The New York Daily News called out America’s gun obsession on Friday following the on-air killings of two Virginia journalists. The paper’s cover featured an editorial headlined: “AMERICA’S FULL OF IT.”
Editorial: Snap out of the gun madness. http://t.co/j3qnmB0KSL pic.twitter.com/q9hQ8cNXWy
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) August 28, 2015
The cover was a sharp pivot from Thursday’s, which featured three screengrabs from the gunman’s videos of shooting and killing two Virginia journalists.
This isn’t the first time the tabloid has called out America’s love of guns. A May 2014 featured the headline: “AMERICA IN DENIAL.”
Some were appalled that they put a picture of her being shot on the cover, but I thought this analysis pretty on point: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/roanoke-shooting-belongs-front-page-images-article-1.2339835
This follow-up shows the past cover was not just exploitation. Good job DN, especially since the editorial staff can be pretty conservative. OTOH, I think they were always supportive of Bloomberg’s gun control stuff. It’s a respectable urban conservative leaning thing to be concerned about.
An entire classroom of children plus 6 educators were completely decimated by a deranged man with a type of weapon he should have never had access to. The blood, guts, brains and belongings of children were spilled and splattered on all 4 walls of what should have been a happy place in Newtown. For those that don’t know, there were kids cut nearly in half by Lanza’s Bushmaster - a weapon designed for war. God only knows what that must have sounded like as it all went down.
And It’s going to happen again. And again. And again.
Why? Because the NRA won’t allow us to have any conversation on sensible gun laws. Sadly, I just don’t see shocking headlines making any real difference here. America is stuck with this.
It’s not just the “NRA” boogie man that blocks and conversation on sensible gun laws. It’s the most of the actual every day gun owners who does it too. I talk to them all the time personally (since I own guns but still think this must stop) and you can see it online too in any discussion of this. And when you talk to them what you find out that fundamentally they just care more about having and playing with their guns then they do any of these people who get killed. It’s all about “them”, “their” rights, “their” law abiding past time they care about, not anyone else at all. They love to say they care, but when it comes down to a choice of any slight inconvenience for them and possible saving others… they just don’t give a shit about other people.
Edit: We need to face it we like to think act like and say that Americans are a caring people. But you can see from the discussions ranging from gun control, to health care, social programs, calls for mass deportations, et, a large if not majority of Americans really don’t give a shit what happens to other people.
Conservatism isn’t about life.
With the exception of Israel, the US ranks at the top of advanced countries in terms of “violence containment costs” according to the Institute for Economics and Peace (Appendix C, Table 30), spending the equivalent of 12% of GDP on this activity. This is nowhere near the 42% of GDP currently spent in the worst place in the world at the moment, failed state Syria, but a heck of a lot more than the say, 2%, of laid-back Iceland. There’s a slogan for the NRA: “USA, not as bad as Syria.” But we’re working on it.