Neil deGrasse TysonVerified account

The difference is that mass shootings have never inspired a single effective action to ensure that they never happen again. The equivalent would be if nobody worked on flu vaccines, or effective treatment, despite people needlessly dying from it.

Medical errors: staff can be suspended, fired, have their licenses to practice medicine revoked. Patients or their families can sue the hospital. Staff can be re-trained, if appropriate, or punished. Policies can be made to prevent it happening again (see Harold Shipman case).

18 years ago we had a single shoe bomber who didn't kill anyone—and we completely altered airport screening for the country. Maybe we should respond to handgun deaths with that kind of urgency—and maybe you posting this is a slap in the face to 34 families planning funerals.

Let’s add a few things here: post 9/11 we banned fingernail clippers, scissors, fountain pens, rulers, pencils on airplanes. I believe we still have a limit on bottled liquids. But we still cannot regulate guns in a manner guided by sanity.

Yo delete this

Cosmos is a little harder to watch when it’s an ignorant chucklefuck showing me the wonders of the universe

Emotions tend to respond more to spectacle when that spectacle is an act of terrorism literally conceived to surge emotions in order to enact social/political change. Almost all the things on your list are the result of human error. Mass shootings aren’t.

Almost all the things on your list also usually have only one victim per event. Medical malpractice isn’t the result of a doctor injecting and killing 30 patients with a deadly chemical in the course of 10 minutes. Imagine if multiple doctors, unpredictably, did this.

Let's look at that data @neiltyson 500 medical errors probably caused by 500 people 300 flu deaths due to 300 instances of flu 250 acts of suicide committed by 250 people 200 car accidents caused by 200 people 34 shot dead by 2 people. Are you sure it's not the data?

It's not just these specific 48 hours. His stats are EVERY 48 hours. It's a valid point that deaths aren't causing the emotional reaction, it's the spectacle. The angry replies are actually proving his point.