“There’s A Larger Story”: Why Won’t The Press Put U.S. Gun Violence In Context?
Another unfolding American gun massacre has produced an avalanche news coverage, but it’s coverage that continues to omit crucial context about gun violence and the rash of often public shooting sprees that plague the country. It’s a troubling journalism trend, and one that seems to be getting worse. As America recoils from new shootings, the news media are casting the gun horrors in less context, not more.
It’s true that the press is moving away from presenting shooting sprees as isolated incidents. The coverage of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., has been rich with references to the Aurora, Colo., movie theater massacre from this summer. Then again, how can reporters not connect the dots from those two rampages to a sweeping cultural and criminal problem, and one that continues to worsen and extends to all corners of the country.
But simply acknowledging the deadly trend doesn’t mean the news media are providing much-needed context. For instance, each year roughly 30,000 Americans die from gun violence. By comparison, since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, approximately 4,300 Americans have died in that conflict.
As Forbes’ Rob Waters noted, from the period between 2000 to 2009, “If you exclude natural causes of death and consider only deaths caused by injury, [gun violence] is the second-leading cause of death over that time span; only car accidents (417,000) killed more people.” And according to Bloomberg News, the number of Americans killed by guns will soon exceed the yearly number of auto fatalities, as auto-related deaths are falling and gun fatalities are rising.
To understand the larger story of gun violence in America, people have to understand the context. People have to be aware of the 30,000 figure. They ought to know, for instance, that in the week since Newtown, an estimated 500 Americans have died from gunfire, and more than 1,200 have been wounded. They ought to know that just since the Sand Hook School massacre, approximately 50 more American children and teens have died from gunfire.
If we don’t understand the saturation status we’re not going to understand the steady stream of public shooting sprees.
But news consumers aren’t getting that information from the media – at least not in the wake of the Newtown tragedy.
Very few mentions of the 30,000 statistic have appeared in newspaper articles or on television segments about the Connecticut massacre. In fact, a Nexis search uncovers only two major newspaper news articles that referenced that key figure in the last week, one in the San Francisco Chronicle, on December 18, and one in the Hartford Courant December 19. (The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Tampa Tribune and Indianapolis Star published references to the 30,000-death statistic in opinion pieces about the Newtown killings.)
On television, the references were just as rare: I found only four. One each on PBS, CNN, NBC and MSNBC.
It’s possible that a handful of additional newspaper news accounts and television discussions mentioned the fact that approximately 30,000 people die from gunfire every year. (Nexis transcripts don’t capture every cable news segment.) But given the extraordinary amount of coverage of the Newtown shooting, the press had ample opportunities to highlight the 30,000 number. But these findings indicate that the references were quite scarce. In fact, they were even scarcer than when I urged the press to include crucial gun death context following the Aurora gun massacre in July.
Other key points that have been largely ignored in the Newtown coverage:
•There are huge economic costs associated with gun violence. For example, firearm-related deaths and injuries resulted in medical and lost of productivity expenses of about $32 billion in the U.S., according to most recently available data.
•Gun violence is among the leading causes of premature death in the U.S.
•Among the world’s 23 wealthiest countries, 87 percent of all kids killed by guns are American kids.
The point here isn’t to simply to wallow in a grim statistics. It’s to illustrate how little context is included in the so-called ‘gun debate’ in this country. And especially the so-called gun debate that takes place in the media.
If that conversation is really going to happen it’s imperative Americans understand what’s at the center of the topic, and that sadly, this crisis extends far beyond Newtown.
By: Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America, December 21, 2012
“A Crazed Romance With Guns”: The Answer To Gun Carnage Is Not Arming Teachers
Have you ever seen the holiday film classic “A Christmas Story”? Set in 1940s Indiana, it’s the charming tale of young Ralphie, whose only wish for Christmas is a Red Ryder BB gun. Poor Ralphie is constantly rebuffed by the adults in his life, who warn him, “You’ll shoot your eye out.”
During this shattered holiday season, with so many Connecticut families experiencing unimaginable loss, the movie is a reminder that guns have always been popular in the American imagination. It also gently reminded me, however, that previous generations were much more circumspect and cautious in their attitudes toward firearms.
I am delighted that President Obama, shocked to his senses by the carnage in Connecticut, has finally found the courage to stand up to the gun lobby and take steps toward more regulation of firearms. But I fear that won’t be enough.
Don’t get me wrong: I support a ban on assault-type weapons, a ban on high-capacity magazines, and waiting periods for gun purchases. All of those are common-sense measures that should already be the law of the land.
But I don’t think those steps will be enough to change a culture steeped in gun lore and conditioned to believe that firearms hold some magical powers to keep the streets safe. Somehow, our crazed romance with guns — a dangerous and dysfunctional relationship — must end.
It hasn’t always been this way. My late father came of age in the 1930s and ’40s in deepest, reddest Alabama. He was an avid outdoorsman who loved fishing and hunting. Nothing made my father happier than awakening in the wee hours on a crisp morning in November to go out into the cold and stalk deer. Go figure.
I think he would have been amused — or perhaps puzzled — by the ad campaign that Bushmaster adopted to sell its AR-15 assault-type rifle, which was used by the Connecticut shooter. The campaign bestowed “manhood” on Bushmaster buyers. I don’t think my dad — who worked hard, supported his family and tried to teach his children right from wrong — ever thought his manhood was in question.
A veteran of combat in Korea, he was as strict about gun safety as the National Rifle Association is imprudent. He and his hunting buddies refused to hunt with rifles because the projectiles are too powerful and travel too far; they used shotguns instead. They banned hunters whom they deemed careless. Dick Cheney would not have been welcome.
As a young college graduate headed for the big city, I contemplated buying a firearm. My father wouldn’t hear of it, noting that I’d be more likely to be a victim of my own handgun than to ward off danger with it. He suggested that I stay out of dangerous places instead.
My dad was also a junior-high-school principal, and I think he would be horrified — simply horrified — by the irrational suggestion from some political leaders that the answer to school shootings is to arm teachers. He knew perfectly well that arming teachers would be a way to get more children killed.
As the term “friendly fire” connotes, soldiers and police officers, who undergo intense weapons training, frequently miss their targets or hit others by mistake. Last August, as just one example, New York City police officers killed a gunman outside the Empire State Building. Nine bystanders also ended up wounded, all by police gunfire or ricochets.
When did so many of our political leaders — governors, members of Congress, state legislators — lose their senses about guns? How did we come to have a culture in which public figures believe it is rational to advocate arming teachers to prevent school massacres?
Even as some of the loudest gun advocates have become more hysterical in their absolutism, the number of households with guns has actually decreased over the last few decades, according to polls and federal data. Unfortunately, the number of guns owned by a smaller portion of households has increased.
Meanwhile, reasonable, old-school outdoorsmen like my dad aren’t speaking up. They need to stand up and be counted.
By: Cynthia Tucker, The National Memo, December 22, 2012
“Guns And Babies”: What Newtown Does Not Teach Us
I began the week of December 10th with the horrible news that one of my former students, Brandon Woodward, had been gunned down on the streets of New York City. I ended the week with even more unbelievable news: that 20 children, six teachers and their shooter were dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Between those deaths, another shooter killed two people at an Oregon shopping mall.
There are no words for the horror parents must have felt yesterday, especially parents in Newtown. To bury a child is the worst fate imaginable. To bury anyone you love is an awful, soul-gutting task. When that death comes at the point of a gun, the last thing grieving parents and the loved ones of the deceased need to hear are clergy members and religious pundits prattling on with a false moral equivalence that goes like this: if God and guns are allowed back in our schools, tragedies like Sandy Hook will not happen again.
Who would say such a thing? For a start, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer, Fox News’ Mike Huckabee and David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network’s The Brody File. Since yesterday’s awful news, each has claimed that God’s absence from our schools and the lack of concealed gun carry permits for teachers and school administrators allowed this carnage to happen. I am sure there will be others who decide to preach sermons along this line from pulpits around the country this Sunday.
In their quest to give pat answers, these men and others once again blame tragedy on what they perceive as the absence of God in public places. In their attempt to provide a remedy, they suggest that the very tool of destruction used in this massacre—guns—be allowed into the classroom alongside God, as a deterrent (no matter that the gunman’s weapons belonged to his mother). Their logical fallacy is stunning, and reveals the absoluteness of their punitive—and puny—belief.
One of my Twitter followers, Brent Sirota, said it best: “The louder and more vituperative the theism invoked at any given social or political problem, the emptier the conservative prescription.”
If there was any moment where God must have been present, it would have been in a classroom of young children, some just five years old, who were probably praying and crying for their parents as a disturbed young man took aim at them with a gun.
The time has come to confront, without reservation and unceasingly, the type of theological evil that emerges from figures like Mike Huckabee and Bryan Fischer—who after yesterday seem little different from the Westboro hatemongers. It is not about “reaping and sowing,” David Brody. The nation reaped this whirlwind not because of God’s absence, but because of an absence of limits on the power of the NRA and its particular interpretation of the Second Amendment. That group and its ideology have become an omnipotent force that holds a gun, fixing its sights on all of us as a nation. God is not lobbying on Capitol Hill about guns. God isn’t making state laws more lenient for concealed carry. God is not selling assault rifles at gun shows without so much as a three-day waiting period.
God did not give David an AK-47 to tackle Goliath, but a slingshot.
Listen up, evangelicals and conservative Christians. You can’t say that because God isn’t in a classroom, that we as a nation have reaped what we’ve sown—and then ask for guns in schools at the same time. Those children and teachers were innocent. You can’t compare this to abortion. It’s a false equivalence. If you continue to allow these theological hacks to speak for you, or if you as clergy repeat this asinine excuse to your congregation this Advent season, you lead your people astray, and you have blood on your hands as well.
I don’t currently identify as an evangelical, but in my time at Fuller Seminary I learned some great theology from people I still respect. In one of my classes, theology professor Ray Anderson said something very simple yet very profound that I have carried with me since. Even in the most horrible moments, he said, God is present with us. God is not absent. It’s a statement that flies in the face of the kind of theology that Mike Huckabee is peddling: a presupposition that we must give homage to a god that wants fake sacrifices and piety to appease his divine wrath. What Anderson taught me is the kind of belief that can sustain people through terrible tragedies.
In times like these, I find more in common with the atheist, agnostic, and the seeker. They either don’t care for god in any shape, name or form, or have the good sense to leave god out if it.
People, mentally ill or not, are responsible for their actions. Actions have consequences. We must be willing to address the fact that as a nation we are sick. We are hopped up, angry, ready for a fight every day, and we live in an apocalyptic aura of fear that makes all of us uneasy and unstable. Our moral core, our American Exceptionalism is not about freedom—it’s about violence. We’ve anointed the Second Amendment as sacred scripture and a charter of freedom: the right to bear arms, so that we can kill. We are a vicious, violent nation. And these days it’s our violence most of all that makes us stand out.
Americans must begin to assess our humanity, and view each other as human beings, rather than target practice. Violence and promoting a violent Christian God does not solve the nation’s problems. It creates more of them.
For those like Brody, Huckabee, and Fischer who see tragedy and want to prescribe more violence and proclaim the glories of a violent, punitive God, please do us all a favor: shut up. Let us grieve these children and their teachers’ lost lives in peace. Now is not the time for your brutal apocalyptic beliefs.
By: Anthea Butler, Religion Dispatches, December 15, 2012
“We Sould All Be Angry”: Now Is The Time For Meaningful Gun Control
We should mourn, but we should be angry.
The horror in Newtown, Conn., should shake us out of the cowardice, the fear, the evasion and the opportunism that prevents our political system from acting to curb gun violence.
How often must we note that no other developed country has such massacres on a regular basis because no other comparable nation allows such easy access to guns? And on no subject other than ungodly episodes involving guns are those who respond logically by demanding solutions accused of “politicizing tragedy.”
It is time to insist that such craven propaganda will no longer be taken seriously. If Congress does not act this time, we can deem it as totally bought and paid for by the representatives of gun manufacturers, gun dealers and their very well-compensated apologists. A former high Obama administration official once made this comment to me: “If progressives are so worked up about how Washington is controlled by the banks and Wall Street, why aren’t they just as worked up by the power of the gun lobby?” It is a good question.
There was a different quality to President Obama’s response to this mass shooting, both initially and during his Sunday pilgrimage to offer comfort to the families of victims. I think I know why. It is not just that 20 young children were killed, although that would be enough.
For some months now, there have been rumblings from the administration that Obama has been unhappy with his own policy passivity in responding to the earlier mass shootings and was prepared in his second term to propose tough steps to deal with our national madness on firearms.
He spoke in Newtown in solidarity with the suffering, but pointed toward action. No, he said, we are not “doing enough to keep our children, all our children, safe.” He added: “We will have to change.”
And his initial statement Friday pointed to his exasperation. “We have been through this too many times,” he said, reciting our national litany of unspeakable events, and insisting that we will “have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”
“Regardless of the politics.” That is what it will take. This phrase comes easily to a president who just fought his last election, but he and the rest of us must change the politics of guns for those who will face the voters again. We cannot just be sad. We must be angry. We cannot just shake our heads. We must wield our votes and declare that curbing gun violence is one issue among many, but a paramount concern for our country.
And we will have to avoid the paralysis induced by those who cast every mass shooting as the work of one deranged individual and never ever the result of flawed policies. We must beware of those who invoke complexity not to further understanding but to encourage passivity and resignation.
Yes, every social problem and every act of violence have complicated roots. But we already know that it is far too easy to obtain guns in the United States and far too difficult to keep guns out of the hands of those who should not have them. And we already know that weapons are available that should not even be sold.
What, minimally, might “meaningful action” look like? We should begin with: bans on high-capacity magazines and assault weapons; requiring background checks for all gun purchases; stricter laws to make sure that gun owners follow safety procedures; new steps to make it easier to trace guns used in crimes; and vastly ramped-up data collection and research on what works to prevent gun violence, both of which are regularly blocked by the gun lobby.
After mass shootings, it’s always said we must improve our mental-health system and the treatment of those who may be prone to violence. Of course we should. But this noble sentiment is too often part of a strategy to evade any action on guns themselves.
Not this time. Americans are not the only people in the world who confront mental-health problems. We are the only country that regularly experiences horrors of this sort. The difference, as the writer Garry Wills has said, is that the United States treats the gun as a secular god, immune to rational analysis and human intervention.
We must depose the false deity. We must act now to curb gun violence, or we never will.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 16, 2012
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