Every Person Shot Down In The Street Is A Horrible Tragedy, Regardless of Their Station In Life

I went upstairs to get dressed yesterday at around 8:30 and MSNBC was treating the fatal shooting of UnitedHeathcare CEO Brian Thompson as some kind of a national catastrophe. I had never heard of him before and— unlike the deluge of anti-insurance company expressions on social media— I have nothing negative to say (or positive) to say about him. But, on average 117 people die by gun violence in the U.S. every day. Why is he getting that kind of coverage and the other 116 none at all?

Thompson, it turns out, was class valedictorian at the University of Iowa in 1997 and worked his way to the top of the biggest health insurance company in the U.S., “bigger than General Motors,” Andrea Mitchell intoned in an effort to make the shooting more significant and more newsworthy. She didn’t mention, though, that in May the Justice Department filed a suit against Thompson for fraud and insider trading. Maybe better not to so soon.

Look, every shooting is a tragedy, and the lives of the 116 other victims of daily gun violence in the U.S. are no less significant than Brian Thompson's, even if their deaths didn't make messages— "deny," defend" and "depose"— written on the bullet casings. The disparity in media coverage underscores how society and the press value certain lives over others based on wealth, status or a perceived “story.”

Thompson’s position as a CEO draws media attention because it aligns with larger narratives about power, influence, and corporate America, making it “newsworthy” in a way that obscures the universal humanity of gun violence. For the vast majority of victims, especially those from working-class or marginalized communities, the tragedy of their loss is treated as a statistic rather than a deeply personal and public story.

This disparity reflects systemic inequalities in whose stories are deemed worthy of telling. When the media amplifies the death of a CEO while neglecting the other 116 victims, it diminishes the broader epidemic of gun violence and frames it as exceptional only when it affects the wealthy or powerful. Such coverage reinforces the idea that some lives matter more than others— an idea that should be antithetical to the fundamental tragedy of gun violence, which devastates families and communities across all strata of society.

Now imagine if someone shot a high-ranking, polarizing fascist like Elon Musk. Do you think the media would be running the story about his DOGE partner Vivek Ramaswamy having spent years attacking him as a China-suckup hack? He wasn’t shot but yesterday Andrew Kaczynski reported that Ramaswamy “has a lengthy history of attacking his partner’s ties to China, frequently referring to Musk as a ‘circus monkey’ and a puppet for the Chinese Communist Party. Ramaswamy once noted that in 2022, Musk— who always takes the side of authoritarians— suggested that “Taiwan should become a special administrative region of China, a stance aligned with Beijing’s interests and one that drew praise from Chinese officials. Tesla’s investments in the Chinese market and Musk’s comment on Taiwan have drawn fierce criticism from Ramaswamy, who argued the Tesla CEO was pandering to the Chinese Communist Party for business benefits, such as regulatory approvals and tax breaks. ‘I think Tesla is increasingly beholden to China,’ Ramaswamy said in May when discussing the carmaker’s decision to build a battery plant in Shanghai. ‘I have no reason to think Elon won’t jump like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping calls in the hour of need,’ Ramaswamy added.”

Ramaswamy’s own words could be used by critics to question Musk’s role as a government cost-cutter, given how much his own companies have benefited over the years from billions of dollars in government contracts and assistance.

“Both Tesla and SpaceX quite likely would not exist as successful businesses if it were not for the use of public funding, either through subsidies, through the electric car industry, or through actual government contracting in the case of SpaceX,” Ramaswamy said in 2022 on a Fox News podcast. 

Though Musk, the world’s richest man, and Ramaswamy, himself a [multi-]millionaire, are both seen as friends of Big Tech, the two have divergent views when it comes to China. While Musk has recently favored closer ties, Ramaswamy has called for an economic decoupling from China.

As a presidential candidate in the 2024 GOP primary, Ramaswamy was often critical of US economic ties to China. While he claimed other companies such as Apple and Black Rock were enabling and making political concessions to China, he often singled out Musk for some of his harshest criticism.

“Elon Musk has, I think, demonstrated his willingness to change his political tunes based on the favors that he gets to be able to do business in China,” Ramaswamy added on the 2022 Fox News podcast.

…In one lengthy post targeting Musk in May 2023 he wrote, “the U.S. needs leaders who aren’t in China’s pocket.”

“Now the crusader for ‘free speech’ (@elonmusk) kisses the ring of the world’s biggest censor: Xi Jinping,” he wrote in another June 2023 tweet.

Ramaswamy echoed those comments multiple times in 2023 and 2022.

“I do think it is a kinship that Tim Cook and Elon Musk probably have, is that they both bend the knee to the true overlord, which is Xi Jinping,” said Ramaswamy in 2022, mentioning Cook, Apple’s CEO.

“This is what China’s recognized, is that US companies will jump; if Xi Jinping says ‘jump,’ they’ll say, ‘How high?’” he said in another comment mentioning Musk in June 2023 on Fox News.

This is the thing, at least for me— when gun violence devastates a family, it should matter equally, regardless of the victim's social standing. By focusing disproportionately on figures like Thompson— or hypothetically, Musk— the media misses an opportunity to shed light on the epidemic affecting communities across the country, ensuring that countless tragedies never go across Andrea Mitchell’s desk and remain invisible.

UPDATE: Yahoo News reported that “Beyond the shooter's own motives, it's clear from the shockingly celebratory reaction online to Thompson's murder that anger about the American insurance and healthcare system has reached the point of literal bloodlust. As the American Prospect so aptly put it, "only about 50 million customers of America’s reigning medical monopoly might have a motive to exact revenge upon the UnitedHealthcare CEO."