Forget the Flu: Guns Cause Far More Deaths

As Americans load up on Tamiflu, shootings draw little notice
By Katherine Thompson,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 29, 2009 8:56 AM CDT
Forget the Flu: Guns Cause Far More Deaths
Photos of the five Lupoe children are displayed during a memorial service for the family on Thursday, Feb. 5, 2009. Ervin Lupoe, 40, shot his wife Ana, and their children on Jan. 26.   (AP Photo/Jason Redmond)

In the US and Mexico, a plague much more widespread than swine flu continues to pick off its victims, regardless of age, health, or hometown. "While federal and state authorities are preoccupied with preventing a swine flu pandemic from overwhelming the United States, the epidemic of gun violence rages on, unabated and little noted," writes Cynthia Tucker in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

"We have an odd way of assessing risks," Tucker writes: even in Mexico, swine flu deaths are a tiny blip compared with the toll of gun violence. But as "the news media have hurriedly produced new catchphrases for their round-the-clock swine flu reportage," the public makes a run on pharmacies. "If only we could muster half that hysteria over gun deaths." (More gun control stories.)

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