A Tale of Two Shootings: Why Is the Buffalo Narrative Being Driven, While the Laguna Woods Narrative Is Ignored?

AP Photo/Joshua Bessex

While peripherally studying the news coverage of both the Buffalo shooting at Tops Friendly Market on Saturday, and the Laguna Woods shooting at Geneva Presbyterian Church, I was struck by the amount of news and analysis being given to the Buffalo shooting, while the Laguna Woods shooting, which is close to me, has been all but ignored.

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From CBS News Los Angeles:

One man was killed and five others wounded when a gunman opened fire in a church in Laguna Woods Sunday afternoon.

The shooting occurred at Geneva Presbyterian Church, located in the 24000 block of El Toro Road, at around 1:25 p.m.

By the time Orange County Sheriff’s deputies arrived on scene, the suspect, later identified as 68-year-old David Chou of Las Vegas, was hogtied by an extension cord by churchgoers. The churchgoers had also confiscated at least two weapons, the sheriff’s department said.

Why is this not national news? Churchgoers chose not be statistics—Bravo! These congregants didn’t hide under their pews. They bravely took down the shooter, took away his weapons, hogtied him, and waited for the cops to arrive.

That’s a script for a Hollywood blockbuster in my eyes.

It’s an incredible story on a number of levels, and should be lauded, applauded, and reported from every major outlet. Yet, the Laguna Woods shooting is relegated to local news, and the Buffalo Shooting, which happened on Saturday, continues to dominate the national news and analysis cycle. Both shootings are tragedies about the shooter. Both men came from out of town in order to target a particular community where they did not belong.

But, the selective adoption of one narrative over another is quite startling.

My colleague Brad Slager wrote about this selective coverage on our sister site Townhall:

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As most know, of all of these incidents, one is getting far more coverage – and one is getting far more “analysis.” A proper thinking individual might suggest these all warrant a level of introspection, yet the press in this country have shown that being proper is not a highly-listed priority. It does not take long to see why there is a very selective level of outrage with these incidents.

California’s Governor Gavin Newsom, who is under the delusion that he is running for the presidency, decided the world needed to know about his outrage over the Buffalo Shooting:

As usual, Hair Gel is talking out his hind parts. New York gun laws are probably stricter than California’s, so that “easy access to firearms” is quickly shot down as a falsehood.

But here’s the kicker. The Laguna Woods shooting happened at 1:25 p.m. on Sunday. It is past high noon Monday here in California, yet his Hairfulness has not posted one word of outrage about the targeting and shooting of Asians at a Presbyterian church in the state that he is supposed to be governing!

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Just because the Laguna Woods shooter was the same race as the people he targeted doesn’t mean it isn’t racial hatred. The lazy politicians and media like to lump different races under the banner of “Asian,” but it doesn’t mean the people who occupy that group identify with each other or even like each other.

Says a lot about the way race is covered in America. The phrase “People of Color”? Dumber than a bag of rocks.

The Laguna Woods Shooting also happened at a church. In the supercharged atmosphere created by the leak of the SCOTUS draft opinion on Dobbs. v. Jackson Women’s Health, The pro-death cabal are targeting churches because of their stand for life. As my colleague Brad Slager noted in the Townhall article mentioned above, this past week of destruction and tragedy included the firebombing of two pro-life resource centers in Madison, Wisconsin and Keizer, Oregon.

All three incidents are classic definitions of domestic terrorism. But our clueless California governor apparently only sees domestic terrorism when it involves a white person who also happens to be pro-life.

Let that sink in.

There have been a number of mass shootings that have come and gone in the news recently. One happened on the same day as the Laguna Woods Presbyterian Church shooting. A Flea Market in Houston, Texas, left two dead and three critically wounded. The news copy is fascinating in that it doesn’t bother to mention the races of the shooters or the victims. According to KHOU-TV in Houston, the injured men were also the men involved in the escalation and altercation. There were thousands of people at the flea market, but no innocent bystanders were harmed.

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Guess that ruined the narrative meter, so it made barely a blip on the coverage.

The November 2021 Waukesha, Wisconsin Parade massacre where a Black supremacist used his SUV to mow down parade-goers and participants saw the media slathering over the coverage, until they found out the race of the alleged attacker. Coverage was reduced to the SUV being an animate force that killed people (imagine that), and then quickly divested for other bright, shiny objects.

Because of the Buffalo full-court press, stories are filtering out that the alleged Buffalo shooter had a white victim of the Waukesha massacre written on his rifle. Now the legacy media has to pay more attention to the tragedy of Waukesha while they try to milk analysis of “replacement theory” and ignore that a Rachel Maddow-loving, mentally ill man took 10 lives.

The Sacramento shooting in April left the news cycle faster than you can say, “Brylcreem,” because the investigation found that it was gang-related. You know, Black-on-Black crime? The Left loves to ignore it (see: Illinois, Chicago) The right loves to use it as a statistic on how horrible the Left is and how pro-law enforcement they are. Who is disserviced? Black people in particular, and the communities—no matter what the race demographic—where these incidents happen, in general. Sacramento’s demographic of over 500 thousand people are majority White and Hispanic, with a sprinkling of Black, Asian, Native Islander, and even Native American lumped in. Bottom line: This shooting didn’t fit Governor Hair Gel’s gun control, white terrorism narrative, so he looked toward the next national tragedy he could be outraged over.

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Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

The selective outrage is mind-numbing, especially through the lens of one who reports and analyses the news. When it comes to the legacy media and their partnership with the leftist agenda, all narratives do not matter, only the ones that serve their ends.

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