let's start today with mass shootings
you know whenever there is news of a
specific mass shooting understandably
the focus becomes the facts of that
particular situation when we had the
buffalo mass shooting where this 18 year
old was targeting black people this was
in buffalo new york not this past
weekend but the previous one we
immediately understandably correctly
spoke about the details of that incident
where did the individual come from what
were the motivations of the individual
who were the victims of what was the
response what has been the political
response and on and on and whenever we
do that
we often will lose
the perspective
that there are so many of these mass
shootings in the united states that it
would almost be a full daily podcast
just to keep up with the mass shootings
that are taking place in the united
states now i spoke to a couple of people
yesterday just casually texted friends
and said hey i'm researching for a story
i'm doing
if i just asked how many mass shootings
have there been in 2022 so far without
looking anything up what's your sense
and many of them wrote back something
like well i'm aware of like three or
four specific ones that like made the
news to the to the threshold that i was
aware of it so there's probably been
like 40 or 50 because we have a huge
mass shooting problem here in the united
states we have had as of yesterday
210 mass shootings in the united states
so far it's only may
it's only may and we have had 210 mass
shootings never mind individual
shootings as well as shootings in which
two but not more than two people were
injured or killed remember if one person
shoots two people
by most metrics that's not considered a
mass shooting you could argue that it
should be
um but depending on the archive or or
statistics you look at it only is
considered a mass shooting when three or
four people
are
injured or killed and bearing that in
mind if you go to the gun violence
archive and you can download a
spreadsheet of this
you will see
210 actually in fact
i believe the number is now 211. since i
last looked at this there's there was a
mass shooting yesterday in south
carolina north charleston where five
people were injured so it is now 211
mass shootings in the united states
every single one of these is a story
that impacts
many people families friends co-workers
etc if we pick a random one of these
just for example the the
second most recent one
um which when i looked yesterday was the
most recent one when you look at that
one that was in goshen indiana by the
way a place i've been to
and um
it took place
on rosemary
court
um
when you look at the victims there was a
17 year old male who was killed
there was a female injured another
female injured another female injured
and the suspect is believed to be a 20
year old
male
who was also killed according to the
information that we have here and for
every single one of these typically
there is a media source that you can
look at in this case the media source
takes us
uh looks like it's a facebook page a
release from the goshen police
department talking about how an
emergency call was received
that a shooting took place at a
residence
five individuals were injured according
to the report emts were sent out two
injured females were airlifted to a
trauma hospital in fort wayne one was
taken to a hospital in south bend an
injured male was taken to goshen
hospital but has been declared deceased
and one male was pronounced deceased at
the scene
every single one of these is a story
that affects so many people's lives and
most of these don't even make national
news
and one of the things i've talked about
before uh npr also about nine days ago
did a story on this at that point nine
days ago there had been 198 mass
shootings now we're already up to 211.
whenever there's a news story
that doesn't have a clear beginning
middle and end
it often will not make it into the news
or whenever there's an event that like
that so when we talk about well
there was a shooting where one person
was killed and it gets more attention
than thousands of people in the united
states or however many are going hungry
whereas that's a major story how do we
still have hunger in a country as rich
as the united states well it comes to
what makes a good story for corporate
media and i've spoken about this before
uh terrorist attacks weather events
individual shootings votes on a
particular bill
those have a defined typically beginning
middle and end
they have very clear players
there are very clear sort of goal posts
for what is the coverage expected to be
and how are these topics discussed
uh regular corporate media is not really
set up to talk about
hunger in the united states
in an ongoing way okay there's a food
stamp bill democrats for republicans i
guess whatever but the news corporate
for-profit news is not really set up to
talk about that uh uh malaria in africa
um
dysentery and
these are not the types of stories
that corporate media is designed to
address and even when you look at the
politics the political stories
the
intractable and corrosive nature of
how we select our representatives and
then how they don't really represent our
interests that's an ongoing and major
story arguably it's one of the
fundamental stories about how american
politics is broken it doesn't really
have a clear beginning middle and end
and as a result it's why you often don't
see much about it in corporate news so
to go back to the beginning 210 211 now
mass shootings in the united states and
it is not even memorial day
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