Graphing Madness
By Mitch Berg
SCENE: Mitch BERG is hacking down shrubbery for the spring. Avery LIBRELLE, walking past, hears the chainsaw and walks around the front of BERG’s house.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: Er, hey, Avery. Kinda busy here…
LIBRELLE: The US has more guns than any country in the world, and the highest death rate.
BERG: As you can see here… (produces a chart from his back pocket) …
…while per-capita civilian gun ownership is high – and has gotten higher since the data in that chart – our gun homicide rate is actually down the list a ways.
LIBRELLE: Hah! To laugh! Most of those countries with higher murder rates aren’t industrial?
BERG: So?
LIBRELLE: Do I need to speak slowly? They a r e n ‘ t i n d u s t r i a l.
BERG: No, I got that. So what? Is the life of a brown or black person, or a subsistence farmer, worth less than the life of a white middle class liberal American?
LIBRELLE: Why, no!
BERG: Then why do we not count their deaths the same?
LIBRELLE: Do you have any arugula?
(And SCENE)
April 2nd, 2019 at 12:48 pm
Come to think of it, maybe I need to get my chainsaw ready for Earth Day April 20….nothing says “environment” like cutting down a tree and cooking my dinner over the fire made with its branches! Especially if I’m eating a good chunk of a highly flatulent steer.
April 2nd, 2019 at 6:39 pm
Off topic, kind of.
Trump suggests he’s gonna close the Mexican porthole.
Reaction of bugmen: “Babababut; muh Avacado toooooast!”
April 3rd, 2019 at 8:51 am
Mitch, could you point to the source of that graph?