The Rise of Gun Violence: Who Shoots Whom?

- November 16, 1999

What can be done to end the senseless mass killings? Is the Media to blame? Can the Media paint a more accurate picture?

From Columbia Spectator, Columbia University
by Ethan Perlstein, junior

It was by chance last week that I caught wind of a breaking story of another shooting, this time in my hometown in South Florida. The location of what later emerged as a murder-suicide was a shopping mall literally a stone's throw from my grandparent's apartment. I immediately called home, not knowing the extent of the tragedy, though never fearing that someone close to me was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Now Miami. Check another major metropolitan center off the list of United States cities riddled with lethal gunfire. Soon I'll have to take off my shoes in order to count the number of mass shooting in public spaces, a count that has grown like an unchecked tumor in the past six months.

Before Seattle and Hawaii, a bloody, hot summer in Atlanta and Los Angeles; the murders perpetrated in a brokerage firm and the Jewish Community Center shooting, respectively. And, of course the Columbine and Jonesboro school massacres. I'm afraid to look at the cover of tomorrow's newspapers.

Promises and Finger Pointing

It seems so senseless. Isn't that how the media packages it? Another senseless death. I want to believe the answer isn't that prosaic. It thrills me when I turn on the television the day after a shooting to listen to certain solemnly commiserating politicians once again spell out the evils of firearms. Promises of tighter gun control, extended waiting periods, meaner background checks, and admonitory finger-pointing at Hollywood for glamorizing gratuitous violence follow. Other politicians sheepishly reassert the same twisted trope: "Guns don't kill people; people kill people."

The fundamental injustice is that most of these public shootings take away innocent people. Nothing can be done to bring them back. Yet I want to lash out at something tangible. Many more people are killed at the bloody hands of firearms than the media let on, more often than not without the X-factor of "being at the wrong place at the wrong time."

These may be gang killings in South Central L.A. Somehow I don't see NBC's Dateline consoling the families of murdered gang members. I don't see NBC or ABC or CBS for that matter, even talking about gangs when they can zoom in on the well-mannered lawns of the truly innocent, mowed down senselessly.

Let's face it. White suburban pain is more photogenic. What burns me the most is that politicians may finally do something to limit gun ownership in this country but only selectively spurred on by some deaths and not others.

It's painful to bring up this point because those close to the victims of shootings suffer an irreplaceable loss; putting deaths side by side is a luxury for those who are untouched by the horror of these tragedies. Most victims of firearms die less gloriously, in inner cities. Most victims are not whites, but minorities. It's not whites killing whites, but minorities killing other minorities. To be able to say this is risky, because categorizing is usually done with an intent to evaluate. And to the family and friends of those killed by guns, the loss is equally irretrievable.

Plea for Media Honesty

However, I believe the media does not even honor this basic respect. I remember watching the events at Columbine unfold last spring. I also remember that it only took several hours for the massacre to have its own visual iconography and a half-hour slot in the rest of the evening newscasts.

Invoking the universality of statistics tends to trivialize the particularity of individual suffering, but most deaths caused by guns are not attributable to public shootings. Without trying to excuse one or the other, the media should at least be honest with its viewers.

Unfortunately, sending cameras into economically depressed urban centers and documenting the bleakness of many minority neighborhoods doesn't sell. But, until then, we are pulled in by violence's outwardness. The hypocrisy transcends the media, as I believe most sins to some degree transcend the sinner. The viewing public feeds at the trough of Big Stories, and the media dishes it out like there's no tomorrow. Or at least until the next shooting.