by Brad Slager, RedState:
Most of us are familiar with the media narratives when it comes to reporting on mass shootings. The familiar beats of coverage are so rote as to basically qualify as tropes.
Conversely, we see by now that whenever there is a deviation from the expected characteristics of a shooter the coverage is notably different. In fact, it has become a cliched punchline that if the featured individual is found to be a member from one of the protected minority classes then the response becomes, “…And that’s when the story disappeared from the front page.”
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That secondary reality has loomed large this month. So much so that we have now seen that Mad Libs media narrative exposed in all its shame, as there have been a string of these gun-related incidents in just a matter of days and it has led to a blaring amount of silence from the press. The sham of the contrived outrage from our media superiors is how there has been little in the way of outrage this week.
Beginning in Texas, where there was a shooting in Joel Osteen’s church. This proved to be a stark miscalculation on the part of the gunperson, given that after brandishing a weapon they were encountered quickly by gun-toting parishioners. Yet the opportunity for journalists to heap scorn and condemn the gun-crazy state of Texas was hobbled when it was first learned that a Hispanic woman was the shooter. Quickly, the proper woke officials stepped in to cast a murky clarification on things.
When the facts of the Texas church shooter interfere with the preferred narrative:
RACE: “White, non-Hispanic”
PLACE OF BIRTH: El SalvadorUmmmm… pic.twitter.com/lffbnykQOk
— Brad Slager: Flips On The Highbeams In Fog Of War (@MartiniShark) February 22, 2024
Not only did they want to dodge any reference to the shooter being an immigrant, but that string of names at the bottom is a result of the person self-identifying as a male. As seen with the Tennessee Christian school murders, when you have a possible non-binary or trans individual on the cold side of the gun sights, the press will run away faster than a toddler that just snatched a Nutter Butter. The good news was that this attacker was taken down before any other deaths occurred, so once their pronouns became Was/Were the story disappeared from the news.
Then there was the shooting that took place at the celebratory parade for the Super Bowl champions, the Kansas City Chiefs. At first we saw the expected script trotted out in the press, with the NRA made culpable and the pedantic calls for new gun laws. Then came the facts. Four arrests were made, and two of the shooters were underage, meaning they were illegally in possession of the weapons. (Funny how the call for tougher murder laws is never invoked, as that would expose many of the foibles of this tired gun argument.)
Later the other two adults were charged and named. But something was notable in the deviation from usual press reactions. The news outlets appeared hesitant to bring forth the names of the adult shooters, and they slow-rolled the release of the mugshots, something that is itself usually an excuse to run another story on the violence and extend the anti-gun narrative. The Kansas City Star waffled on producing the mugshot of one culprit, Lyndell Mays, because, as an Editor’s Note explained, they reserve running mugshots for those big important acts of violence.
