By Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
On Christmas Eve, seven people were shot in the city of
Chicago. The media made little mention of the shootings, since they're now
routine in Chicago -- the city has seen some 500 shootings in 2012 alone. The
vast majority of the shooters are black, and the vast majority of the victims
are black. Many of the victims are under the age of 18: Anton Sanders, 15, shot
on Jan. 20; Deshun Winfert, 15, shot on Feb. 5; Damion Rolle, 14, shot on Feb.
21; George Howard and Albert Guyton, both 15, shot on Feb. 27 and Feb. 28; the
list goes on. A few are under age 10. You've never heard of any of them.
But when an evil white person with a history of mental
instability shoots up a school, killing 20 children, most of whom were white,
the media is suddenly concerned with gun control.
Perhaps that's because the media is racist. Or perhaps
it's something else. If the media pays attention to the shootings in Chicago,
it will have to talk about the fact that Chicago is heavily gun controlled. It
will have to discuss the fact that guns are illegally flowing into areas of
heavy gun violence. And it will have to talk about the impact of social ills
like single motherhood, gang recruitment and poor public education.
Instead, the media focuses on Sandy Hook, Aurora and
Columbine. Focusing on such statistically aberrant scenarios rather than the
more widespread gun violence that plagues our cities allows the media to target
one of its most hated groups: the National Rifle Association.
This is what the left does: they pick a target, freeze
it, personalize it and polarize it. They use individual cases as a baton to
wield against groups they hate. The Trayvon Martin case was used as a club
against the American Legislative Exchange Council for their support of
"Stand Your Ground" laws -- even though George Zimmerman never
claimed "Stand Your Ground." The war on women was used as a club
against Komen for the Cure -- even though Komen cares for more women than
Planned Parenthood ever will. The left uses specific cases to destroy important
institutions. It makes their future battles far easier.
That's what they've done here. The left's attack on the
NRA is ludicrous. Neither the Sandy Hook massacre perpetrator, Adam Lanza, nor
his mother, Nancy Lanza, was a member. The state of Connecticut has long
rejected the NRA's legislative influence. The NRA takes zero -- zero
-- tax dollars. Yet somehow, the NRA has been targeted as the root
of all evil.
Why? Because the NRA represents the strongest single
proponent of gun rights in America. And if the left can use Sandy Hook to bash
the NRA, to make it unpalatable to the American public, they will. That's why
the execrable Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC spouted that the NRA had "blood
on its hands" despite any evidence to support that proposition. That's why
Piers Morgan of CNN labeled NRA head Wayne LaPierre "dim-witted" and
"dangerous" for suggesting that schools ought to have armed police,
but said nothing when Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck said the
same thing. David Gregory of NBC was only too happy to bash LaPierre over that
proposed policy, but send his kids to a school with 11 armed security guards.
So what does that have to do with Chicago versus Sandy
Hook? The media knows that in all shooting scenarios, the conversation quickly
polarizes into two positions: ban guns or discuss other myriad social and legal
issues that lead to shootings. In communities plagued by high levels of social
ills like Chicago, the second position is the more obvious one. In cases of
placid communities getting shot up by a nutcase, the left can talk gun bans
more easily.
And they can label the NRA the culprit more easily, too.
When gang members shoot each other in Chicago, it's obvious to everyone that
there are no NRA members involved. When people in Connecticut own guns, the
media has made the case that they must be NRA members, even if they aren't. And
so the NRA, with no relation to Sandy Hook, becomes the problem.
It's far harder to stop Sandy Hook than it is to stop
violence in Chicago. But the left doesn't like the possible solutions in
Chicago. They prefer to destroy their competition. So the shootings in Chicago
will continue. So, in all likelihood, will incidents like Sandy Hook, thanks in
large part to the left's focus on destroying its enemies rather than preventing
acts of evil.
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