[#godgun]
Click to bow and pray.
What is the problem? Guns or crazies? Seems to me that there are more crazies than there are gun owners, but you know about the media...
False dichotomy. Despite being expected, fallacies don't actually help.
What is the rifle equivalent of a french tickler? Or a variable-speed, remote-control prostate massager? Or ... er ... you know, never mind.
Because if we constrain ourselves to Las Vegas, more and more the question looks to have something to do with the nature of the weapons themselves. And here is the thing you're overlooking from the comfort of a rifle range: If having to reload, or have his hands in better shape to squeeze the trigger over and over again, makes a difference between whether this or that person lives or dies, well, at least you're comfortable in your rifle range, or out in the canyon plinking with your toys, or what the hell ever.
And the idea that you don't give a fuck about whether this or that person lives or dies in those moments because thinking about it is somehow inconvenient to your idea of what's fun?
What?
I've asked a couple reciting cultists, lately, so let us try again and wonder if we get an answer this time:
Just what rights do you fear for?
Seriously, the crazies are certainly dangerous. But so are the so-called "responsible gun owners". And some of them, it turns out, actually intend to be dangerous.
• • •
I will continue to believe that most likely, it is the media that is conducting operant conditioning and desensitization which has more of an effect on weak and diseased minds. Just flick on the tv and channel surf, and you will see several bang bang shoot-'em-ups wherein, an extraordinary amount of ammunition is expended. Meanwhile, the news is giving this particular loonie his 15 minutes of fame.
Because ignoring a problem—
(37:34)
Paul Kennedy: Chris, is there one point, one incident, one event, that has brought it all home to you, that has sort of made it perfectly clear that gun culture is absolutely central to the American ethos?
Chris Hedges: Well, you know, Andrew [Somerset] writes about the Newtown massacre, I would say that, because, I mean, here you have, what was it, twenty little elementary school children shot down, murdered in a town in Connecticut; and let's be clear, they were white, so, you know, that evoked a kind of, I mean, children are shot, black children are shot in Chicago almost every day and it doesn't evoke the same kinds of responses, which I think—another window into the endemic racism within American culture, buttressed by American media. So we have twenty little white children, all killed, and we can't budge, we can't make any changes ....
(CBC↱; boldface accent added)
—makes it go away. Right?
Or, you know, maybe the little black children shot just aren't a problem? Is that it? Maybe? And that's the thing; generally speaking, no, they're not a problem except for the fact that Americans don't really want to admit that circumstance, that outcome, true.
But, you know, it's real easy to invent your two-bit conspiracy theories as long as we remain solely focused on the narrow sliver of whatever moment the notion requires us to limit ourselves to.
There are, of course, reasons why the twenty dead white children are spectacularly and sensationally newsorthy, but that's the thing; there are also reasons why the steady drumbeat of dead dark skin just isn't. So, yeah, if you want to talk about the media, then let us also discuss market perceptions. Because the flip side of the media is its audience. And diversity is as diversity does, but a missing white girl generates more press and market interest than a missing black girl, just like nobody really cared about the largest mass shootings of the year prior to what happened in Las Vegas, because they were deevees, about women, and, you know, it's just women so who the fuck cares. You'd think a majority of the audience, but maybe the traditional prejudices have finally set in, though in such case I would encourage women to campaign loudly and unabashedly about the fact that they no longer trust news media.
But, yeah. You might want to be careful with your media conspiracy theories. Conservatives, you know, have such a sterling record on that one.
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Notes:
Kennedy, Paul. "Gun Crazy: How fetishizing guns shuts down debate about them". 2016. Ideas. 2 October 2017. CBC.ca. 3 October 2017. http://bit.ly/2hIJUNO
