After reading about the 4-year-old killed in Minnesota over Memorial Day
(CNN) weekend I wanted some context. That's because the horribleness of the incident wasn't registering with media coverage. Sure, a Google news search produces 152 related articles, but almost all are repeats of the same several paragraph AP report. No photos, no local reporters and no commentary. Give it time, perhaps. But I expect just a few more comments and then the story will move on. Why?
The reason why is because kids dying from guns is common in America. According to the Children's Defense Fund
(source), 2867 kids and teens died from guns in 2002. And of those 71 were under age 5. Every day there are 8 deaths - 55 a week. In past twenty years there have been nearly 100,000 deaths in the US.
And so another death is not uncommon. But it is an outrage and a tragedy. Every one of the deaths should make national news. The news cycle for each death should be weeks. There is no excuse for so many senseless deaths to happen.
The disease is stupidity and greed. The symptom of this disease is dead children. And since stupidity and greed are treatable ailments, there is no excuse for the disease to go untreated. The stupidity is not on an individual level. Rather, it's societal. We are an idiot and dumb-as-shit society when it comes to how we react to the news that every week 55 of our children are killed by guns. Rather than ask what can be done to stop this, rather than acting on how much we value the lives of children, we just give up and accept that nothing can be done. While the stupidity is societal, the greed is individual. It's greed for money and for power. Those who want money buy those who want power. And the two are in collusion, in a conspiracy of inaction and neglect.
There is no excuse for us to let this continue. Our outrage should make us figure out a way to prevent every possible preventable death. Either we do this, or we don't really value the lives of children or of people in general. And if that is the case, then fuck us all.
My blog: PoliticalSmartAss.com