Even though handgun deaths are actually down a bit from the early '90s, says a piece in Sunday's NYT Week in Review, recent well-publicized shootings tend to stimulate lawful gun purchases for household protection, which may be bad news for those households, since according to one quoted expert, the odds that a home will be the scene of a homicide are substantially greater if there is a gun in the home.
The decrease in deaths caused by guns in the home could be undone because of how the media covers shootings.
Vice President Al Gore and  House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt were chronicled by the times.