I feel like hearing more kids dying with ass cancer stories and heart disease deaths and people dying from preventable diseases stories would probably shift people away from focusing just on guns and homicide and maybe actually cause people to care about science and solving those other things.

Not that those are good to not focus on, just that there's already an ongoing anti vs pro gun conversation going and at least if we talk about something else that's proportional causing deaths... well, I doubt there are many "pro-cancer" people out there (but I know it's non-zero).

I guess I just want some positive momentum on something at this point.

Politically you are probably right. New York Times? A business that likely wishes to sell more subscriptions.