"FACTS ARE FOR SUCKS!"

In yesterday’s USA Today, they had a front page story on violence in schools. I didn’t read too much of it; it seemed the same old blah-blah. What caught my eye was the box listing school-related deaths so far this year. As I scanned the list, I was stunned by what the country's number one daily considered “school related” Check these out:

Aug. 14, Columbus, Ga.: A 14-year-old girl visiting former teachers is accidentally shot and killed by a 14-year-old boy.

Aug. 19, Meraux, La.: A man holding his 2-year-old is shot to death near a crowded school bus stop.

Sept. 4, Brighton, Colo.: A 15-year-old boy is shot and killed near a high school.

What? “Killed near a high school”? “Near a bus stop”? These are school related? I’m sure they were both killed near trees, too. Does that make them “tree-related deaths”? Of the eighteen deaths the paper listed, I count roughly six maybe that I would say were school related. Check out the list your self and you’ll see what I mean.

The paper does this to try to blow the school violence story out of proportion. They do this to sell papers, perhaps to push an agenda, like an anti-gun agenda, who knows for sure. All we do know is they do it fairly sloppily. Of course, six months from now, that won’t matter because the Lexis-Nexus search will return results for some anti-gun nut that says “The USA Today reported eighteen school-related deaths back in October, just two months after the start of the school year”. It won’t matter that at least twelve of the reported deaths were bogus.