By: Alan Korwin
12/17/2012 08:27 AM
A gun lobbyist, traumatized by the evil in Newton, Conn., under pressure by reporters for an interview, asked me desperately for help. What is he supposed to say? How can he respond to such slaughter, how can he defend guns in the light of this massacre? He is at his wit’s end, ready to give up, throw in the towel. Help me please, he implores. What can he say in the face of such an abomination? There are no words. And there aren’t any.
Why does the media only cover guns in the face of such tragedy? Why don’t they discuss it when we can examine the subject coolly and rationally, and maybe get somewhere?
Because then we might learn something. Because then the public could become educated, but the media does not really want this to happen. Because then you might learn that guns have social utility, and are indispensable — that guns serve good purposes — instead of being pounded with the hopelessly false idea that arms are bad.
If the media covered guns without tragedy as a background, you would learn that guns save lives, which is why we want our police heavily armed, with high-capacity magazines, and high-powered rifles, and all the ammunition they can carry. You would learn that you need guns and ammo and full-capacity magazines — for the exact same reason.
You would learn that your need is even greater, because YOU are the first responders, and police are always second. You face the criminals first, in every event. Police, with all their deadly bullets only show up later. Police are the second responders. Media stories are always wrong about that. That’s what you say.
People would learn that guns are for stopping crime. Guns protect you. Guns are good. Guns keep you safe, and help you sleep quietly at night. Guns are why America is still free. And the media doesn’t want that message to get out. That’s why they only haul out the subject with horror as a backdrop. That’s what you say.
Thirteen scholarly studies show that guns are used to prevent crimes and save lives between 700,000 and 2.5 million times each year (depending on study size, time frame and other factors). You could get the book entitled “Armed,” by Kleck and Kates, and read the studies yourself. Why doesn’t the media ferret out those stories and put them on the front page? That’s what you say.
Even the FBI says justifiable homicide happens every day, and they’re only counting the cases that go all the way through court. Most armed self defense is so clean it never even makes it to court — or the gun isn’t even fired. Why isn’t that in the national news every day?
Because you, Mr. and Ms. Reporter, don’t want the public educated about guns. Because you want the public ignorant, misinformed and terrified of guns, just like you are. Because you are pushing an agenda to vilify and ban fundamental rights we hold dear, that have helped make America great. Because you want people to have a lopsided unbalanced distorted view, and you’re doing a great job of that.
That’s what you say. And let them try to deny it.
Because so-called “news” media gun stories are not news, they are propaganda. Showing the image of a mass murderer 100 times a day isn’t news, it is propaganda. Because staying on the same single event for a week or more isn’t news — even reporters would call it old news, or yesterday’s news, or yellow journalism, if they were being honest — a trait many have long since lost the ability to exercise. It is propaganda by every definition of that term.
It is designed to disgust, and cause revulsion, and motivate mob mentality. It serves no news purpose other than to induce fear and cause terror. In five minutes you have told the story, nothing new is added, yet it rolls on with images on endless loop. It promotes evil, encourages copycats, with zero redeeming news value. It violates every rule of ethical news behavior there is. That’s what you say.
Showing the grief and tears day after day as you are doing, dear reporter, is not news, it is manipulation of we the people. It is an effort to turn people against something you as a reporter personally detest, because you are as poorly educated on the subject as many of your viewers and readers. You are so poorly informed on this subject you need counseling.
That’s what you say. Tell reporters they are acting like hoplophobes. Let them look it up.
When eighty people died that day, with their bloodied bodies strewn all over the place, they didn’t care. When children were torn from their parents, and parents never came home, they didn’t care. When people left home and said, “See you later honey,” and were never heard from again, they didn’t care, and I didn’t care, and they never even mentioned it, because those people died in their cars.
Eighty people. Entire families. Moms and dads, infants, teenagers, all across this great land, not just in one town. That grief was every bit as tragic. And eighty more the next day. And today. And reporters didn’t even mention it. Because reporters don’t care about human tragedy. They just want to use their favorite tragedy, a maniac’s evil, now [five] days old, to promote a terrible agenda they and their bosses and their political puppet masters want them to promote. And that’s the abomination. They should be ashamed of themselves. They are a disgrace. That’s what you say.
Even though cars are involved in virtually the same number of deaths as firearms, and typically used by all the murderers, we don’t call for their elimination, because cars serve a purpose greater than the harm they cause. Doctors kill between ten- and one-hundred-thousand people every year through “medical misadventures,” a sugarcoated term for mistakes (the actual number is hotly disputed). We don’t call for doctors’ elimination, because doctors serve a greater purpose than the harm they cause too.
Guns are precisely the same, but you wouldn’t know it watching the so-called “news.” Think of all the lives guns save and crimes they prevent. We should call for education and training — and the pro-rights side does, constantly, to the media’s deaf ears. Right now, schools and the media are a black hole of ignorance on the subject. Half of all American homes have guns — how is it possible to get a high-school diploma without one-credit in gun safety and marksmanship? How can you honestly argue for ignorance instead of education and live with yourself? That’s what you say.
The greater part of this great nation is on to you. We hold our rights dear. We hold the Bill of Rights in highest regard, while you spit on it with your unethical and vile effort to destroy it from your high and mighty seat. You believe you are protected by the very thing you would use to demolish it. Your use of propaganda, every time a tragedy occurs, to deny us our rights is the highest form of treason, a fifth-column effort, an enemy both foreign and domestic of which we are keenly aware. You will reap what you sow. That’s what you say.
The media says it wants more laws but we already know that everything about every one of these tragedies is already a gross violation of every law on the books, many times over. You media types would outlaw all guns, as many of you are calling for. We all know it would be as effective as the cocaine ban — a product many of you enjoy in the privacy of… Hollywood and Wall Street and Occupy rallies and your upscale parties and across America. And if you like the war on some drugs, you’re going to love the war on guns. That’s what you say.
And if you think the rule of law is the solution — like for people on Prozac and Ritalin suddenly going berserk — remember that, at least for tomorrow, if the man next to you is going to suddenly crack, you really do need a gun.
Ask yourself why people in greater numbers are suddenly cracking up and taking up the devil’s cause, to speak metaphorically. So many reporters have obviously given up on religion and the morality it used to exert, the binding social effect it had on people. Are you a religious person? Ask them. People typically never ask the reporters questions. Reporters don’t know how to handle that. Try it. That’s what you say.
Do films like American Psycho, where scriptwriters invent characters who enjoy killing and go around gleefully murdering people, and financiers who put millions behind such projects, and which the entertainment industry put in our faces on a constant basis — does that have any effect? Would you argue it has no effect? Hundreds of films like that, filling our TV’s daily — doesn’t that do something to people? Dexter, a mass murderer disguised as a cop who is the hero of the series, does that shift people’s thinking, their sense of balance? How do you justify supporting such things instead of shunning and casting such perverts and miscreants from the industry? That’s what you say.
But here’s the bottom line as far as I’m concerned. Here’s the Pulitzer Prize, waiting for you if you want one. Should people who put scores of guns into the hands of drug lords get one-month sentences — like we saw the very day before this massacre — is that right? If you get the laws you’re shouting for, would it matter if that’s what the Justice Dept. does with them?
Why isn’t THAT discussed? How did you let that skate by? Don’t tell me you covered that story, if you simply reported the government handout, that Fast and Furious smugglers Avila and Carillo were sentenced. That’s not reporting, that’s reading.
That’s the ugly underbelly of this “gun problem” we have. There are the laws for real crimes, and the feckless government role, letting slaughter continue unabated, even abetted. There’s the solution you say you seek, squandered.
Were the hundreds murdered that way less important? Is it a racist thing — because they were brown-skinned Mexicans and not little White children, is that it? How could Eric Holder’s Justice Dept. — and you — let those perps off so easy? Why isn’t that the headline? It was the biggest gun scandal in U.S. history — your own words. One-month sentences? Not even a trial? And you bought into this? That’s what you say.
The ring leaders in the biggest gun-running death-dealing high-powered so-called “assault-weapon” scandal in U.S. history were caught red-handed giving guns to murderers, but they got a plea deal from the administration, not even a trial, and the media had nothing to say.
The media that has so much to say about guns — or so they would have us falsely believe — are shills for the Justice Dept. that perpetrated this travesty, and now would use their bully pulpit to attack our rights, in the name of little children, day after day. Journalists have become a travesty, that’s what you say.
More than 90 of these fearsome guns were delivered by our very government to the worst murderers on the planet. And now, thanks to double-jeopardy protection, we won’t have a trial so we can’t even find out who in our government gave the orders. And now we have nothing to say.
The event in a small Connecticut town has opened the gun issue again.
And that’s what you say.
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