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Firearm fatalities are without a doubt one of the most alarming political issues of our lifetimes, with 48,830 Americans dying from gunshot wounds in 2021 (according to the most recently published CDC data). The anger and ensuing advocacy for change is hardly surprising. But as the old adage goes, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” So if we want to understand why Americans are dying of gun violence, we ought to look into who is doing the killing – and what motivates them to do so.
Unfortunately, that’s not always a popular thing to do …
Take for instance the recent horrific Super Bowl parade mass shooting in Kansas City, which killed 43-year-old Lisa Lopez-Galvan – a mother of two children – and wounded more than a dozen others.
(Click to View)
According to eye witnesses interviewed for a report published in The New York Times, the shooting started when an argument between two groups of teenagers devolved into “two young men firing wildly at each other.”
Who are the young men? If you read the Times report you wouldn’t know, as no details about the teenagers were included in the report. Luckily for those of us who care about truth and accuracy in reporting, cell phones have made the complete whitewashing of a politically inconvenient situation impossible.
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How has the Times covered other teenagers involved in shootings? Just days after Kyle Rittenhouse shot multiple assailants attempting to physically harm him during the George Floyd riots, the paper had no reservations about publishing his name and image – both of which are conspicuously absent from their report on the Kansas City shooters.
Rittenhouse’s shooting – for which he was tried and found not guilty by a jury of his peers – garnered massive media attention. Will the media pay the same attention to the teenagers in Kansas City who allegedly killed Lopez-Galvan?
The activist class will punch their “how much longer will this go on” post ticket without further analysis.
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The teenagers who perpetrated this shooting were already banned from possessing handguns by federal law.
This same disregard for the law is displayed daily by countless other teenagers nationwide who also don’t seem to care that they’re in contravention of federal law.
(Click to View)
Perhaps that’s why the mainstream media shields the identities of the “teenagers” in Kansas City. The more you think about who perpetrated the shooting – and how unlikely they were to ever abide by any firearm regulation – the less likely you are to walk away from the article supporting the disarming the future victims of those disinclined to follow the law.
The identities of other shooters have been shielded for different, but equally insidious reasons.
Consider Audrey Hale, who shot and killed six people – including three nine-year-olds – at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee on March 27, 2023. Hale, 28, identified as a man and went by the name Aiden. As the community reeled from the brutal murders Hale committed, many were left wondering what motivated the young adult to return to her former school and perpetrate such a heinous crime.
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They didn’t have to wonder for long. Hale left behind a handwritten manifesto which was quickly recovered by authorities. Unfortunately, police have been vague in their release of information contained in the document, Nashville police chief John Drake telling the press “there’s some belief that there was some resentment for having to go to that school.”
Some argued the shooter’s motive shouldn’t be revealed.
“It should not be published,” Jordan Budd, the executive director of Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere (COLAGE), told Newsweek.
In other words, pay no attention to that (trans) man behind the curtain.
It wasn’t until conservative commentator Steven Crowder obtained and published images of three pages of Hale’s manifesto that the public got their first glimpse into the inner workings of Hale’s mind.
(Click to View)
Hale wrote that she wanted to “kill all you little crackers” – referring to her victims as a “a bunch of little faggots with your white privlages (sic).”
How did the authorities react to this leak? Nashville’s mayor demanded an investigation, and its police chief told the media he was “greatly disturbed” by the release of the document.
Crowder received a similar reaction after recently releasing the manifesto of another mentally ill individual intent on shooting up a school …
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Luckily, this individual was identified and stopped before they could “kill all the fucking jocks and those fucking preppy shit-headed fucking girls.” Unfortunately, the Chippewa Falls middle school hid the discovery of this information from parents until Crowder’s release of the document.
Even if a complete gun sale ban were somehow enacted in the United States (which is unlikely to ever happen), and every law abiding citizen willingly gave up their firearms (which is never going to happen), we would still have a massive problem on our hands.
That’s because the problem is deeper than the guns themselves, it is the rise of a criminal culture which sees violence as a valid means to resolve interpersonal disputes, it is the deepening nihilistic spiral of societal self hatred encouraged by today’s culture.
There are governmental interventions which could address these issues, but not without significant downsides.
Lax-on-crime laws which facilitate the revolving-door criminal justice system could be tightened, so that society would be better protected from the kind of idiots who think exchanging gunfire at a parade is an appropriate way to resolve a trivial dispute. Likewise, greater monitoring of mentally ill people – especially in school settings – and the involuntary commitment of those likely to hurt themselves or others could have prevented dozens of tragedies in recent years.
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“We need fixes that address the root causes of the issues – fixes the state will never be able to provide.”
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But ultimately both “solutions” lead to more people under the custody of the state, something that often results in the individuals never having a shot of ever leading a productive life again. This isn’t a good solution.
We need fixes that address the root causes of the issues – fixes the state will never be able to provide. Solutions that prevent the problem instead of reacting to the problem necessarily must come from our local communities and from within our homes.
I don’t claim to know how to solve these problems, but I am certain the first step is to acknowledge they exist, and The New York Times‘ deliberate obfuscation of the basic facts in Kansas City is demonstrative of the desire of many to do just the opposite.
Similarly, our schools are going to keep being targets for violent mentally ill people until we as a nation look into the existential abyss that has consumed our youth culture and which has resulted in skyrocketing rates of mental illness.
The nationwide attempt by authorities to do anything other than address the (mentally ill) elephant in the room is disturbing. While specific local officials shouldn’t be condemned for following policies regarding the release of documents, the national media’s failure to host a meaningful dialogue about why so many kids feel compelled to end the lives of their peers is indicative of their true motivations.
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Let’s return to 2SLGBTQIA+ activist Budd’s argument about Hale’s manifesto.
“It should not be published,” Budd wrote. “The focus should be on how this was able to happen in the first place. There should not be such easy access to deadly weaponry.”
Budd, and the majority of the media, always demand that we don’t address why these people kill other people, but rather demand that we further regulate firearms, ostensibly to prevent future harm.
Until these individuals demonstrate a good-faith desire to address these problems by being open to (admittedly uncomfortable) dialogues about the roots of these issues, I believe it is safe to assume their desire to reduce violence is overshadowed by their desire to disarm law-abiding individuals (who frequently end mass shootings through their heroic interdiction).
If history has taught us anything about those who desire to disarm the law-abiding masses, it is that they usually have profoundly dark intentions for those they disarm. These same motivations are revealed in modern America by the purposefully disingenuous rhetorical engagement of many anti-gun activists.
It is deepest hope that my assessment of the underlying darkness which drives this broken debate is dead-wrong, but I fear I’m right. I want to contribute to the reduction of gun violence in America. I hope that I can use my voice in as a member of the independent press to point out the lunacy of the rhetorical framework in which our current firearm-death debate resides, and to lay the groundwork for a more productive public discourse.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
(Via: Travis Bell)
Dylan Nolan is the director of special projects at FITSNews. He graduated from the Darla Moore school of business in 2021 with an accounting degree. Got a tip or story idea for Dylan? Email him here. You can also engage him socially @DNolan2000.
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6 comments
Dylan Nolan; fast becoming my favorite FitsNews reporter! Excellent job on this article, Sir.
Pew! Pew!
Ok Opie, now do the same thing with every killing committed by a white nationalist/MAGA shooter that you never heard about from Fitsnews.
If you want to blame it all on mental health then make healthcare available to all.
I’m sure “constitutional carry” will solve it…
“ I don’t claim to know how to solve these problems…”
You could have started and stopped with your analysis there. No need to type up a whole blog post that amounts to nothing. Oh wait, this is FitsNews.
Carry on, kid.
Funny, you have all these Sheriff’s and police chiefs whining about passage of Constitutional Carry and how it will be so hard for their people to tell the good guys from the bad guys. If it troubles them so badly to see citizens exercising their Constitutional rights , people like Lott, Lee Foster, and Holbrook, should do what they should have done decades ago and retire for the good of the profession, their deputies or officers, and the public they serve. Their whining about this is shameful at very best.
Dylan, good work. Those that want to take away guns are not law-abiding citizens. Gun laws are for law-abiding citizens. Laws mean nothing to criminals, who get their guns off the streets illegally and use them to break laws.