The assassination attempt on Democratic Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, and the death of six other people, including a federal district court judge, was a heinous act. What was even more despicable was the fact that there were members of the mainstream press that wanted to assign blame not to a mentally ill gunman, but to others.
At the get go, the mainstream press blamed conservatives, gun owners, libertarians, the Tea Party movement and talk radio for the shooting. They ran with the preposterous claim that it was the “incendiary language coming from these forces that were responsible” for putting ideas in the gunman’s head. Never mind that Jared Loughner was a deeply disturbed individual and never mind that he cited as his favorite philosophers Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler. Adding to this, Loughner was into the occult and was a serious drug abuser. To the mainstream press, the facts in this case did not matter. All that mattered to them was that there was a tragedy, a crisis, and that the mainstream press was going to use this to smear conservatives and libertarians and blame them for this despicable deed as they did in 1996 with the Oklahoma City Bombing by Tim McVeigh.
Aside from the irresponsible smears by the mainstream press, there are lawmakers in Congress that are calling for stricter gun control laws, the renewal of the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” in matters concerning radio and television, and laws that would prevent individuals from expressing themselves passionately toward members of Congress. It was former Chief of Staff to Barak Obama, Rahm Emmanuel, that stated two years ago that “you never want a crisis to go to waste.” Clearly, the opportunists are going to use this tragedy for anything that they can get.