What's the true story? It will never be found in statistics.
With all due respect to BBM, it won't be found in a fictional story/movie, either.
(And BTW ruthlessly unsentimental, aka Clancypants, one of the greatest Brokieologists I've known, made an argument in favor of Jack's accidental death that forever convinced me. He said that the narrative makes more logical sense if Jack died accidentally, if the murder was all in Ennis' head -- aren't the murderes that flash through his mind even carrying a tire iron? -- which makes it a story of Ennis' and Jack's lives being ruined by Ennis' internalized homophobia and fear instilled by the Earl and Rich tragedy. That said, I think I've seen quotes from the filmmakers indicating they were more on the fence about it.)
And at the risk of being even more argumentative than I already have been
if there were a "true" story of Jack's death it indeed probably would be found in statistics, because his death would either be recorded as accidental tire explosion or murder. Unless of course the cops were in on the coverup. I think even then they'd probably just say it was an unsolved murder, since it would be clear from the body which thing happened.
Funny, I had seen some statistics when I was researching gun violence that Wyoming is a hotbed for it. Don't know if I'll be able to dig that up again.
Well, if you find them again, let me know. My google search was hasty. I know Wikipedia isn't the ultimate source on anything, and those stats are seven years old, but I'd be surprised if they're
that far off.
I myself have traveled quite a bit in Wyoming, especially the rural areas. One of the reasons I've gotten to see so much of the state is because my very presence added a measure of safety and "respectability" to my traveling buddy and allowed us to safely pass by.
Well, again, though, since those eight murders a year probably involve drug deals and familial killings and so forth, I'd say that statistically speaking even your traveling buddy is probably fairly safe. But I don't blame him for being cautious.
Statistics never tell the entire story. I'm sure Philadelphia is responsible for most of that statistic, but, on the other hand, most of the shootings here are similar to what you described in New Orleans. They're also mostly young-black-male on young-black-male gun violence, and it's not uncommon that drugs are involved in some way (e.g., sales turf), or somebody coming on to somebody else's girlfriend, or somebody "disrespecting" somebody or somebody's girlfriend--or teens or, worse, young children who get shot by stray bullets. In any case, this sort of thing doesn't happen in the areas of the city I frequent. Of course, that doesn't mean they never will, only that they haven't.
Well, New Orleans has probably changed somewhat post Katrina. But when I lived there the murders often did occur in the parts of the city I frequented. New Orleans, sometimes called a "checkboard," does not have the drastic housing segregation common in Northern cities, and poor neighborhoods abut rich ones. So although, yes, the perpetrators were usually black, the victims were often white. Murders happened all over the place -- I mean, probably more so in housing projects, but otherwise fairly geographically distributed. Not that that should be a part of the argument, since of course Black Lives Matter.
I was joking when I said you and Chuck were doomed, but I did want to point out that your states are more dangerous than Wyoming, presumably because you have bigger cities and more poverty.
When we moved for a year from NOLA to NYC, it at first
seemed like you'd be more likely to get murdered in NYC because the papers were full of murder stories. Took me a while to realize that those murders were quite geographically concentrated and the chances of getting murdered in, say, Midtown Manhattan were pretty slim.
In NOLA, on the other hand, my then-husband got mugged, presumably at gunpoint (the mugger pointed something at him, hidden in a sleeve) on an upper-middle-class street at 7 p.m., sun still up, while carrying our 1-year-old in a backpack. A fair share of murders stemmed from muggings.
But vis-a-vis
Easy Rider, I'd bet any amount of money that none of the NOLA killings involved rednecks randomly picking off hippies. Even in the rural South, I never heard of that happening while I was there.
I think, Katharine, that as a woman, you'd be far more likely to be raped and strangled in my part of town than I would be to be shot.
Thanks for conjuring that lovely image, Jeff!
Though from what I gathered about your part of town, many residents wouldn't have a lot of interest in raping women.
I'm extraordinarily lucky to live in a part of town that's almost entirely free of violence (knock on wood). There are car and garage break-ins, and packages stolen off porches, but in years on years the only violence I've heard of was when a construction worker showed up early at the site of the house being built and found some kids inside -- they robbed him and pushed him down the stairs.
I'm not sure what FRiend Lee might mean by "a ritual of safe passage," but once when I was traveling through Wyoming with OCD, he told me that expected behavior is to raise one hand, maybe touch the brim of your cowboy hat, when you pass another driver on a secondary or back road. I'd just think of that as "Wyoming good manners," rather than as a "ritual of safe passage." But maybe she's referring to something with which I'm not familiar.
Yes, I think that's widespread in rural Middle-America. Some people just raise one finger as greeting. A friend of mine who grew up in South Dakota made mention on Facebook of drivers giving each other the "one-finger signal" and at first I took her to mean something entirely different and far more common in the city.
