Newsweek really is a shitty rag...

The current issue of Newsweek just arrived in the mailbox at my sister's house (for some reason she has a subscription; her reason is that "at least it's better than Time!"), and naturally the issue is focused on the VT tragedy. The main article is itself an awful piece of trash. Here's a quick taste:



Not only do we get that old "videogames caused Columbine" canard--like "Gore invented the Internet," the media can't let it go--but they're going into baseless speculation that Cho was either physically or sexually abused. Every account has been that the guy was deeply disturbed from a very young age--his brain clearly just didn't function properly. Some people don't need for an "evil seed" to be "planted" in them.

But that can at least be chalked up to a pathetic attempt at "deep" writing and the attendant bullshitting because it fills space.

What really proves that Newsweek is worthless is this huge graphic on pages 44 and 45 entitled "Guns: The Global Death Toll," which has all the of the countries colored various shades of red according to how high the death rate from firearms is. (Unfortunately, I can't find it at the Newsweek website.) For some of the developed nations--US, France, Switzerland, Japan, etc.--they have a pie chart for that nation showing how the total number of deaths for that country breaks down between homicides, unintentional/undetermined, and suicides. Below each pie chart is a large number showing the combined death rate per 100,000.

To compare, here are the data for the US and Switzerland (which has the next highest number after the US of the "pie chart countries"):

Homicides Suicides Undetermined Total Per 100,000

US 11,920 16,869 856 29,645 10.08

SW 40 412 7 459 6.40

The only numbers that really matter for the discussion of gun violence are homicides, because those are the only numbers that concern the safety of the general public. For the US, homicides account for 40% of all firearm deaths in the country, whereas in Switzerland, the number is only 8.7%! Therefore, the homicide rate per 100,000 for the US should be 4.03, and for Switzerland 0.57! But because they include suicides in the total death toll, Newsweek gives a completely distorted view of just how dangerous guns are in the US for the general public. In the US, seven times as many people per 100,000 are killed by another person armed with a firearm than in Switzerland, not the 1.575 that the graphic implies.

And then they have a map of the US showing the firearm death rate by state, but here still it includes suicides, so it's just as useless. (The top states are Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Mississippi, by the way.)

And I had read it for 25 years.

I tried Time for a couple of years, and it was just as bad. I don't get that any more, either.

I stick with The Nation.

Why shouldn't suicides be included? Fact is, shooting yourself is a very thorough and very convenient way to kill yourself. How many people would abandon the impulse if it actually took some planning? :shrug:

When the concern is public safety, suicides are irrelevant, because a suicide is inwardly directed. If, for instance, 50 people committed suicide with a firearm last year in country x, does that say anything about the danger to the public at large from guns? If there were 0 firearm homicides, that would mean there's a very small chance you'd get shot in the country, but if there were 10,000, you'd think twice about visiting, right? The number of people who used a gun to kill themselves doesn't really say anything about how safe that country is for other people, or that there's a "gun problem."

I completely disagree, though, with your characterization of gun suicides as being very convenient. I think the reason someone would commit suicide with a firearm is not because they're more readily accessible than another means, but because they're perceived as less painful and quicker than any other way. It's much easier and takes far less planning to jump off a building, or buy a bottle of Motrin and swallow the whole thing, or go down to the hardware store and buy some rope to hang yourself.

In fact, committing suicide with a gun would actually be a huge hassle and take quite a lot of planning--you'd have to buy the weapon, go through the checks, buy the ammo, and then pull the trigger. After all, OTC drugs, rope, knives, etc., don't require any sort of check to purchase (well, maybe an age check for certain pain medications, but nothing deeper than that), so if someone suddenly found himself extremely depressed and suicidal, he'd much more likely just jump out the window. A high firearm-suicide rate isn't really due to a "gun culture" but rather the perception that it's much quicker and less painful to commit suicide that way--if the perception changed to thinking chugging bleach was the easiest, quickest way, the gun suicide rate would plummet and bleach suicides would rise, but the country would still be just as dangerous for other people as it was before, since the homicide rate would be unaffected by that perception.

Whether or not the country is safer for "other" people, suicides are a public problem, they're a gun problem, and not at all irrelevant.

Less painful, quicker = more convenient, does it not? And killing yourself with a gun takes very little planning if the gun is already there -- like the Motrin, or the rope.

There's certainly a perception that it's much quicker and less painful to commit suicide with guns and that perception will not change (our imaginations are not that challenged that we can't associate some duration of extreme suffering with swallowing bleach). That puts the blame squarely on gun culture, and the ease it offers in turning an impulse into a tragedy.

they had a Newsweek special edition, Letters from Iraq, or something like that. It was letters from Americans who had died in Iraq home.

Reading the authors introduction to the letters went something like this:

It doesn't matter whether the reason we went in was right or wrong, the administration may well be right, that it will be for history to determine if this was the correct action or not...

Printing the letters and thoughts of the fallen brings the reality of war home, but not acknowledging that this entire war was based on a lie, and in trying to somehow justify that lie is unforgivable

They are using these American lives just like the administration is, and why not, as Moyers said the media is just as responsible

What's needed isn't homicide versus gun ownership rates, because that's a game you'll lose.

Switzerland is heavily armed, with adult men until their early 40s issued an assault rifle and ammo, it's quite possible that the number of households with guns is higher there than in the US--over a million weapons out (possibly as high as 3 million), but a population of 7.5 million. Handguns are also around, but much less frequent. Note that "assault rifle" is different from "assault weapon"; an assault weapon is just a mean looking gun. Assault rifles are mean guns, typically issued to US soldiers but typically *not* allowed to be owned by the general public.

It's similar to the situation in Israel. These are classic examples of "people kill, not guns", because if you increase the gun possession rate you do *not* get increased homicide rates. If guns kill, more guns entails more homicides per capita, and you don't get that. Perhaps you *could* argue from the Swiss data that everybody who buys a gun should be trained and have it inspected every once to make sure it's not misused.

What's needed is looking at the homicide rate versus ownership rate broken down by gun type. *That* may tell you something, and I haven't seen stats broken down that way (then again, I haven't looked).

Yeah, that's a valid possibility for a news magazine to toss out there. :eyes: You can almost hear the editor saying, "just in case somebody of faith is reading, better suggest invisible beings could be to blame". Say amen and send in the exorcist!

What a pandering piece of poop.

The muddying of homicide figures is predictable. Don't want the US to look like the Wild West now, do we? I've got news for Newsweek: other nations DO see us as the Wild West. My brother-in-law and his wife were robbed on their first (and last) holiday here and I know others who won't even visit a first time because of the relative lawlessness and casual disregard for human life they see in America. And that was before Bush** the wannabe cowboy took over; the perception is worse now.

Guns and God says it all. Ain't nothing so important as keeping gays from marrying and protecting chucklenut's right to torture people. Death by homicidal maniac is just more grist for the corporate media to keep the masses shocked and awed and DOWN.

"The spirit of the Devil was in that boy, uh huh!!!" Can we stick to psychology and neurology? ie. science?

Not to mention the whole vapidity of "somehow, somewhere, someone." Reminds me of Donald Rumsfeld's "We know where the WMDs are; they're in the area around Baghdad, East, North, South, and West somewhat."

Between Jesus on the cover and Paris Hilton coverage, I can't take it anymore. John Mecham has ruined the magazine.