the coverage. Crucially, a few young men in an antisocial frame
of mind are drawn to watch the coverage too and inspired to get their
brief moment of fame in the same way. It is a cycle that feeds on
itself.
My claim is that we as a society aren't
actually concerned about the number of people killed, we are
concerned about the news stories. If there were fewer news stories we
would be happier. We might not think that, but that's how we behave.
The way to reduce these reports (and
ultimately, the violence itself, hopefully) is through the coverage
and consumption of news, not the availability of guns. If we ignored
issues of press freedom, we could pass a law limiting the coverage to
bare bones facts and no sensationalism. We could prohibit publication
of any images, still or video, as well as sensational text. Instead,
just a text account of the location of the crime, number and names of
victims. We seem able to suppress identities and lurid details for
sexual abuse victims, maybe we could harness some of the same energy?
Perhaps we could make such images illegal as we do with child
pornography. Without the oxygen of publicity, such crimes would start
declining.
That might be a hard sell, and press
freedom really is worth a lot. But citizens could unite in expressing
their opposition to news outlets carrying sensational coverage and
then organize boycotts of the advertisers. Are people willing to turn
the spotlight back on themselves for the role they play in these
shootings? Giving ratings numbers to outlets that cover these stories
sensationally is a clear cause, and a dip in ratings is the way to
affect the behavior of news organizations.
Of course, with a video camera in every
phone today and the viral video phenomenon, an end run around any
such measures is in place. Given that, here's the hard truth about
the the way to get a reduction in such news reports. It will happen
if they become common enough that they're not interesting news any
more. Commentators will passionately tell us that if we ever get used
to such things then we're losing our very humanity. But that
perspective is from within the bubble of the news mentality. If such
incidents became common enough, then the news coverage would go down.
The actual murder rate might go up a little, but even if it went up
50% that would be from 2% to 3% of the total, and it still doesn't
mean much when the other 97% go unaddressed. And the actual good
news: the rate also might go down again, as once the phenomenon is
common enough to not be news, fewer perps would be motivated by the
news and it could decrease without triggering the opposite reaction
of "it's news again".
Have we not lost our humanity in our
indifference to the other 97% of clearly unjust gun homicides? Have
we lost our humanity in not responding to the inability for ordinary
working people to earn a living wage? For the unavailability of
health insurance? And worst of all, for the climate change nightmare
that is unfolding? Maybe we have, and should ignore sensational mass
shootings and focus on those things instead.
The news is a seriously flawed tool if
your goal is to decide how to improve the world.
We have a need for another "news"
program -- maybe more an "olds" program. I might call it
"Boring But Important".
I addressed these same basic issues
over a decade ago in <two> <posts> that I think are still entirely valid.
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