Like most people I guess, I was certainly shocked and saddened by the horrific events in Connecticut yesterday. A lot of people’s lives have been changed forever.
But as I watched the nightly news and all the sympathetic posts on my facebook newsfeed, part of me couldn’t help but wonder, why are these deaths on the news? Here are some other sobering numbers for you:
-each day in the United States, approximately 500 people die of preventable medical error.
-each day in United States, approximately 94 people die in automobile accidents.
-each day in United States, approximately 32 people are murdered with the use of firearms. (Another 40 commit suicide using firearms.)
That adds up to something like 600 families coping with the death of a loved one every single day.
As a friend of mine in the medical industry puts it, those 500 medical errors are the equivalent of a 747 jumbo jet crashing. Every day. But, it’s not on the news. Granted, an awful lot of those victims of medical error were on their last legs anyway. But as my medical friend put it, “I don’t think they see it that way.”
The point I guess I’m trying to make is this: there is nothing wrong with all of us mourning and feeling sympathy for those families in Connecticut. But it does worry me that we become inured to premature death when it becomes a regular event. If elementary school shootings occurred three times a week, would it still be newsworthy? Or would it just become normal, something to “tsk tsk” about, like car crashes?
It’s not just video games that make us insensitive to violence and death. It’s also violence and death that make us insensitive to violence and death.
© Justin Locke
