OK. And so?

Coulter: If You Compare White Populations, US Murder Rate Same as Belgium

Perhaps true.

But what’s her point?

The slaughter among the nation’s non-whites doesn’t matter?

That's not even the issue, is it?

The overall murder rate, much inflated by the violence of non-whites just as she says, is one thing while large-scale massacres like Newtown are quite another.

And as to the latter, I have the impression the shooters and the victims are generally overwhelmingly white.

In fact, black and liberal commentators sometimes unfairly complain that such shootings get a lot of play in the media while the shootouts on city streets are largely ignored just because, they say, the victims of these spectacular crimes are white while the victims on the streets generally are not.

But that is just race-baiting nonsense.

The slaughter among the nation’s young black and some other non-white males is a matter of criminal gangsters killing other criminal gangsters in places such people are routinely to be found.

In contrast, in a single incident at a school or a theater or other non-urban location a previously harmless shooter with no criminal associations or record may use a legally procured weapon to massacre dozens of ordinary, innocent kids, teachers, theatergoers, or other law abiding folks quite deliberately, at a location we all expect and demand to be a lot safer than the common battlefields of gangsters.

And so it is specifically this sort of mass violence that politicians are moved to specially deplore and promise to take special action to prevent.

As to measures to cut down on the mutual slaughter of and by criminals in limited areas of the nation's cities, the general population is understandably somewhat less concerned than their kin or their neighbors personally put at risk by the gun-play.

With that, of course, anyone can sympathize.

But the general public in America has always recognized that, apart from the danger to innocent bystanders, criminals killing each other is by no means altogether to be deplored.

Update 01172013 1219 hrs EST.

The president's measures, while inadequate to the task, are a step in the right direction.

Though I doubt it is his intention, they seem likely to have a greater impact on the future incidence of school or theater or other exurban massacres than on the slaughter common among young black males.