Literally before the victims’ spilled blood was cold after the Roanoke, VA on-air TV news shootings this week, President Obama, VA Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and the leftist crowd were blaming the NRA and calling for more gun control and “background checks,” because:
- The killer apparently purchased his gun legally two months ago, and;
- The killer passed multiple background checks and waited a week for his gun.
The Virginia background checks go beyond the standard federal NICS background check administered by the FBI, and include the extensive “VCheck system.” The state-level system instituted in Virginia existed before the federal NICS program, was strengthened to comply with NICS, that was strengthened again after the Virginia Tech massacre.
The media has not widely reported evidence that the shooter was a gay Obama supporter in favor of gun control and a race war, or that he was a fan of previous massacrists whom the media made famous. There has also been little mention of the words “hate crime.”
The media also failed to mention their own responsibility for the mess. Public/media attention is the driving motivation for most of these public mass shooters, in a well-documented phenomenon called the “copycat effect.” But the media prefers to keep on giving these guys their desired front-page splash in order to sell more commercials or papers, and to generate more such killings in order to generate even more media attention. Another media priority is using these events, in which they are complicit, as fodder for the political gun control debate.
