Oh, crap.

[SheilaT]

I just got home from work a bit ago and I'm watching Rachel Maddow, so I'm several hours behind in news. I also don't own a TV, so I sometimes miss breaking stories when I'm home.

So I just now learned that there was a murder-suicide in Longmont, CO. I have a niece who lives there with her husband and two small children. My first awful thought was, what if he went crazy? I consoled myself by knowing that no news is almost always good news. In my experience bad news travels incredibly fast, and if my niece had been at all involved, I'd have heard by now from some other family member. Oh, and I honestly have no idea if there are guns in that house. I will need to ask.

Well, it clearly wasn't her family, but how awful.

The only good thing about the fact that in the wake of the massacre in CT, is that very many of the individual gun deaths are now going to be reported as national stories, not just local ones, which may help people understand that the gun problem isn't just in the mass murders, but in the day by day 30 people or so are killed by guns in this country. Every day. 30 or so people.

[kestrel91316]

1. Well we don't need to fret because I'm quite sure that most, if not all,

of those 30 people every day were criminals who got their just desserts, delivered by righteous gun owners who never break any laws or safety rules.

[Care Acutely]

2. Yes. If only they'd had MORE GUNS!

[ellisonz]

3. "If it bleeds, it leads" has been true for quite some time...

...hasn't changed crap.

NRA = Scum

[SheilaT]

4. Interesting thought.

I probably first heard "If it bleeds, it leads," some thirty years ago, and have always simply thought of that as an indication of the shallowness of local news.

Maybe there's actually something deeper here.

[ellisonz]

5. We, as a society, have a ridiculously...

...high tolerance level for violence in real life. We think, oh well it wasn't me, or they had it coming, or who really cares, and we just move on without actually empathizing with *all* of the victims of these heinous, tragic crimes. Such callousness has been routine among many even here at DU.