Cracked: The Media doesn't cover school massacres enough

How can cracked take a school massacre where no one was shot and turn it into a dog whistle for gun control?


This:

"4 Reporters Skipped America's Deadliest School Massacre To Witness Charles Lindbergh's Transatlantic Flight"

"As opposed to facing the gruesome realities of a school massacre, the return of the Lone Eagle was exactly the uplifting story needed during the Great Depression. News organizations pulled journalists covering the Bath disaster and reassigned them to report on Charles Lindbergh's heroic exploits, and the story of 38 murdered students was forgotten within the year. We're sure there's a lesson in there about America needing to take school tragedies more seriously and not get distracted by attention-seeking fascists, but how would that still be relevant today?"

Because school shootings don't get much media coverage in the US?  Note that it's not a plea for gun control, directly.  Just bemoaning how the US doesn't learn and the media isn't... pushing for it enough?

Huh?

And does Cracked really want to get in with Nazis and Gun Control?

Because the last time they tackled that it sounded a bit like an apologia. Including insinuating that Nazi gun control did not go far enough, victim-blaming the Warsaw Uprising, and other creepy pro-fascist statements.


 Such as how it's not "gun policy" when a gun law "strip[s] Jews, communists, union leaders, and other enemies of their guns with the help of the registry" but it is pro-gun  when the law "exempt[s] Nazi Party members from most regulations".

And it's not like Cracked hasn't covered Bath before.

Where they also get in a jab at gun control by ending the other entry on Bath this way.

So, why did he do it? Apparently, he was upset about high taxes, losing the town clerk election, and, oh yeah, he was fucking nuts. Obviously, the U.S. invested heavily in mental health after the disaster, and nothing like this ever happened again.
Related:
How The NRA Lost Its Mind

Gee....

And yest that link does go to an Adam Wears article where he and another person basically rail against the NRA's Cincinnati Revolt. Basically getting angry that the NRA started to actually lobby and organize against gun control.

Gunshows didn't exist before the mid 90's?

Or at least that's what Bloomberg is asserting.

In another false claim, Bloomberg went on during Monday's town hall
to say federal law doesn't apply to internet and gun show sales because
the internet and gun shows did not exist when the federal background
check law was passed in 1993. 

"Why? Because those two things came after the law that applies to gun stores was passed," Bloomberg said. "And what I tried to do is just to get every state, because the federal government doesn't seem to want to do it, to just check before they sell anybody a gun to make sure they are not in one of those categories where people really—I think most people would agree—should not have guns."

Huh.

Or... it could be that Bloomberg has no idea what the basic federal laws are about a subject he has spend hundreds of of millions of dollars lobbying.

Or he knows the actual laws, but is happy to lie to get his way. Which is more comforting? It's lying. It's definitely lying.

Bloomberg: Out.

So... to all of you worried that the racist-republican wall street billionaire will buy his way into the Oval office can rest easy.

He's dropped out of the race.

And... endorsed Biden... with a pledge to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help him win.

Gee, I wonder if that munificence comes with any strings attached.

Cracked: Restore Felon's rights! No not those rights!

It's not gun related but...

'Extreme' Political Viewpoints (That Really Aren't)

So you have "higher taxes for the rich!" (even though the US has a more progerssive tax code than Scandinavian countries, fee money (IE basic income), free college,  which aren't exactly "extreme", given how popular "Free stuff" and "Someone else pays for my stuff" are...

The 4th one is interesting it's felon voting.  And not for why you think...

See this was written by Adam Wears, yes that Adam Wears.

Who writes.  "Basically, if there's anything that's even slightly reminiscent of Jim Crow, that shit needs to die pronto."   So... does Wears advocate the restoration of ALL of a felon's rights upon release?

And if not why not?  If he thinks a felon shouldn't get all the rights back is that saying some Jim Crow is okay?

Cracked *almost* gets the point.

Cracked has a pretty good piece on things Hollywood gets wrong about the US legal system.

Crime show fans think there are 2 1/2 times as many murders happening than there really are, and there are also concerns that voters are pushing for overspending on prisons to protect people from violent crime that doesn't actually exist.

Gee, I wonder if there are any other things where voters overestimating a type of crime might cause a negative, distorted legislation.

Why take this recent pol which found that 20% of voters think Mass Shootings are the most common cause of gun deaths in the US.

Horrific as they are, mass shootings represent a tiny fraction of gun deaths in America. They account for a few hundred deaths every year, as compared to an average of roughly 19,000 gun suicide deaths. There were 23,854 suicides by firearm in 2017, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And even with a murder rate well above other developed nations, gun homicides, which account for roughly 12,000 deaths per year in the U.S, are a distant second compared to suicides.

And no the Cracked article actually takes a mild anti-gun swipe  where two paragraphs before the quoted section they say

TV has no shortage of violent robberies, vicious murders, and brutal rapes. It's a madhouse out there. We should teach our dogs to use guns. We should teach our guns to use guns. 

So.

It's too late to ban Assault Weapons says... the NYT?

From Alex Kingsbury who in his own admission has lobbied for years to ban them.

And from the article is is clearly no friend of these weapons.  And in general fairly hostile to guns and attributes some... odd qualities to them.

But he is right that firearms can last a long time (pointing out that an AR now could work in 2119 easily).  And he rightly points to the extremely low compliance rates whenever "assault weapons" are banned.

And even when drastically low balling the number of these guns in the country (he says 15 million) he points out that appreciably removing them from the country would be nigh impossible.
(The issue of criminal importation and manufacture isn't even mentioned...)

This does not mean he is friendly to gun rights folks or against any real gun control laws.  Merely that Kingsbury is looking at the logistics and effect of such a ban.

However, he misses one thing.


A massive side (or perhaps primary) goal of an AWB is not to get rid of said guns,  but to stigmatize the public usage of them.  If they are reduced to being hidden safe queens then "gun culture" will greatly diminish.

Which makes subsequent bans even easier.


As a bonus with millions of now illegal (and thus more scary) guns all over the country.  They make handy boogieman on the scale of Emmanuel Goldstein that can justify all sorts of confiscations and registrations.

At least it's not the NRA stepping in it...

Yet...

Cracked has a quick (and non list article!). Decrying some republicans (including the President) who decided to make noises about violence in video-games.

If you ignore the reflexive, and brief, anti gun screed, it's not a terrible post.

By Cracked standards it's fairly sedate.  I guess we'll see what they post next.
(It's kinda... odd that they haven't reported at all on the NRA's massive internal problems).