The Boston Globe



We must not be numb to the numbers any longer

When I watched the nightly news in the late 1960s during the Vietnam War, I was always horrified by the kill statistics, which were announced like a sports score: “840 Americans killed to 1,150 Vietnamese,” and so on. After a while I thought we would grow numb to these numbers, but instead a revulsion built and helped fuel the antiwar movement.

Perhaps if the networks and newspapers announced the deaths by guns every night, every week, totaling them up for the year, the viewing public might become so horrified that they would force an unwilling Congress to finally act on sensible, overdue gun regulation.

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