You know what's NOT a good bath toy for a 5 year-old?

[krispos42]

54. That's my point

Is it being reported more because of the media's common use of retweets and Facebook links used to drive stories? How about Google News alerts?

Cricket rifles and kids shooting kids becomes a hot topic, people set their Google alerts, then they retweet and repost on Facebook, then it shows up on the "Trending Now" or "Most Popular" section of a news site, generating more clicks and attention...


It becomes self-reinforcing.



I don't know. I do know that in a nation of many hundreds of millions of people a year, there will be a certain predicable number of events happening, and that includes very young kids getting killed by other very young kids that find loaded guns.

It's thankfully not a very large number, but it's there. It's been going down over the decades, but statistically, it will still happen on a regular and predicable basis. If you knew the number from 2012, you could probably predict that 2013 will be the exact same number, and the odds of 2013 being within ±10% of 2012 would be pretty high, I think.