Acceptable Losses
With the mass shootings in ElPaso and Dayton still less than two weeks ago, and largely out of the news already, I decided to start tracking gun violence data on a daily basis. the Gun Violence Archive is a tremendous resource that logs each and every incident of reported gun violence incidents out there. I rely on their data for my tracking at a blog I set up called Acceptable Losses.
I make no political commentary on the blog beyond the title and tagline. I want people from across the political spectrum to consume this data without raising the debate that people seem to run away from. Not sure if it will work, but I feel I had to try.
Ultimately, until we as a society act to deal with this scourge, we can only conclude that these casualties of gun violence are simply acceptable losses.
The title of the post says it all
1,802 people have been shot in America these first two weeks of August. 1,270 wounded. 532 dead.
When we cover these mass shooting events, the coverage starts with a total casualty count, but that disappears quickly, and the reporting becomes almost only about the dead. And far too quickly after that these tragedies become stories that just drop almost entirely out of the news.
People wounded by gun violence are wounded for life. That trauma never goes away. We must remember those victims too. We must address the horror that is gun violence to reduce the number of people dying at the end of a gun but also to reduce the far greater number of people joining the ranks of the wounded.
Grasping the scope and scale of the problem
For me, looking at the data a variety of ways helps me grasp that scope and scale.
Each and every day in August has seen an average of:
- 133 incidents of gun violence.
- 128 people shot.
- 91 people were wounded.
- 38 people were killed.
Each and every day this has been the toll of gun violence in America.
Ways to share this important data
I post updates daily as best I can. I have some health issues, so I am sure I will miss a few days every once in a while. I will share my updates across a few platforms if you would like to be able to share it yourself. Feel free to share liberally.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GunViolenceCasualtyCounts/
The blog: https://acceptablelosses.home.blog/
Twitter: I will be posting a new parent tweet every day
I know it is tough to contemplate this data in human terms and on a daily basis, but we as a society need to come to terms with this stark reality if we are ever going to muster the will to change it.