On Facebook there is a news article being passed around about how the most recent spree shoot/killings represented the 11th school shoot of 2018 and one person on a friend’s page responded shocked that we have become so used to these events that they no longer become major news items.
Her confusion we led by the deceptive language of the headline and far too many people simply do not read beyond that.
When she read ’11th school shooting’ her mind conjured up the image of mass shootings, of vile people or persons stalking the hallways killing at random, of the horrific images of Columbine and Sandy Hook, but have there been 11 of those in just three weeks?
No.
So what are the details of those 11 shootings?
2 are suicides, a man who shot himself in a school’s parking lot and a 14-year-old boy who killed himself in a school bathroom.
3 incidents were bullets fired from unknown people outside of the school for unknown reasons that shattered school or bus windows .
1 was an accidental discharge after a firearms instructor left a live firearm in the classroom and students mistook it for a training device.
2 more were shots fired from vehicles, 1 person was injured but the reports do not state that the injured person suffered a gunshot wound,
1event followed an altercation at a fraternity event at a university that resulted in a death.
1 was a teenage girls shot in the cafeteria by a teenage boy. No one else of the 45 to 55 people present were shot.
And the final event was the mass shooting with two deaths at the Marshall county High School. That brings us to 11 shooting in or around schools but it is clear why nearly all of these failed to make national news.
Every murder is vile, every suicide is tragic and there is no doubt that we are in the midst of cultural crisis. As I have stated in other posts I think that we will reach of critical mass and there will be a state change in the public debate on this issue. (One that might be sped along by the degradation of the Republican Party by Trump.)
All that said, the deceptive language doe not help. The purpose of language is clear communication and it doesn’t matter if your are classifying every shot fired near a school as a school shooting or rebrand torture as enhanced interrogation, abusing the language is not the way to go.
The deceptive soundbite of ’11 school shootings so far this year’, which originated from an anti-gun activist organization, isn’t just being spread by Facebook. It is also being repeated verbatim by professional journalists as something obviously factual. I heard it myself from a CNN reporter.
Sadly, this is standard fare from the Mainstream Press. For decades, they have openly sided with the most outrageous lies promoted by anti-gun organizations. I think this reflects the actual beliefs and opinions of Mainstream Press culture. The Press isn’t just doing a bad job reporting on the issue of guns, the Press itself acts as a national interest group, campaigning to pass anti-gun legislation under the guise of “reporting”.
If Trump is accelerating anything, it isn’t some cultural critical mass of anti-gun opinion, it is a critical mass of the Press losing their authority and legitimacy with the Public. A loss which the Press has been earning from decades of hubris.