Dear NY Times;
Thank you for your reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic. Your graphics are particularly elucidating. A good graphic representation of numerical data allows the reader to draw conclusions and generate pertinent questions. A good graphic communicates more than raw numbers. Your map of the country with red circles proportionate to the numbers of COVID-19 cases is excellent. I see that the Washington Post has a similar graphic.
This graphic would be perfect for the other epidemic this country is experiencing, gun violence.
Please publish the same map of the country with red circles proportionate to the numbers of shootings-not just deaths, as non-fatal shootings often result in permanent disfigurement and disability from spinal cord or brain injuries and nerve injuries in the extremities-throughout the country. Please publish this map at the end of every month with the running total of shootings represented in what we know will be enlarging red circles.
Your readership benefits from a better understanding of the spread of the coronavirus. It results in citizens taking appropriate precautionary measures to prevent the spread of the infection. Publication of a gun violence map will have a similar effect on citizens taking action to slow the far more dangerous, far more corrosive epidemic of gun violence.
Sincerely
A reader more likely to suffer (or know someone who suffers) from gun violence than the corona virus.