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Gun Grabbers Try Posting Pic of Killer Gun, Don't See the Problem Until It's Too Late

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If there are two entities which have desperately tried to make hay while the tragic sun shone over Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, it’s Newsweek and Everytown for Gun Safety.

Unsurprisingly for a publication that has ensured Kurt Eichenwald remains a homeowner (even though they can’t actually pay their own rent), Newsweek has taken a staunchly pro-gun control stance in the weeks since the Stoneman shooting. This is little different from their normal editorial line, mind you, just that they now talk about it incessantly.

Meanwhile, Everytown for Gun Safety, an astroturfed group funded by former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other gun-grabbers, is the group responsible for the wildly incorrect (but widely reported) statistic that since 2012, there have been five school shootings a month and 438 total people shot. They’ve also been quite active in the weeks since the Parkland shooting.

So, these are two of the most active names in gun control today — one a media organization that’s been one of the loudest voices on the gun-grabbing side, the other being America’s preeminent anti-gun organization. Surely, these people are informed about the firearms they discourse on so frequently.

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On Saturday, that well-maintained illusion underwent a rather thorough trainwreck on social media.

The whole mess began Friday, when Newsweek published a piece that was critical of President Trump’s plan to allow concealed carry among specially-trained teachers in order to deter or stop school shootings. Their rather thoughtful examination of the proposal was titled (and I swear I’m not making this up) “Give Teachers Guns, and More Black Children Will Die.”

I could do an entire series of articles on that headline alone, but that’s not actually the most damning part of this whole mess. See, as many of you probably know, articles go out on social media with a picture along with it, some sort of photo that has to do with the story at hand.

In this case, Newsweek chose to put it out on Twitter with a stock photo of a handgun and a magazine with a bullet loaded in it. The next day, Everytown for Gun Safety decided to retweet the article along with an excerpt from the preposterously race-baiting story.

Do you think the media knows enough about firearms to talk about gun control in an informed manner?

As of early Monday morning, that stock photo had not changed. I am not going to retweet the original Everytown for Gun Safety post, if just because I can almost assure it will change sometime in the near future. See, dear reader, if you can point out the problem:

https://twitter.com/andyrutledge/status/975162538001354753

That gun isn’t killing any child, be they a person of color or not. Why? The bullet is loaded backwards in the magazine.

Now, in the debate over gun control and gun rights, you might think that this is a pretty minor thing for a writer to cavil over. It’s a stock photo error, right? What’s the big deal?

Well, here’s the thing: We’re currently having a national discussion over an item that’s constitutionally protected. Many on the left side of this discussion are talking about some of the most sweeping, fundamental changes to that constitutional right that we’ve ever seen — and two of the loudest voices in the debate don’t know enough about that item to know how it works.

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I can’t profess to be an expert in everything I write about before I start writing and researching the story. No writer or journalist can claim that. When I write an article about a topic that I’m out of my depth in, I consult expert advice — either on staff or in other trusted publications — every step of the way to make sure that I get it right. Occasionally, I still make errors. Everyone does. Hopefully an editor catches it, but they’re human too.

If it were just Newsweek’s writing, social media and editorial staff at fault here, I would let this slide for that reason — albeit while noting that they’re writing incessantly and emotionally about a topic I don’t have confidence they entirely understand, for this reason and many others. (Like, you know, titling a piece “Give Teachers Guns, and More Black Children Will Die.”)

In the case of Everytown for Gun Safety, their entire raison d’être is firearms. That’s literally all they focus on — the tightening of gun laws in the United States. They saw the article with this ridiculously incorrect photo and they retweeted it. That’s a whole different level of incompetence.

No, the bad photo didn’t invalidate the Newsweek piece they retweeted. (The bad prose and bad logic did, but that’s a different story.) However, looking at that photo, why would they tweet it in the first place? It’s clear they didn’t recognize the error. Otherwise, they would have realized any educating they gained by retweeting the story would be invalidated by the preposterous photo.

This is evidence in microcosm of why I think we can’t really have a discussion about guns at this moment. Perhaps in the future, the left will educate itself about the firearms they seem so desperate to control. At that point, we can have the “discussion” everyone seems so eager to have. Now is most certainly not that point, and this ridiculous tweet proves why.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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