Watching the news, you’d think that some sort of gun crime renaissance was underway. The cynic in Murdoc wonders how much of it is due to sensationalized round-the-clock coverage. When a story is hot, all the other stories similar to it become hot, as well.

Take this in Michigan:

Two students dead in Michigan apparent murder-suicide

A student fatally shot a female classmate before turning the gun on himself Friday in an apparent murder-suicide that prompted a lockdown at a community college west of Detroit, police said.

The bodies of Asia McGowan, 20, of Ecorse, and Anthony Powell, 28, of Detroit, were discovered inside a classroom at a Henry Ford Community College building after police responded to an emergency call of an assault and shortly afterward reports of a shot being fired on campus, said Dearborn Deputy Police Chief Gregg Brighton.

Now, there’s no doubt that this is a completely legitimate news item. It deserves coverage. But it’s currently the lead item on MLive.com, and I wonder if that would be the case if some other high-profile gun crimes hadn’t been in the news lately.

Even more curious is this at the end of the story (an AP item, by the way):

Earlier Friday, a 19-year-old gunman wounded three people at a vocational training college in Athens, Greece, before killing himself, authorities said.

Murdoc finds tacking this onto the end of the article a bit odd. Does the crime at a voacational training college in Greece really have any relation to this? Also mentioned at the end is the Binghamton incident, which I guess at least was on this continent.

Unmentioned in the article is Henry Ford Community College’s carry policy.

Tags: MI

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Crime and Violence, International, Media, Schools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.