Photo by NCinDC

Last week we criticized Post columnist Courtland Milloy for lazily linking bike lanes to the stubbornly high unemployment rate in D.C. Today, though, he writes an important and necessary column.

In the wake of the Newtown massacre, Milloy reminds us of the shooting of a young mother and her 23-month-old baby on a Metrobus last week. While the mother died—the shooter, her boyfriend, subsequently killed himself—the baby, Kodie “Cocoa” Brown, survived, despite being shot in the face. Writes Milloy:

The mom, 20-year-old Selina Brown, who turned to shield the girl, was shot several times and died in the bus doorway. One of the bullets seared Cocoa’s face, burning a rivulet into a cheek below one eye, shattering the bridge of her nose and gouging out the brow over the other eye.

“Doctors say it was a miracle that it didn’t take her eyes out,” said Derrick Ferguson, Cocoa’s grandfather. “The friction of the bullet passing so close to her eyes has affected her sight, though, and because of the damage to her nose she is having difficulty breathing.”

And yet, breathe she does.

Milloy goes on to say that as Newtown’s victims are being remembered, it’s important not to forget the young victims of many killings in and around D.C. He adds:

A D.C. school official told me that at least 42 people who either were attending Ballou High in Southeast or had recently left the school have been the victims of homicide during the past eight years. During school assemblies, whenever students are asked if they knew somebody who has been killed, nearly all raise their hands.

The massacre in Newtown raises the uncomfortable and difficult question that has been the topic of discussion this morning: are we more shocked by single mass killings that seem as random as Newtown did than we are by persistent and seemingly systemic murders in urban areas that take as many lives, albeit over a longer period of time? Milloy hints that we are, and in a sense it’s difficult to disagree.

Take a minute and read his whole column, and head over to Homicide Watch for the most comprehensive looks at the victims of homicide in D.C.