If you feel like suddenly your Twitter feed or your Facebook timeline is getting an unusual amount of pro Gun Control items, you may not be imagining it. If your local news rag is suddenly pontificating the need for Universal Background Checks and portraying you as a fat, psychotic redneck ready to kill baby black boys coming home from church, it is not hypersensitivity on your part.
Welcome to the Great Gun Control Electoral Push of 2014.
Take my local bird-poop catcher’s online edition this morning:
Upfront and center, Fabiola Santiago tell us about the case in the Central Florida town of Bell where Don Spirit killed his daughter and six grandchildren and then killed himself. As you can see the culprit is a “gun-loving culture” and not a convicted felon with a history of drug problems and domestic violence.
But how disingenuous is Ms. Santiago? Plenty. I guess in the spirit of trying to be seen as impartial (or just being stupid) Ms Santiago let us know in the article that “The highly dysfunctional Spirit family was well-known to local and state authorities, who had been to the home to intervene in quarrels between father and daughter and to investigate neglect, threats, and violence by Spirit.”
She also tells you with a fresh face that “there’s mounting evidence that local and state authorities failed to protect these vulnerable children. For one, the long father-daughter history of drug abuse, domestic abuse and unlawful conduct, including illegal gun possession, was readily available.“ and if that is not enough, that “The state’s Department of Children and Families, alerted to problems with Sarah Spirit’s parenting as early as 2007.“
And then she gives us the reason: “gun-loving culture.”
We pay a high price to live in a culture that worships guns and a man’s right to own them, amass them, and proudly expose his vulnerable children to them — a culture that stereotypes criminals and too often chooses to look the other way when they’re one of their own. We pay a high price to turn our eyes away from inherited cycles of poverty, from the lack of mental health services and the need for contraception, no matter what’s preached in church.