Officer Alex has a meltdown about the media…again
So the day of the shootings in San Bernardino, I watched the press clamor all over themselves prognosticating that this was “clearly the work of a white male Christian fundamentalist.” Fox News, MSNBC, CNN…It was consistent and for once, it was fascinating to watch the actual facts unfold because the current media environment was a minefield of instability and their chosen “experts” of the hour were all over the map, yet still speaking with great conviction. And, like the “Beltway Sniper” theories from the heady days of October 2002, they were all wrong.
Why? You could lay this at the feet of it being “an insane white guy theory” and still be able to survive if you were wrong and accordingly that’s where folk went. Being so very wrong is simply an inconvenience after the fact with such a theory, and that’s what happened, of course. So now we have moved on to the “the spoon is what made us fat” stage of things to further avoid the inconvenient reality of who the killers really were, and the race to continue avoiding this is at full steam as I write this, and yes, I’m OK with that too. Who needs Islamophobia when you can talk “gun control” instead, as it’s being designated? Fair enough.
So the killers were Muslims with automatic weapons and pipe bombs and like the shock of Muhammad and Malvo, one was a female, defying both theories and stereotypes. The actual suspects in this case come from a rich background of the televised cutting off of folks’ heads, setting people on fire, rape and/or stoning but we don’t want to offend those who have similar (albeit clearly less violent) cultural ties and we’re now left with the righteous indignation of the tools they used to commit the majority of these 14 murders (hence, blaming “the spoon” for making us fat).
In a televised speech regarding another shooting in Colorado Springs that left three dead, President Obama himself stated “enough is enough.” Repeated outbreaks of gun violence like this one (Colorado Springs) are “not normal” and we need to have a conversation about semi-automatic weapons, he said. These weapons (aka “spoons”) were the problem.
Now as it happens eight people were killed and 20 were wounded over the Thanksgiving holiday in Chicago and this prompted no such response. The three killed in Colorado, however? Now that was “not normal.” Legislation is what was needed and details were given for reassurance.
As it happens, the details given as to what would have legislatively prevented this tragedy were actually already in effect. The guns used in the San Bernardino shootings were legally purchased. The key suspect passed his background check, and these were done in a state where the president’s “new” proposals were already enacted, and none of these addressed what the FBI described as the “IED factory” in the suspects’ garage.
Legislation. Reassurance. “Control.” I understand why these are being pushed, but at some point simply repeating things and hyperbole is just not enough, and I think the American people at both ends of the political spectrum are starting to pick up on this.
There are thousands of gun laws on the books nationally. That ship has pretty much sailed. We’re going to have to accept the fact that the problem isn’t a lack of legislation, or Republicans, or God help us, even the NRA. The government is going to have to go door to door to pick up the millions of assault weapons in this country, or it’s going to have to address the small number of people actually committing or likely to commit these crimes…even if it offends them. Everything else is just a distraction between tragedies.
But what do I know? I’m not a legislator or a politician (aka: True Expert, apparently).
When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center