In the US, there are about 16,000 murders and 33,000 suicides each year

[FarCenter]

Focusing on one of each in Austin is probably a bad idea.

[CBGLuthier]

1. but if you can get a clever internet post out of it

it is a moral imperative.

[Orrex]

2. You're right.

We see about 33,000 suicidal assholes flying their private planes into government buildings each year, so there's no sense in singling out any one of them.

[FarCenter]

5. He played in a band -- maybe he had a theatrical bent

Otherwise, I wouln't ascribe any more meaning to it that the average murder-suicide.

[Orrex]

11. Well, I'm not suggesting that we reconfigure our political machinery as a result

But the oddity of it is naturally going to generate interest and discussion.

If he'd arranged to have a bridge collapse on himself, we'd likely be talking about it, too.

[redqueen]

15. He wanted a body count to get his message out... and encouraged others

to do the same.

This is ridiculous.

[FarCenter]

20. He could only achieve this objective with cooperation of the media to sensationalize the crime

If there were no media sensationalization of the crime, that aspect of his motivation would be removed.

[redqueen]

21. And that makes him any less a suicide bomber how, exactly?

This is not just another guy who snapped and committed suicide. Not sure why so many are trying so hard to cling to that notion.

[KittyWampus]

10. maybe then we'd know more how The Troubles were.

For instance. Just as easy to look further east on the globe.

Not equating the terrorism aspect but do note that it's another level of hell having bombs and crap blowing up on a regular basis.

[HereSince1628]

3. Don't forget that infotainment is reality TV, it's only a stage for marketing

Flames, smoke, mayhem are revenue generators.

[crazyjoe]

4. and according to some on this site, every one of them was

an act of terrorism

[enki23]

6. right. so september 11th wasn't really that big a deal either.

less than 20% of the murders for that year, for chrissakes! and, of course, it's hardly worth even mentioning the murder of dr tiller. one tiny murder? just a drop in the bucket. just one of 16,000. it's stupid to assume any significance for that.

damn, this is a stupid game, isn't it?

[FarCenter]

7. 9/11 was a moderatedly big deal, because it raised the murder rate by about 20%

And probably more because it threatened to shut down some of the core activities of the economy in southern Manhattan.

[ThomWV]

8. If you don't mind me asking, do you have a recent source for those numbers?

I understand they may be numbers that for some reason or another you have right off the top of your head, but if you have a source for them I'd be interested. It just stuck me as odd that there are twice as many suicides as murders but we hear so much about murder and so little about suicide.

[FarCenter]

12. References for the data

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/violent_crime/murder_homicide.html

An estimated 16,272 persons were murdered nationwide in 2008. This number was a 3.9 percent decrease from the 2007 estimate, a 0.8 percent increase from the 2004 figure, and a 4.8 percent increase from the 1999 estimate.

http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/Suicide-DataSheet-a.pdf accessible from
http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/suicide/index.html

In 2006:
• Suicide was the eleventh leading cause of death for all ages.1
• More than 33,000 suicides occurred in the U.S. This is the equivalent of 91 suicides per day; one suicide every 16 minutes or 10.95 suicides per 100,000 population.1

Suicide is probably up since 2006, based on other new stories.

[ThomWV]

16. Thank you very much. Those are indeed disturbing numbers.

[WinkyDink]

9. Are you new to this thing called "humanity"? It is the individual which illuminates the general.

I mean, why focus on one teen-ager hiding in Amsterdam and killed by the Nazis, when SO MANY OTHERS DIED?

Jeez Louise, but your post is stupid.

[FarCenter]

13. That is just the point -- each individual is just as important as another

They don't become more important because they die as part of a group or because they die in some sensational way that is picked up by the media or a publisher of a diary.

[Don Caballero]

14. Nearly all from the barrel of a gun

[Tim01]

17. I was waiting for somebody to try this. Never dissappoiinted. nt

[FarCenter]

18. About 67% of murders were by firearm

13% were knives and cutting instruments,
14% by other weapons,
6% by personal weapons, e.g. hands, fists, feet.

From the FBI crime statistics.

I couldn't find a good breakdown for suicide, but some stories say firearms are used in about 50% of suicides. Men use firearms more than do women.

[Don Caballero]

19. Disturbing statistics

[slackmaster]

22. Would you feel better if they were all pushed or jumped out of a window?

[Don Caballero]

25. The point is that guns are too readily available to the general public.

Killing a person from a distance with a gun is much easier for a person to do as compared to actually having to get close and touch the person they are killing.

[FarCenter]

26. A 100% effective gun control program might reduce murders by about half

Some of the gun murders would undoubtedly be committed by other means. More knifings in crime settings. More strangulations in domestic crime.

[slackmaster]

27. A belief that something "might" do some good is not grounds for wholesale removal of a civil right

Murder rates in Australia and the UK have not been reduced significantly by their recent draconian gun bans.

The suicide rate in Japan is far higher than that of the US, and they have very strict gun control.

[FarCenter]

28. I wasn't advocating gun control, only pointing out its limitations

Plus, 100% effective gun control is clearly impossible to implement.

And the police are essentially ineffective in protecting the public from the crime of murder. So self-protection is essential for many people.

[Liberal In Texas]

23. Anything done like this in a spectacular manner gets attention.

It's somewhat human nature and our media willing to exploit it.

There are tons of GA accidents as well that we never hear about. Only when something "unique" occurs does it get the media attention. Like the Tesla crash that happened the day before. We'd probably still be seeing that except the Austin guy pushed it into the background.

[FarCenter]

24. Terrorism is 95% media - it didn't really exist in the modern form before widespread newspapers

Certainly the Romans could discipline a military unit by killing every tenth man. Or they could subdue a province by marching up and down and killing a lot of people. But terrorism had to be done locally, in volume, and in detail.

Only in the latter 1800s did the modern form of terrorism take hold with bombings and assasinations that were sensationalized by the newpapers.