Of All the Voices in the Aftermath of Parkland, the NRA Is the Least Worthy of Condemnation

You wouldn’t know it from watching the news, but in the wake of the horrible mass shooting in Parkland, Florida the only major player not to totally disgrace themselves is the NRA.

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That statement will certainly make some left wing gun grabbers’ heads hurt but it makes it no less true.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think the NRA has been flawless with its messaging in the aftermath of the Stoneman-Douglas school shooting. It’s entirely understandable that they weren’t. From the moment the first reporter’s smartphone alerted him to the massacre there has been a full court press to blame the NRA for the crime.

Blaming the NRA for gun crimes is certainly not unprecedented. Gun control advocates aren’t very thoughtful or original in pursuing their anti-second amendment agenda. They play by Alinsky rule 13 like it is part of their automaton firmware.

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

It is actually scary how “by the book” they played this. The political and media wings of the extreme left (aka today’s Democrat Party) isolated, froze, personalized, and polorazed the NRA. In a matter of days they shamed major organizations into severing ties with the NRA (who, again, played absolutely no role in the massacre). They then targeted people like Senator Marco Rubio and Dana Loesch as the people who could be hurt faster than the NRA as an institution.

What makes this situation unique in my mind is the rapidity with which they were able to mobilize and solidify the narrative before any real facts came out. If I were a Gatway Pundit or Infowars type of thinker, I might conjecture that media outlets like CNN actually knew about the colossal systemic failures in the FBI and local law enforcement that allowed the shooting to happen before they hastily slapped together their “town hall” where survivors of the shooting and the despicable Sheriff Steve Israel got to throw rotten fruit at Marco Rubio and Dana Loesch. Rubio and Loesch deserve credit for showing up for what they both surely knew was a suicide mission.

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It really almost seemed like they were in a rush to hold their televised spectacle while nerves were still raw enough so that the facts, when they came out, wouldn’t matter. Think about how the use of “hands up don’t shoot” was allowed to became the key phrase in Ferguson even though it was a complete fiction. This looks like the same sort of situation. I doubt it was a conspiracy but it was a fetid stew of gross incompetence, biased journalism, cynical pursuit of ratings, and misguided activism.

That CNN was able to pillory Rubio and Loesch as surrogates for the NRA before all the victims were even in the ground was probably more a matter of having practiced the narrative so often. That they gave Sheriff Israel a platform to blame the uninvolved for his and his deputies’ bungling shows their disregard for actually reporting facts.

That CNN and other media outlets used (and continue to use) traumatized children as thought leaders on gun policy is irresponsible and sickening. That the parents of those children continue to let it happen is tantamount to child abuse, in my opinion. These kids haven’t been allowed to grieve; they’ve been encouraged to go on the attack.

That the failure of the FBI to follow up on multiple tips that specifically said that Nikolas Cruz was likely to shoot up a school is not being investigated as much as what the President said or did not say about arming teachers is an absolute embarrassment.

Nothing will ever be done to reduce or prevent school shootings while these incidents are being used by the extreme left to score political points and take pro-second amendment scalps.

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The NRA is not culpable for the mass shooting

The NRA is not culpable for the failures of law enforcement to do their jobs.

The NRA is not culpable for the criminally irresponsible media response by CNN and others.

The NRA is not culpable for exacerbating the psychological damage suffered by the student survivors from Stoneman Douglas High School.

You can disagree with the NRA’s position regarding the second amendment. You can even try to repeal it if that’s your agenda. You can’t make up facts and falsely accuse people in pursuit of that agenda.

 

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