Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Gun Sales

Another crazy disgruntled employee decided to off his coworkers on live Television.  The victims were young TV News employees.  Very sad.  The killer then attempted suicide.  Three dead and one wounded.

The winner in all this will be the NRA and gun manufacturers who will see a surge in fire arm sales.  But, maybe another winner could be a media who will wake up to the gun craziness in this country, now that some of their own are victims.

This whole situation is like being told you have lung cancer and that smoking more tobacco might help.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is insane now with gun rights trumping our right to public safety. We are all at risk for someone who shouldn't have a gun, has one and it's aimed at you. There's no longer a ban on assault weapons, the response is buy more guns so you can protect yourself. Our country is off its rails on this issue with Congress in the NRA's strangle hold. I hope you are right Jim that media will step up since now they are victims. Peace and love to us all. If that makes me sound like a gun hating hippy, so be it. But, I am a registered gun owner with training. The insanity must stop and I think most responsible gun owners and non gun owners would agree.

Anonymous said...

The shooting was a disgusting tragedy, but the media protects itself. Had the shooting victims been private citizens, a cop, a politician or public figure, the national news media would have no problem airing the video shooting over and over again in its entirety so all could see its graphic and bloody mess saying it was in the public interest to air it. An innocent reporter and a cameramen are shot, but the national news media does not run the video saying it is too graphic and the need to protect family.

Anonymous said...

There's always a spike in public sentiment for stricter gun control after an incident like this:

http://tinyurl.com/d6ptzbd

And as we know the political class will do nothing.

The media may be successful in pressuring them where the people haven't been. Of course more of it is like the Journal now, what with media consolidation and it coming under tighter corporate control. People aren't exposed to many alternate viewpoints.

It might also be helpful to think about this in the context of the disconnect between government and the people in general. If people are surveyed about individual issues they favor things like gun control, making the wealthy and corporations pay a fair share of taxes, a non interventionist foreign policy, making the small adjustments that would put Social Security of out the reach of the Wall Street vultures who want that trust fund, etc, etc, none of which the congress ever listens to or has to. Those viewpoints are frozen out of the discussion and the parties vet candidates who would raise them.

Congress doesn't have a 9 percent approval rating for nothing. It doesn't represent us and people know it. We don't talk about it because we talk about Donald Trump, the school superintendent, and other things that make the front page or the evening news, and also quite frankly because we've internalized the reality that is. We've always told ourselves we have a vote and live in a democracy, so it must be. But there will be no gun control, no end to the wars, none of it, and members of congress will get re-elected at the rate of 90 percent or so as usual.