While flipping channels the day after the Virginia Tech shootings, I came across this headline on Fox News: Are Gun-Free Zones More Dangerous? Typical Fox News response…over-the-top stupidity.

Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about how, the day after the shootings, 200 people died in Baghdad. 120 of them died in a bombing at a market. This was contrasted against the fact that in the U.S. the tragedy of April 16 was so anomalous to our experience as to be a major national event, leaving us shaken and horrified. Imagine living in a city where 32 deaths of innocent civilians constitutes an average day. I do not mean to imply that the deaths in Baghdad make the loss of those students and teachers at Virginia Tech any less tragic; I only mean to say that many of the same politicians, pundits, ministers, and laypersons who grieve at the deaths in Virginia think little of the deaths that happen every day in Baghdad, a city made exponentially more dangerous by our occupation.