1950's: 151.3 million, 1 mass shooting.
1960's: 179.3, 6.
1970's: 203.2, 13.
1980's: 226.5, 32.
1990's: 248.7, 42.
2000's: 281.4, 28. (Drop off coincides with assault weapons ban instituted by the Clinton administration, which was reversed under Bush II.)
2010's: (google.com data): 309.3, 276 so far (metro.us data). I did the tally myself on this one, so it may be a bit off but it's certainly in the ballpark. I'd hoped an explanation for the increase would be found in the expansion of population, thinking more people, more potential psychopaths, but that appears to be a minimal effect. Many on Facebook believe the reason for this unprecedented wave of violence is that God has been been shunted aside in our society. A more logical factor may be in something that Adam Lanza, Elliott Rodger, Dylan Roof, Stephen Paddock and Nikolas Cruz all share, cited in today's NY Post Fast Takes column - each is fatherless. Long ago I read that the most common factor among prison inmates was single parent households. Although I would not oppose an assault weapons ban, I doubt it would curb this disturbing trend, as there are already many in circulation, and sales spike dramatically whenever a ban is threatened, and there will always be slimes who would sell them illegally. The root of the problem is complex, mysterious and, unfortunately, not likely to diminish in the foreseeable future. I'd love to be wrong about that last part.
A sinkhole opened up in a residential area in Rome:
With the world desperate for something to laugh about, who would have thought it would come from the sport of curling, where a Russian husband and wife Olympic team have been accused of using performance enhancing drugs. In Curling?
For the first two hours of today's session of the floating book shop it seemed the returns would be paltry, then more buyers showed and made the toil almost worth it. My thanks to the middle age gentleman who bought a thriller in Russian, and to Ira, who purchased his second book on legal advice; and to the bus driver who snatched up two 2017 novels by James Patterson and one by Michael Connelly, and to the young woman who selected The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins.
My Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Vic-Fortezza/e/B002M4NLJE
Read Vic's Stories, free: http://fictionaut.com/users/vic-fortezza
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