-By Warner Todd Huston
Before they had any facts at all, a handful of liberals in politics and the media immediately jumped on TV using the Navy Yard shooting to blame so-called “assault rifles,” and the AR-15 in particular, and others used the crime to push their political ideology. As it turned out, though, there was no AR-15 used by the shooter. In fact, he didn’t even own one.
Before the FBI and local officials reported that the incident was over and the murderer was dead, liberals were running at lightening speed to find a TV camera or someone in the media in order to use the incident for their own political purposes.
Chief among them was Senator Dianne Feinstein who jumped to blame so-called assault rifles for the attack. Feinstein rushed out a statement to scold Congress for “shirking its duty” to outlaw guns and undermine the Second Amendment.
“This is one more event to add to the litany of massacres that occur when a deranged person or grievance killer is able to obtain multiple weapons–including a military-style assault rifle–and kill many people in a short amount of time. When will enough be enough?”
But as it turns out, the FBI reports that this killer had no rifle at all with him, much less a “military-style assault rifle.” He did have a shotgun but it seems he didn’t use it. Instead all the damage he did was with two pistols he was carrying–one of which seems to have been taken from a security guard on the Navy Yard grounds. Authorities report that the killer did not own an AR-15, but had rented on, which he had returned, earlier in the week.
Another elected Democrat who tried to use this crime to his political advantage, but not by attacking guns, was D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray. The D.C. Mayor quixotically tried to blame the attack on budget cuts and the sequester.
Even a D.C. doctor got into the blame game trying to turn this crime into political hay and used her time before the cameras to rant against guns. She was on TV ostensibly to give updates on the wounded, but instead used the occasion to try and get herself into the news.
Trying to extend her 15 minutes of fame, MedStar Washington Hospital Center Chief Medical Officer Janis Orlowski launched into an anti-gun rant while being interviewed about the medical situation at the Navy Yard.
She called guns “something evil in our society that we as Americans have to work to try and eradicate” and went on to say, “Let’s get rid of this. This is not America.”
Orlowski also repeated her performance on Piers Morgan’s CNN show as well as The Today Show.
Of course, Orlowski has been a big donor to Obama and the Democrats.
Speaking of CNN, the cabler’s Second Amendment-hating Piers Morgan used another of his little seen shows to again attack guns, including AR-15s. Morgan used a Mother Jones magazine argument that mass shootings have increased exponentially, but his guests disputed those numbers. In fact, the US murder rate is not as bad as that of countries like Mexico and Honduras.
Earlier in the day, CNN also showed its ignorance of guns, saying the shooter had an “AR-15 shotgun.” Naturally, there is no such thing as an AR-15 shotgun.
In the world of Newspapers, the New York Daily News featured an entire front page article built on the idea that the Nay Yard killer used an AR-15. “Maniac used ‘Newton’ Weapon,” the headline screams next to a photo of an AR-15 rifle. We now know that no rifle, especially an AR-15, was used in the crime.
These won’t be the only examples of exploiting this incident for political gain as further facts about this crime come to light. But these were early out of the gate comments of those hoping to turn this incident to their political advantage.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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