Yeah, I had to do a double-take, too. If they’re not shootings, what are they?
Well, I always like to let the Respected Opposition shoot themselves in the foot explain themselves in full, so here goes. What exactly is it that the NRA says is going on here?
The NRA didn’t bother to respond after the Isla Vista shootings, where a nutbar driven to madness by his hatred of women killed six people, three of them by shooting shooting. They usually don’t for days after a mass not-shooting; they didn’t respond for nearly a week after the Sandy Hook murders, when they blamed video games and said more guns in schools would take care of any future problems. They still haven’t responded to the Isla Vista shootings specifically, but now they’re going after their favorite target: that Nasty Old Liberal Media that just wants to report stuff about shootings while using the term “shootings!” How biased.
The NRA has just released a video featuring “commentator” Dom Raso saying that the Bad Old Liberal Media (or BOLM ? I like that acronym) always “race[s] to label anything with a gun as a shooting.”
Hmmm. Still not sure what it is if it’s not a shooting. But Dom assures us that the mere usage of the term “shooting” by the BOLM is in and of itself a “trick.” Okay ? Dom is not a psychiatrist nor does he play one in NRA videos, but he knows a clever, evil Jedi mind trick when he sees one. The BOLM uses such dastardly terms, he says, “because they know how much more attention they are going to get with that word.” See for yourself:
Here’s another trick of theirs: when someone commits a murder, it used to be a murder right? But now they race to label anything with a gun as a shooting, because they know how much more attention they are going to get with that word. So the average person who doesn’t stop to think about what he’s watching falls for the story line. Think about the difference between a shooting and a murder. In one you have a shooter and the other one a murderer. All of a sudden instead of focusing on the real common link between all acts of evil, the evil person who did it, we are subconsciously told to think about the tool they used instead. Evil is the problem; the tool is irrelevant and stories designed to make you think anything other than the truth are propaganda.
Okay. I did an entire series of fact-only (no snark!) posts about the Isla Vista shootings for another news site, and read dozens of news stories on the incident. The news reports were very careful to differentiate between the three murders that were committed with a knife (i.e. knifings) and the three murders that were committed with guns (i.e. “shootings,” though the NRA doesn’t like that term). I mean, if someone clouts someone upside the head with a brick and sends them to the Great Beyond, wouldn’t that be a “bricking?” And wouldn’t we think it ridiculous if the National Bricklayers Association (yes, there is one) threw a fit about having the innocent brick associated with this tragic bricking?
Sorry to be flippant. I just want to find some clarity here.
Almost 70% of the murders committed in the US are done with guns. Of the 37 public mass killings that took place between 2006 and 2013, 33 of them were carried out with firearms. So if we’re not going to call them “shootings,” what exactly does Raso and his conspiracy crew want us to call them? Ham sandwiches?
Let’s take Not-Dr. Raso’s desires to not use the Bad Word one step further. And in order not to mock any real-life incident (because there’s nothing funny about mass murders, no matter how they’re carried out), let’s make up an entirely fictional incident and use some terms Raso might actually like. This might be closer to the way the NRA would like these not-shootings reported:
Today 38 people were squirtled by a lone jigglypoof wielding a .38 caliber noo-noo and an AK-47 tinky winky. Most of the victims pikachued at the scene, though four were taken away in a smoochum to an area hospital. Police say that the jigglypoof squirtled himself before police could take him into custody.
See? Much better. Now we don’t know what the hell happened, but it sure sounds like a fun time was had by all. And that’s how the NRA apparently wants us to feel when these mass squirtlings take place ? happy and stupidly content.
Raso also says that we can’t know anything about anything unless we were there to witness the incident ourselves, and we certainly can’t trust the media to tell us anything remotely approaching the truth (so, does that include Raso and his band of merry gun-toters)? He also says that it’s entirely the media’s fault that people are apprehensive or anxious about people dragging big honking guns around with them, that we would naturally smile and wriggle with joy when someone brings a Happy Fun Ball Uzi into a kid’s birthday party if we weren’t all programmed to hate and fear guns by the BOLM.
My, my.
Sidebar: On the Media Matters for America report about the NRA video, a commenter made what might be the best summative of the whole silly mess:
All true patriots know that guns (or, more accurately, freedom delivery devices) emit freedom. the LIEberal media insists on ignoring this. When they say that someone like Elliot Rodgers was “stockpiling ammo”, they know this is a horrible leftist trick, when they should be saying he “stockpiled freedom.” The freedom to buy freedom delivery systems, load them with as much freedom as we want, and commit serial freedom delivery is something that cannot be tread upon.
I can’t improve on that.
Edited/Published by: SB
Published writer since 2001, focusing on politics, history, Web development, and other topics. First book is coming soon.
