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COLUMBUS, Ga. — If irony could kill, the Fountain City’s tone-deaf approach to its own safety and development would already be long-dead.

As it turns out, subsidized governmental funding from taxpayers’ dollars combined with small-town incestuous self-congratulations provide enough metaphorical life support to keep just about any delusional dream alive — no matter how detrimental it actually is to the welfare of a literal city. 

This past Friday on May 12, The Columbus Convention & Visitors Board of Commissioners — better known by their deceptive pseudonym of VisitColumbusGA — just celebrated their ‘tourism success’ on the site of a recent double-shooting. 

If that isn’t the literal definition of irony, we don’t know what is. 

The event, which consisted of giving away free hot dogs to locals who already live here, was held in and around the splash pad on Bay Avenue, directly in front of Banks Food Hall. 

However, two women were shot in front of Banks Food Hall — the same exact location that VisitColumbusGA was trying to activate as a ‘tourist attraction.’

In the early-morning hours of May 7, two women were shot in front of the Bay Avenue food court establishment. Police were called to the scene when they found that a third person had crashed their car trying to drive the two wounded gunshot victims to the hospital. 

The irony of VisitColumbusGA holding an event on the site of a very recent double-shooting is insane. 

THE STATS

So far this year, no less than 85 people have been shot in Columbus as of May 15. 

The city has already experienced 23 homicides within the first 135 days of the year. That’s a rate of 0.17 homicides per day, which equates to just over 62 per annum. 

With a population of 205,617 people, that means Columbus is on track to suffer a linearly-projected rate of 31 homicides per hundred-thousand residents.

Given that shootings are known to increase in warmer weather — which Columbus experiences for roughly five months of the year — we can estimate that rate to be 30% higher for 5/12 of the time. That brings the total expected number of homicides to about 70 this year, or a rate of 34 per hundred-thousand residents. 

Following the formula above, the number of people shot in Columbus — whether fatal or not — is currently projected to reach higher than 230 people shot this year. 

We’ll be diving into this reality more in the coming days.

THE COLD HARD TRUTH

Ask yourself: Do you really think people are packing their kids in the van to come visit a city with a homicide rate that exceeds that of many third-world nations?

Do you really believe that the millions of dollars VisitColumbusGA claims to be producing in their Facebook posts are coming from tourists buying a burger on Broadway, or is it more likely that this revenue already existed from people going about their daily lives who live ten miles away in Phenix City or Harris County?

Do you really believe that VisitColumbusGA’s alleged 30k Facebook followers are spending all of this alleged ‘tourism’ money if they don’t even bother to interact with the Facebook page itself? 

Have you noticed that even with an alleged following of 30k people, their aMaZiNg Facebook posts get an average of fewer than five likes per post?

Don’t you find that a bit …strange?

THE BOTTOM LINE

Tourism isn’t ‘working’ here. 

Homicide, however, unfortunately is.

Cities don’t have low homicide rates because they have tourism; they have tourism as a result of first having low homicide rates, which in turn allow for organically-sustainable local economies. You can’t just skip those two foundational premises and go straight to tourism, guys.

If you believe that faking the ‘tourism’ bandwagon is somehow going to cause people to forget the outrageous homicide that is ruining our city, then you might be part of the problem.

If you’re holding tourism events on the sites of recent double-shootings, then you might want to reconsider your entire approach to life.

Needing to point this out is about as demonstrative of our city’s gross incompetence as one could possibly imagine. 

The thing speaks for itself. 

How aMaZiNg. 

Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.

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