A few decades ago the military started using WIA and KIA instead of using wounded and killed in action. The new media continues to use the same terms in their war news. Why don’t they use those terms for the wounded and deaths here? Granted the United States isn’t a real war zone but more people were shot here last year than in the Afghanistan war zone. IEDs and Bombs killed more there.

            It seems a soldier may have a greater chance of being killed here than any other war zone. A mass shooting is when four or more people are shot in a single event. We are having double digit numbers of those every week. Recently San Jose’s mass murder of nine made the news only because it occurred in a big media market.

            Congress and all of America would be livid if that many people were killed in repeated 737 MAX passenger jet crashes. Why not the 50 – 60,000 killed by guns every year? This year may set a record on numbers of deaths and mass shootings. We die from guns at the rate of one Viet Nam War each year.

            Why isn’t something being done? Money in political campaign chests buys our elected officials and an intense and expensive media campaign. The money is spent to convince people to protect themselves from others with guns. The gun lobbies aren’t non-profit organizations of poorly paid people but highly paid people diverting membership money to their own use.

            Maybe our gun deaths should be reported as WIA and KIA.

            The headline for today’s newspaper was another child shot be accident. Supposedly the two year old got the loaded pistol from a television stand (no trigger lock) and shot himself in the head. This was supposed to have occurred with the father in the same room. A couple of days ago a cop had to shoot a 14 year old girl carrying an AK47. The 12 year old boy dopper a loaded shotgun. The kids had gotten them and lots of ammunition from a house.

            The commonality of these two incidents is improperly stored weapons. The pistol was loaded and supposedly stored in a television stand. The AK47 must have been loaded since I doubt a 14 year old girl would know how to load and chamber the first round. None of the guns had trigger locks or were in gun safes. A Morris cop told me that is a law for Illinois.

            My questioning of the Morris cop went into penalties for those who improperly stored their guns. Apparently it is no more than a misdemeanor with a slight slap on the wrist unless someone is killed. I didn’t ask what responsibility an owner has if their guns were stolen and used in a crime.

            I think the laws should be passed to make it a jail term for an improperly stored weapon. Seldom does a gun owner need a gun in their home. It is much more likely to go off accidently killing another household member. The member is more than likely a child. Any permit should include the facts and penalty for improper storage.

The first time I heard the term “The People’s Right to Know” was during the Viet Nam War. It was supposed to be the reason secret information was released. I think it’s one of those “in the eyes of the beholder” conundrums. Some things should never see the light of day and others should.

As a co-founder and first president of the Grundy County No Tolerance Task Force, I learned that one of the best ways to fight gang recruitment was to wash off or cover gang signs, keep their activities from being recorded or reported as such, and to tamp down any activity that involved recruitment. The object was to reduce copycat activity by wannabes.

How does this affect today’s right to know? I believe the Dayton mass shooter was influenced by the publicity of the Wal-Mart shooting. We know one school suicide is likely to spawn others if it is publicized very much. A few days ago a man walked into a store with body armor and an assault gun. He did nothing because he had no intention to do anything or had not found the targets he was hoping to shoot. Since Dayton and Wal-Mart, other men have killed using the same type weapons with some reaching the four people shot criteria for mass shootings. Most of those were reported locally and not given much publicity outside the immediate area.

The question is still valid today. Is the public’s right to know causing more shootings and unnecessary fear? Instead of getting headlines across the world, should the media and the internet downplay events thus preventing copycat mass shootings?