The recent article Jacksonville Shooting Emboldens Urgency For Gun Control by Bernice Chen is deeply offensive. It portrays gun rights advocates and NRA members as heartless people who don’t care about shooting victims. Instead of presenting tangible solutions to such mass shootings, the article repeatedly slams the opposition as greedy NRA members, disconnected politicians, and dark manipulators. It makes it seem as if everyone who supports guns rights is an evil bitter clinger and accuses the opposition to gun control of “cutting off the vital dialogue to creating change.” Seriously? Does anyone think that gun rights advocates don’t want change? This article continuously promotes the idea that the only way to be compassionate and to show that you care for the shooting victims is if you support gun control legislation.

Then, this article suggests that Americans are getting desensitized to mass shootings and that “voters will care less and less” because the frequency of mass shootings is rising. Not only is that wrong, NPR, but it assumes that Americans no longer care about mass shootings.

The article also repeatedly insists that it “remains that gun control is necessary” and that “if we want to lessen the rate of firearm-related massacres across the country, then politicians and citizens, whether Democratic or Republican, need to pull together, focus on gun control, and encourage legislation.” But it never specifies as to what it means by “gun control” and how effective it will be. Instead, the article spends all of [its] paragraphs smacking the opposition and the NRA.

Gun rights advocates are accused of yelling “distractions, conspiracies, whataboutisms, and empty promises to drown out the opposition.” C’mon. When is the last time you’ve seen a serious pro-firearms person on a major news outlet other than Fox? Are the 2nd amendment advocates really the ones who want to drown out opposition? The [number] of people in the media who want gun control legislation far outnumber those who don’t.

No one wants innocent people to die. But this article essentially says that the NRA fights for the 2nd amendment because they’re in it for the money, “contributions, revenue, and membership go through the roof, so they continue to respond to each tragedy and lobby for legislation protecting gun use.” That’s absolutely bogus. It is the author of this article who is standing on the graves of dead children to promote a political agenda and scapegoat the NRA.

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