Snell: Waking the dragon — How Feinstein fiddled while America burned

[TupperHappy]

Along with bombs and bombers, guns seem to be all the media wants to talk about these days. Death is sexy to our miscreant media, especially when people are killed on purpose. And when that happens, it’s all the newspapers and news stations will print and broadcast, in turn making these events appear worse than they are in reality.

To understand this, one need only look at the difference in coverage between the Texas fertilizer plant explosion, which killed at least 14 confirmed people and injured 200 more at the time of writing this, versus the coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing, which only killed three and injured a hundred others. Texas was on TV for a day, tops, while we’re still hearing about Boston and will for many weeks to come.

Where the media really didn’t care too much about the Texas incident, once a kid was killed at a race, the Boston bombing is now a foil for everything from gun control to immigration in the wake of Sandy Hook, with both sides of the political spectrum using it against the other. What about Texas, you ask? Nothing but crickets chirping from the mainstream media at the moment. Recent studies have shown that people who consume large amounts of mass media often feel more insecure, are less informed, or can’t distinguish between news and what passes as news, what with all the opinion you’ll find in news today.

But when it comes to something as deadly serious as guns and crime, Americans can’t afford the media hyperbole, misinformation and disinformation.

...


http://www.iowastatedaily.com/opinion/article_1c144792-b36d-11e2-8ac6-001a4bcf887a.html?TNNoMobile

[Kolesar]

1. And: "We have a lot of liberal columnists working for the Daily. "

As a conservative, I’m fine with that; they’re the ones who apply for the job, and conservatives usually don’t. Free market, baby, deal with it. But many of our liberal columnists are my friends, with whom I have spent time outside of work, too. And they, along with everyone else it seems, have an opinion about guns, as you can see by glancing through the last few weeks of the Daily’s Opinion section.
...
whiner

[Eleanors38]

4. Do you see the gun debate as culture war wherein

Gun people can be demonized at will, and treated as less than human? That such demonization can be conveniently sanctioned by associating gun people with the NRA? Thanks in advance.

[rrneck]

2. This piece links to the gungeon. nt

[gejohnston]

3. the difference is

the Texas explosion was because a member of the community's elite was too cheap and too interested short term profit to care about the safety of his business, workers, or the town.

Guns are an easy target. Someone shoots up the school, go after the pick up truck rural guy because he or she lacks neither the economic nor political clout. Besides, it fuels a culture war while explosion doesn't.