Another shooting, no deaths

[Sunseeker]

Too many shootings this summer. And people still think "oh gun control is fine as it is!". I just want guns out of the hands of the irresponsible and mentally unsound.

Sure, I'm fine with having people who want to own guns submit to a "mental health" test, provided that the questions deal with how you handle stress and the like, no what politician you're voting for.

[Azivalla]

Sure, I'm fine with having people who want to own guns submit to a "mental health" test, provided that the questions deal with how you handle stress and the like, no what politician you're voting for.

Exactly. We need to check the people buying weapons and make sure they won't be going on a rampage. So what if it takes awhile to get a gun. Safety of the public is more important.

[Torq]

I think there's a whole lot of noise out there and it's easy to get sucked into it at times. Message boards are also like scared dogs. Someone bites your first because they think you're going to bite them. My initial reply was more in the context of various threads we've participated in. I just don't see the liberal agenda and media issues that you do. That doesn't make me right and you wrong. It just means we've had different experiences.

This is so very true it almost hurts.

And, because I say it everywhere: people are driven by the instinct that necessitates that they're measurably better than others. The easiest way to do that is often to just put the other person down.

It's something that happens regardless of race, political affiliation, status, or creed. It happens in every way: even refraining from engaging in a fight is to attempt to demonstrate superiority; specifically, moral superiority.

People who want world peace fail to realize that the competitive drive is just as much a part of us as we're a part of this world. I'd posit that it descends from the very basic instincts every animal has: the need to be better than a competitor, and thus preserve the superior traits. We're just so very much more complex than the rest of the species on the planet that we've devised ways of being more than just physically or intellectually superior than our peers; hell, some of us even lie to ourselves so we'll feel better than we actually are.

The fact that we're terrible at communicating with each other, especially when the majority of us now tend to communicate through pure text, just compounds the issue.

But I digress.

[Bobdoletoo]

Why are CBS and NBC ignoring this story? Total they have given about 40 seconds to this story. If it had been against a gay organization, there woudl be no end to the coverage. Typical liberal media, ignore any story that puts their agenda into a bad light.

[Kalis]

Why are CBS and NBC ignoring this story? Total they have given about 40 seconds to this story. If it had been against a gay organization, there woudl be no end to the coverage. Typical liberal media, ignore any story that puts their agenda into a bad light.

Nobody died, and you said yourself that they've reported it.

Other than the guard-as-hero angle, "Man fails to kill people" doesn't make for a particularly exciting news item.

Not sure how a man trying to murder people can be regarded as a liberal agenda, just as the bloke who shot up the Sikh temple wasn't following a conservative agenda. They were just nutters following an extremist agenda that has nothing to do with any mainstream political views.

[Chevonne]

If guns kill people, then spoons make you fat. Yeah I stole it. JMO.

[KingHorse]

There should be more shootings at lobbyist group offices.

It's...wait, is this not going to get an infraction?

If not, am I allowed to agree? >.>

[RoKPaNda]

I get the feeling that even if he killed people this wouldn't get as much attention.

Anyway sad regardless as the guy was definitely cracked. Attacking people because they disagree with you politically is just tragic. I support the right for gay couples to marry, but at the same time I respect the right of the guy that owns Chick-Fil-A to feel differently. It's hard to imagine someone getting that worked up about it that they want to hurt someone. I'd really like to see measures put in place to prevent people like that from having guns. As someone else said a mental health screening would be great.

[KingHorse]

http://news.yahoo.com/man-fires-inse...82.html?_esi=1

Clearly it's time to ban bug spray to protect the innocent.

[Kalis]

I get the feeling that even if he killed people this wouldn't get as much attention.

His politics don't seem to fit into the liberal stereotype - he obviously isn't an advocate of gun control - and people don't generally associate themselves with extremists, regardless of their political affiliations, so I'd be surprised if they didn't give it much attention if he'd killed loads of people.

[The Riddler]

His politics don't seem to fit into the liberal stereotype

There's quite a media blackout on the incident, but what information has been obtained indicates that the shooter said "I don't like your politics" on the site of the shooting. The site is a conservative think tank. Doesn't take much to conclude the guy has opposing political ideas since - you know - he SAID he did... He smuggled his gun into the outfit inside of a Chick-Fil-A bag. He obviously wanted to make a statement about the whole flap over that particular incident - which is pretty solidly divided down liberal vs. conservative lines. And it is also knows he is a volunteer at a LGTB organization. Now, there are plenty of conservatives who support the LGTB movement, but it is (as a general rule) a left-leaning group that donates primarily to liberal causes. The shooter's primary issue of focus is clearly the gay-rights movement. And there are lots of liberals who go off and use guns. Just because someone is a leftist doesn't mean they wouldn't get a gun and shoot people if they snapped.

And the reason why the media is ignoring this is NOT because no one got killed. Since when did that matter to the media when they wanted to focus on it? No - the reason why this is not getting any play is because the guy was a gay-rights advocate. The news media has adopted a lock-step default position that they will not focus on any news that makes a gay-rights group look bad. Telling the nation that a gay-rights advocate was willing to go KILL a group of innocent conservatives simply because they had a different point of view is just not going to happen.

The guy was a singular nutcase and does not represent any group or the gay rights movement by any stretch. But this is about optics. The left does not want the public seeing "their" side as being bad. So they bury stories about left-on-right hate, and amplify stories about right-on-left hate. And the result is the kind of bias I talked about in my earlier posts... "Default Assumption? Conservative = Bad" in the brains of far too many people.

The test? What would the news cycle be like if a conservative volunteer of the FRC had walked into the LGTB office (carrying a gun in a Chick-Fil-A bag) and said, "It's not about you... It's about your policies..." and then shot a security guard? You know damn well that it would be the news story of the year. The pro-gay folks who took the guy down would be getting interviews on every Morning news show and cable channel. The topic of every talk show would be, "Do ALL conservatives want to kill gays?" It takes zero imagination to see how if the situation was reversed, the news media treatment of the event would be completely different.

[BLCalliente]

It's...wait, is this not going to get an infraction?

If not, am I allowed to agree? >.>

Sure, join the party!