Word: chicago
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...Comparing absolute numbers of murdered schoolchildren in one place to absolute numbers of dead soldiers in another is problematic, to say the least. During the 2006-07 school year, 34 kids were killed in Chicago. The death of 34 children is morally reprehensible, but if we are going to turn tragedy into a data point, we may as well use a slightly - though only slightly - more rational denominator. In other words, 34 out of how many? We could compare those 34 deaths to the total number of children in Chicago, but since most shooting victims are teenagers, it might...
...Obama didn't invent this analogy. In June, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley made a similar point, comparing the annual toll of nationwide gun deaths to Iraq casualty figures, and wondering what happened to the outrage. Right-wing bloggers have used the same data to make a different point: that the media is hyping the number of casualties in Iraq, since the total is still small compared to, say, the number of annual homicide victims...
...stripped of agenda, does this curious comparison mean anything at all? Is it really possible that Chicago is more dangerous than Iraq...
...technical point turns out to be correct. Between 24 and 28 military members from the state (depending on which of the many available sources we rely on) were killed during the 2006-07 school year. That?s fewer, in absolute terms, than the number of kids killed in Chicago. But Obama was wrong on the relative victimization of both populations: the number of dead soldiers represents about .3% (or 30 out of every 10,000) of the total number of active and reserve troops from Illinois currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Defense Department statistics...
...there you have it: Illinois soldiers in Iraq are still 10 times more likely to be killed than teenagers in Chicago. Well, that's a relief - the same way it's a relief to discover that your brother's terminal illness is progressing more slowly than your father...