Sam Stein and Jason Cherkis do a bit invesigative research on their own finding Gun Violence Killed At Least 80 People The Week Prior To Elliot Rodger's Rampage. Stein and Cherkis open their piece with a long horific paragraph of "a community eviscerated by gun violence that left several dead and many more injured," over the Memorial Day weeked. Except is isn't UC Santa Barbara but New Orleans where by the end of the weekend 19 were shot 4 were dead. Just another weekend in a big American city - not worthy of headlines.
It was New Orleans. By weekend's end, the city had seen 19 people shot, four fatally. On Friday, a fight broke out at a high school graduation party that resulted in one person being killed and seven wounded. On Sunday, three men were shot with an assault rifle. That night, a murder took place at a Cajun seafood joint. On Monday morning, a triple shooting happened right outside a hospital, where people sitting in a car were hit with bullets in their backs, arms and legs. [...] That same day, a 17-year-old died after being shot multiple times. Even earlier, a man riding his bike was shot under an overpass. The day ended with a homicide in the Lower Ninth Ward.
In the week prior to Elliot Rodger's shooting spree in Isla Vista, there were at least 80 gun-related deaths across the country, according to a Huffington Post analysis of local news reports.
Stein and Cherkis tell us that FBI statistics show while 900 died in mass shooting from 2006 to 2012, the CDC reports 11,078 homicides due to firearms in 2010 alone. We have 33 gun murders a day in American, most of which we never hear about.
Have we become so used to daily gun violence that it only become newsworthy if the murders are carried out by a single deranged rich young suburban kid, driving a BMW, who leaves a manifesto on a mass killing spree at a college sorority house? Or if someone dresses up like Batman and mows down people in a movie theater?
Stein and Cherkis raise interesting questions of what make some murders more newsworthy than others.