A Familiar Editorial Split After Parkland Shooting, but Not Everywhere

  • 6 years ago
A Familiar Editorial Split After Parkland Shooting, but Not Everywhere
“We need sensible gun control to help stop the slaughter.”
The image evoked the tabloid’s crusading heyday, back when Mr. Trump was a fixture in its pages and headlines demanded
that former Mayor David N. Dinkins “Do Something” amid a 1990 crime spree.
President, this is your moment,” the paper wrote, urging Mr. Trump to “prove how much you truly want to curb the carnage.”
Another Murdoch-owned outlet, however, showed no sign of championing gun control measures.
In fact, gun violence remains a significant challenge in American life; since the 2012 shooting at
an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., at least 239 school shootings have occurred nationwide.
It was one of the more striking responses from the news media to Wednesday’s killings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., an attack
that quickly revived the national debate over restricting access to guns, and why politicians have taken few steps to do so.
In October, after a gunman killed dozens of people at a concert in Las Vegas, the paper editorialized
that a 1990s-era assault weapon ban was merely “cosmetic,” and noted that mass shootings accounted “for a fraction” of domestic firearm-related deaths.
Breitbart took pains to suggest a seemingly damning contrast: the F. B.I.’s fumbling of a tip about the Parkland shooter
and the agency’s work investigating allegations of collusion between Russians and Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign

Recommended