Ciara Webb (courtesy people.com)

‘First of Two Kansas Girls to Commit Suicide Last Weekend Used a Gun to Kill Herself’ people.com‘s headline proclaims. Huh? What difference does that make? Why not ‘Second of Two Kansas Girls to Commit Suicide Last Weekend Didn’t Use a Gun to Kill Herself’? OK, maybe not. But why? Why is the mainstream media so obsessed with guns per se, so knee-jerk anti-gun? You’d think jobbing journos would be smart enough to see governmental violence against free speech in countries with gun control and connect the dots. To see that it’s in their best interest to be pro-gun. So . . . what gives?

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66 COMMENTS

  3. Piggy backing on @Ah Clem.

    The owners are monied like Bloomfield, Gates, etc. They own the media. So to get our ideas out we have to use the net. Which the administration is doing everything it can to shut down. So much for the first amendment.

    Bloom “Burgher” didn’t disappear from the news until we started shinning a spotlight on his duplicity. i.e. Do as I say, not as I do. I need to be protected by guns, you do not have that right. According to him and the media.

    BTW I believe he is still working towards his goals and using a behind the scenes approach. He is just hiding behind his billions.

    • And using his billions to buy local elections with bloody shirts, half truths, and outright lies..like I-594 in WA state.

      The amount of money he contributed doesn’t even amount to pocket change for him, but he and his plutocrat out-spent “our” side by more than 4-to-1.

      Money talks, and lies are free speech. Especially in a “for the children” context.

  4. Because liberals don’t understand the concept of privacy, are very nosy, are strongly opinionated, and as a result of these items, they go into the “news” business where they can hose down the nation with their biased cherry picked stories from around the nation. By “highlighting” certain events and not others, they show the uneducated masses what the “problems” are, who to vote for, what to think, etc.

    • REAL liberals DO understand privacy, personal liberty, property rights and limited government.
      These vermin are NOT liberals. They are statist control freaks in a leftist-Marxist register.

  5. Why? Three theories:

    1) Graduates of journalism schools tend to be from the back side of the bell curve on IQ – or – “there ain’t no cure for stupid”.

    2) Media types tend to think that they are part of the “power elite”, and so anything that enhances the state’s powers will make them more powerful.

    3) They all believe that “guns are icky, and gun owners are all bunch of ignorant, racist, homophobic, redneck, right-wing nasty poopyheads.”

    • I’m thinking it’s almost exclusively #3.

      Remember the headline USA Today used in the point/counterpoint op-ed piece in which RF took the opposing view to the editorial board’s? “Why Would Anyone Oppose Reasonable Gun Control?” or something to that effect?

      In their view, regular people should not have, need or want guns. This being a no-brainer, their brains are closed to any evidence to the contrary, not matter how logical or scientific.

      In John Lott’s book More Guns, Less Crime, researchers tracked the number of media mentions of lawful armed individuals halting a mass shooting at a law school. The vast majority of the media reports omitted any mention of the DGU, and simply said that students had tackled the shooter. When Lott asked one prominent newspaper editor why the paper had deleted the reference to the DGU even though it was in the reporter’s notes, and the editor’s flabbergasted response was something along the lines of “We can’t have people thinking that they should be armed or that this kind of thing works…there’d be blood in the streets,” etc.

      I think the media gatekeepers believe that they are fulfilling a social responsibility by campaigning against firearms, lawful owners be damned.

  6. thats all they can do is try to pull at people heart strings anytime anything bad happens and there is a gun in the mix. Trying to have a logical conversation about guns with someone who is illogically afraid of guns, is a conundrum. its the same thing that happens when you try to have a logical conversation about religion. The two just don’t mix. Religion is an emotional realm, just like fear.

  7. Why not ‘Second of Two Kansas Girls to Commit Suicide Last Weekend Didn’t Use a Gun to Kill Herself’?

    Because guns are “bad.” Suicide with other things are acceptable, but with a gun, it is a horrid terrible thing.

    Honestly, I would rather die by gunshot to the head than by say… hanging until dead (Robin Williams method – probably because he didn’t have a gun), drowning, impact against a hard surface, poison, etc. It’s the best way to go really. That’s why it is a significant number on the CDC list.

  8. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

    Joseph Goebbels

  9. Journalists smart enough? Are you kidding? The Kardashian clan has more sense than most journalists. At least the Kardashian clan knows how to make money. Most journalists are intellectually lazy, never asking tough or even obvious questions. They just republish or reprint the press release they’re given if they like those giving them the press release.

    They are also unethical. If they don’t like the source or story subject, then they like to omit relevant information hoping to paint a misleading picture for the reader. Combined with them ignoring negative information on the favored institutions, you have an incredibly despicable group that is more enemy to freedom than most want to acknowledge.

    Why are they so anti gun? Rationalization. They want to believe it. It is religion at this point. They just keep believing, pushing, and proselytizing; ignoring anything that contradicts the belief. They are completely emotionally invested. If the Mexican government pulled a WWII Germany-like disarming, imprisonment and extermination, they’d ignore it if it conflicted with their anti gun belief.

    • Yes, exactly. Media journalists’ orientation is adopted from their employer and managers’ political creed which becomes their own if they want to remain employed. Besides hey have been conditioned with the anti-gun dogma throughout their education, so it must be right, right?

      “You’d think jobbing journos would be smart enough to see governmental violence against free speech in countries with gun control and connect the dots.’

      Maybe they’re not smart enough. I’ve seen many airheaded dolts stage “news” reports where they simply don’t grasp what they are talking about, much less understand it. So they are simply parroting what they are told by “officials” or blindly restating rhetoric or rumor.

      Or maybe they don’t want to connect the dots; denial.

      • No, I think you were right the first time – they’re incapable or recognizing an Inconvenient Truth because that’s the basis of how they were selected, trained, and employed.

    • If the Mexican government pulled a WWII Germany-like disarming, imprisonment and extermination, they’d ignore it if it conflicted with their anti gun belief.

      Well, it happened, and what do you see about it in the MSM? Obama making an ass of himself at the G20 Meeting.

  10. The mainstream media is hopelessly statist and hopelessly anti-gun. They are also colossally ignorant on the subject.

  11. Face it, ALL publicly elected and public officials who are required to take an oath to hold office that don’t support the 2nd Amendment as it is written, agreeing that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, are guilty of TREASON and should be tired in a Court of Competent Jurisdiction for TREASON!

    We have been overthrown from within without a single shot being fired! That sentiment first spoken in 1960 before the United Nations by a Communist Dictator has come to pass.

    Our Nation is no longer the Home of the Free and the Brave. Its the Home of the Apathetic and Accepting. Accepting that our Leaders are Liar’s and apathetic to demand compliance. If a person takes an oath to keep and defend the Constitution, then works to overthrow that document that was drafted through and by those who had Faith and Trust in the only True and Living God of Abraham and Moses, then we should revolt.

    What is happening now in the United States, and is being accepted without decent, is far worse than a tax on Tea which caused the Boston Tea Party!

    If any American chooses to sit by and watch our rights decay without standing up, those so called Americans need only to look in the mirror to see the cause for the decay of our rights and the decay of the moral fiber in America. To sit by and do nothing is a slap in the face of all who have served in our Military. We all know corruption exists, yet public meetings are not attended.

    When will American Patriots wake up? Have all of the Patriots died?

    If only 3% of Americans would bring legal Actions against these thugs that call themselves our Leaders, the cost of defending those suits along with the time for the Courts to resolve those suits, would prevent the need for a shot being fired. 3%, if my math is not wrong, would be over 11 million lawsuits. Can you imagine the breakdown in the bureaucracy and the cost in both time and money it would take to respond?

    Time has passed to continue apathy and let these treasonous so called leaders go unchallenged!

  12. So, what exactly? the second girl isn’t as dead as the first one? Freud said that a fear of weapons was a sure sign of a retarded intellect and stunted sexuality and don’t our self titled elites offer up more evidence every single day.

  13. This story made the news because it was about 2 really pretty blonde haired girls who seemingly had everything going well in their lives and committed suicide. I doubt it would have gotten much attention if it was about 2 (fill in your favorite minority here) boys with criminal backgrounds, who had dropped out of school and were living on the streets. THAT story won’t tug at your heart strings like these pretty girls will.

  14. Journalism as a career attracts a certain personality. That personality hates people that are empowered in any way that they, the journalist, didn’t give.

  17. The media is supported by and sympathetic to the Democratic Party and “liberal”/progressive causes. Progressive society HATES guns because they represent the ability of the individual to fend for themselves, to feed themselves, to protect themselves thus removing dependence on state for such.

    • The notion that the people don’t need The State or The Anointed Media is abhorrent to most journalists.

      We’re “little people” to them.

      We must be continually cajoled, herded and trained to do one thing:

      Obey those who know better.

  18. The simple explanation is that if they wrote that two young women tragically killed themselves it wouldn’t be a headline. So they go find a topic that stirs emotions on both sides of the fence. Just the word “gun” can cause an extreme hoplophobe to melt. Then its up to someone to ask the reasonable question, why are we even talking about guns, this is about suicide. BAM, instant argument.

    It’s how the MSM polarizes issues. They use language and bring up arguments that cause emotional response. That gets both sides fired up. Then they can pick the side they prefer and slant the issue to try and modify popular opinion in favor of their point of view. If you look the word “guns” usually only gets to be part of the headline in stories with negative connotation. This article is a great example. It’s always guns and suicide, guns and murder, or guns and misogyny. You never see, guns and fellowship, guns and self defense, guns and hunting (unless the story has an anti-hunting spin), or guns and rights come up nearly as often.

    Its just subjective opinion injected into supposedly objective news. Really, who here or anywhere thinks that news is anything but subjective at this time?

  19. Other people answered this question on various levels of analysis.

    At one level of analysis, the strategic reason is:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYyqBxD-3xw

    The media’s anti-gun hysteria, various zero tolerance policies in schools, babble of the Hollywood “elite,” anti-gun agitprop disguised as research at universities, and astroturf ops like Everytown are all various arms of implementation. All part of the same culture war.

    Zoom one level out and civilian disarmament, radical feminism, radical greenies, and commies are all different faces of the same push to dis-empower the individual (or, in practice, empower a few at the expense of the many).

  21. The reason ‘the media’ is anti-gun is because the media is almost completely owned by the ultra-rich, the elite. The elite are smart and largely psychopathic. Their psychopathic nature allows them to do horrible things in order to make and maintain their vast fortunes. Their intelligence tells them that it would be best if the rest of us did not have firearms, or weapons of any kind, so we cannot physically retaliate against the things they want to do to us. So far they have done very well at abusing us without taking our weapons away from us, but ‘without’ is always better than ‘with’ in their very intelligent opinion; therefore, they continue their press to totally disarm us. Heaven help us the day they are successful in this endeavor.

  22. Teenage white girls don’t usually kill themselves with a gun to the head. That is why it’s a story. Wrist cutting, pills or maybe poison are the typical teenybopper tools. BTW just saw a story on FOX about the confiscation efforts in Buffalo. You won’t hear that on the lame-stream media.

    • Teen girls usually don’t kill themselves with guns; you’re right about that. But if it’s the unusualness of the mechanism of suicide that made this a headline story, I would say the editors missed their mark, because the second suicide victim (another teenage girl) killed herself by stepping in front of a train. That’s a far rarer, more horrific, and more violent method than any firearm. And yet not only did this fact not make the headline — it didn’t even make the article, and the second girl was only mentioned in a single sentence.

      The People editors, however, didn’t miss the opportunity to plaster her pretty, young, Caucasian face on the article.

  23. This is all about power. The law of nature is to rule or be ruled. Progressivism gives people the ability to join a movement wherein they get to have a piece of the rule. By voting for an Obama or an Hugo Chavez, you get to feel like you share in political power. For all of our blatherings to the contrary, the folks in the media are by and large intelligent, if incurious, people, and they understand that they can wield the most power by serving the Progressive cause. Isn’t it creepy that every single rag in this whole entire country is left-of-center? It’s not like there’s a Media Pope who tells them all what to think. But there is a massive Progressive groupthink where they get to manipulate public opinion and thereby rule the masses.

    Those who truly rule in a democracy–which we have been ever since we embraced universal suffrage–are not The People, but rather the people who tell The People what to think. Really, what is the media going to do? Lead The People down the Progressive primrose path, along with the “education system,” that’s what they are going to do.

    Progressives hate, hate, hate that blue-collar whites in the US are not reliable Democratic votes, and attack blue-collar white culture wherever they can. Seriously, what other reason could there be for wanting to ban tobacco but legalize pot? Guns are a part of that mixture.

  24. Gotta disagree with most of the sentiments here. Underestimating the enemy is dangerous and I hope the gun community does not fall farther into that trap. I have one of my masters in media. Doesn’t mean I’m right and anyone else is wrong, it just means I have a different perspective that I hope is useful, because I don’t want the gun community losing in the court of public opinion more than we already are.

    1. There may be some journalists who are stupid, but most are very intelligent. They do get a lot of gun facts wrong, because they don’t care about technical gun details or fine legal details of 2A. They care about readership/ratings and arguments they are trying to make, which means they care about hot sound bites about hot topics.

    2. Journalists do tend to see themselves as part of the “educated intelligent elite,” which makes them arrogant. Research has shown that they do tend to be more liberal than conservative.

    3. Here is the key to understanding the media: Like lots of other things, you follow the money. In a “free press” society, media is a business. Big business. How do you think Bloomberg got so rich? They go for what sells papers and gets TV ratings. If the public stopped tuning in to negative gun stories, they would stop quickly. But people do tune in, because negative gun stories are what media people call “extra-ordinary” with the dash being intentional.

    4. We don’t need to convert the media or even the anti-gunners. We couldn’t if we tried. But the gun community is one tail of a bell curve, a big tail in terms of numbers, but unfortunately a small tail in getting its message out. The media and the anti-gunners are the other tail, smaller in numbers, but bigger in message. We need to keep the 80% in the middle of the curve on our side.

    The gun community is hiding its head in the sand in this battle. We need to take control of the message, not just keep getting defensive over the other side having control of the message. I could write a whole proposal on what we would need to do that, but right now, I think we just need raise the awareness that it is even necessary.

    • We need to take control of the message, not just keep getting defensive over the other side having control of the message. I could write a whole proposal on what we would need to do that…

      We need you to do this. You make your points in a persuasive, reasonable way, and I would very much like to read more of your ideas. Please consider contacting Farago about writing your proposal and publishing it here.

  25. Because the Pulitzer prize folks were cozy neighbors to the Frankfurt School. Because progressives see it as a moral duty to infiltrate educational institutions and spread their ideology, and journalism is a college degree.

  26. Because nobody would ever claim to be anti-rope?

    Seriously though it’s just plain fear of death. Yet somehow guns are THE most scary version of ways to die. I once had this conversation w/ my gun-fearing mother. I said that, yes, death by firearm is certainly a terrifying thing, but so is death by car crash, tornado, bear attack, electrocution, submarine accident, fill-in-the-blank…

    The MSM is a fear-porn machine. And guns are their favorite type of ammunition. Something like that.

  27. Who’s real medias owners? Who are the top Elites in the world? Once again, this is only a matter of population control and world domination…

  28. Many people among us abhor personal responsibility and accountability. That applies to their jobs as well. Thus they gravitate to jobs that pay you for being there without having to actually accomplish anything, be responsible for anything, or be accountable for any results. And the four largest job fields that fall in that category are journalism, teaching, acting, and public service (government jobs).

    Those types are “all in” to their mindset. Since they cannot be bothered to be responsible for their own personal security, they desperately cling to the best sounding idea that doesn’t require them to do anything: eliminate firearm ownership.

    We have all heard the notion that many among us do not live in the real world. People such as journalists who support gun control are simply doubling down on their fantasy, real world be damned.

  29. I don’t know if anyone has said this already, but this is a really tragic story, and it’s really quite disrespectful for then to have taken it and tried to squeeze a political agenda out of it. Why not focus on what the girl was going through? The prevalence of depression in the world today? The dangers of this and other illnesses that cause so many deaths? But instead they focus on a tool, dehumanizing and depersonalizing the story.

  30. They believe that if they kowtow to the State for long enough, and well enough, that when the State finally has total control they will be protected by the State. They will say to the state, “We did everything you wanted us to do. We convinced them all that the State was right, that the State was all-powerful, that the State had all the answers.” And the State will look at them, and the State will say “That’s nice. Now from this point on you will do as we tell you to do. You will say what we tell you to say. You will stay silent when we tell you to stay silent. Deviate from this and you will be sent for re-education.” The Media will be furious at this. They’ll scream and cry and say things like “But we had a deal!” And the State will say “What deal? You prostrated yourselves to us willingly. We made no deal with you. Now do as your State orders you to do, or else.”

    Only then will the Media realize the mistake they’ve made. And by then it will be far too late.

  31. Journalism, be it mainstream or otherwise, makes its money off clicks, sales and ads. A sensationalized anti-gun article that strikes fear into the average ignorant american appeals to the majority of the internet sheep out there.

    Think about the articles an analyses surrounding a story such as the disappearance of flight MH370. Did they give careful analysis of the situation based on available satellite data and search progress? No. They drummed up sensationalized garbage.

    Similarly, if there are more clicks and sales to be made off a “ERMAHGERD GUNS, YOU GUISE!” article, its going to be flogged for all its worth. It is my opinion that this is the largest driving force behind the anti-gun slant of the MSM, but perhaps its more of a gun *ignorant* media than one driven by a political agenda.

  33. Because:
    1) Sensationalism. Guns = ratings

    2) It’s easier to blame an object (guns) than take on the burden of understanding what logic the person has for their choice of actions.

    3) It’s what ‘they’ want you to think.

    4) Typical attention span is less than… look a giraffe!!

  34. This post is headlined “Question of the Day: Why is the Mainstream Media Anti-Gun?”

    There are a lot of answers out there, but one that stands out most in my mind comes from, of all places, Michael Moore’s movie “Bowling for Columbine.”

    Michael Moore: Do you know that on the day of the Columbine massacre, the US dropped more bombs on Kosovo than any other day?
    Marilyn Manson: I do know that, and I think that’s really ironic, that nobody said ‘well maybe the President had an influence on this violent behavior’ Because that’s not the way the media wants to take it and spin it, and turn it into fear, because then you’re watching television, you’re watching the news, you’re being pumped full of fear, there’s floods, there’s AIDS, there’s murder, cut to commercial, buy the Acura, buy the Colgate, if you have bad breath they’re not going to talk to you, if you have pimples, the girl’s not going to f*** you, and it’s just this campaign of fear, and consumption, and that’s what I think it’s all based on, the whole idea of keep everyone afraid, and they’ll consume.

  35. because most reporters got to liberal colleges where they are indoctrinated by liberal professors. it’s almost like a cult except they keep the money they make

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