MercatorNet is an Australian online magazine geared toward family values. By all accounts, they seem to be pretty level-headed and factual organization even though they tend to lean toward the right. However, they must be named after the Mercator Projection because one of their latest articles is distorted at best. (Geography geeks will get that one.)
In a recent column about the mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, while they didn’t outright blame the shooting on the fact that the mass murdering troglodyte’s parents were divorced, they asked: “Why is divorce ignored as a factor of the shooting?” They then go on to list a number of mass shooters who came from a ‘broken home’. As an aside, the term broken home really needs to be retired because my parents didn’t divorce and our home was broken beyond belief. But I digress.
This is a classic example of correlation does not equal causation. I can point to a number of school shooters who lived with both parents who went on to kill dozens. And why just divorce? Why not mention single-parent households too? Not all of them were created out of divorce.
It’s one thing to use a tragedy like this to push a political agenda. It’s another matter entirely when you use it to push one this far off the mark.
Real Crime with Trench Reynolds 