Thread: Media blackout: Shooter kills family members, wounds baby and police officer

Info on media reports or non-reports:

. . . We don't pretend to have found all the gun deaths over that weekend. There is no official census of gun deaths, and it takes the federal government many months to compile national crime and suicide statistics.

We drew our list from the deaths that were reported in the press, and confirmed the details with authorities in all but a few cases. If you only want to know how many people are killed by guns on an average day in America, simply divide the annual figure, about 31,300, by 365 days, and there's your average: about 86 people a day.

As part of a weeklong special report, "Flashpoint:Guns in America," NBC News charted every death attributable to firearms that we could find over the three-day weekend in January ending on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We found that, as President Barack Obama was being sworn in for his second term, at least 91 people were losing their lives to gunfire.

Why did we find "only" 91 in three days? The main reason is that hardly any suicides get reported in the media. Suicides by gun are twice as common as gun homicides.

Some homicides don't get any publicity either. Unless a killer chooses a public place, annihilates an entire family or shoots up a Wal-Mart, he might not even get on a website, in the newspaper or on TV, not on a holiday weekend competing with the festivities in the nation's capital and the Ravens-Patriots and Falcons-Seahawks games.

The Griego family massacre in New Mexico was the only incident that long weekend to get significant national news attention. It also could be that holiday weekends with NFL championships are safer, with so many young men – who are statistically far more likely to shoot someone — inside instead, watching the games . . .

Death takes no holiday: Tracking gun violence over one long January weekend - Open Channel

'Flashpoint: Guns in America,' by NBC News - US news | NBC News

an interactive map of gun violence and its impact during a recent holiday weekend.

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