In a single one month period, more people were killed in the U.S. due to rampage shootings than US Servicemen killed in Iraq in all of 2009 to date.
According to a Washington Post editorial and quoted in the highly recommended The Week Magazine,
“Michael McLendon shot 11 people including himself in a murder spree that spanned two Alabama counties. On March 29th, Robert Stewart gunned down a nurse and seven elderly people in a nursing home in Carthage, NC, while Devan Kalathat slaughtered his family in Santa Clara, California. Then, James Harrison fatally shot his family, including five children, and Jiverly Wong, a Vietnamese immigrant distraught over losing a job and taunted about his limited English, entered the American Civic Association in Binghamton, N.Y. and killed 13 students, employees and himself. Seven cops were killed in Oakland and Pittsburgh, and that’s more than 50 dead within a month”
In Iraq, meanwhile, the U.S. lost 9 servicemen and women in March, 17 in February, and 17 in January, for a totally of 16 according to icasualty.org.
The good news is that Iraq is safer than it has ever been for American armed forces and Iraqi Nationals. The bad news is that we’re killing each other at home. It makes it harder to figure out whether we should be “getting them over there before they get us over here”, when “we” seem to be the biggest threat over here.
Sean Foote's Blog 