Shootings in Coatesville, just normal everyday life anywhere in America

I spoke to several Coatesville residents after the recent murders in Coatesville who said something I’ve heard several times before.  It goes something like this:

“The Daily Local News only reports the bad news in Coatesville about the murders here.”
Another local sentiment is something like, "Coatesville's a nice place to live with lots of good things happening and the Daily Local just reports the bad stuff that happens."

There was a shooting incident at a South Carolina Elementary school on the same day as a Coatesville murder incident:

The DLN isn’t a garden party & wine tasting newspaper. It’s a normal local newspaper reporting general news for the Chester County area. I would be suspicious if they didn’t report the murders in Coatesville. And the Daily Local News does report on the murders in other areas, such as:

“The incident was the country’s third school shooting in less than a week and the third tragedy in Lancaster County in the past year and a half. It has thrust the quiet, rural county into the national spotlight. 

 Similar shock gripped the Lititz community in November 2005, when David G. Ludwig, 19, killed his 14-year-old girlfriend’s parents. 

 Five months later, in nearby Leola, Jesse Dee Wise, 21, was charged with the gruesome murders of six family members, who ranged in ages from 5 to 64 years. 

 Despite these isolated incidents, the Amish community has remained untouched by such violence, until Monday, when Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, of Bart, targeted West Nickel Mines Amish School, bent on killing young girls as a way of "acting out in revenge for something that happened 20 years ago," according to state police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller. 

Response from the humble Amish community seemed to be of reservation and solace, with images of families and friends consoling each other.” 

FROM:

Daily Local News 

Violence shakes a peaceful community 

By MICHAEL CRIST 

POSTED: 10/03/06, 12:01 AM EDT | UPDATED: ON 10/03/2006

Coatesville is as safe as anywhere in the United States. And as dangerous as anywhere in the United States.

When we send our children off to school, when we go to the mall or to a fast food restaurant there’s a kind of street smarts understanding we now have that extreme violence and death can just happen, without warning.

Our Coatesville Police Chief Jack Laufer was at the scene of the murders of five Amish school girls  at the West Nickel Mine School. 

Gunman Charles Carl Roberts IV took hostages and shot eight out of ten girls (aged 6–13), killing five, before committing suicide in the schoolhouse.

The murders in Lancaster County happened a decade ago.

“Since 2013, there have been at least 197 school shootings in America — an average of nearly one a week.”

The shootings in Townville, South Carolina in the video above:

"The aunt of a teen suspected of killing his father, then wounding three people in a South Carolina elementary school shooting, says she wishes she could "turn back time." 

Six-year-old Jacob Hall remains in critical condition at a Greenville hospital. He was hit in a main artery in his thigh. 

A student shot in the foot and a teacher shot in the shoulder were released from a hospital Wednesday."

The shooting at the elementary school in Townville, South Carolina was not a mass shooting. 

"Everytown for Gun Safety defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, not including the shooter, are killed with a gun. The threshold of four deaths derives from a mass murder definition used in an FBI report from 2005. It is the threshold used by the majority of academics and organizations studying mass violence. Everytown reviewed mass shootings in the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports from 2009-2012 and searched the media for further details about these incidents as well as for mass shootings that occurred in 2013–2015. 

Using FBI data and media reports, Everytown for Gun Safety developed an analysis of mass shootings that took place between January 2009 and July 2015. The analysis found that there have been at least 133 mass shootings in the nearly seven-year period. (View animation: The Real Story of Mass Shootings in America). 

Amended August 31, 2016."

MORE AT: 

Analysis of Mass Shootings

Nearly 12,000 Americans are murdered with guns every year — a rate more than 25 times higher than that of other developed countries — and over 20,000 kill themselves with guns. Although the violent crime rate has generally decreased over the past 15 years, the gun murder rate in the U.S. has hardly changed.