VPC: It's The NRA's Fault!

We shouldn't --- and don't --- expect unbiased reportage from the San Francisco "GATE";  their articles are written to reflect the political opinions of their community.   They cater to their market.

They slant their 'news' articles by selecting the quotes which reinforce the political message they wish to send.

And in this SFGATE follow-up article on the Las Vegas killings, they don't disappointed their market.

The "Hero or Victim" article spends less time discussing whether Joseph Wilcox was a "Hero or Victim" then it does whether he was a "Victim or Dupe".

The Violence Policy Center leans toward "Dupe":

Vegas conceal carry permit holder: Hero or victim? - SFGate:
(June 12, 2014)

Gun control advocates said the death of Wilcox was a black eye for the NRA and its promotion of gun ownership and carrying as a solution to a rising tide of mass shootings. "From its magazines to Wayne LaPierre’s statements after Newtown, the NRA routinely argues that concealed carry is a simple [emphasis added] solution to complex situations including mass shootings," said Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center. "In his own way, Joseph Wilcox was as much a victim of the NRA’s language and marketing as the two law enforcement officers who were killed."

Simple?
Who said it would be "simple"?
Or Easy?
Or Painless?
NRA only suggested it would be better to fight back, than to allow murder to continue without resistance..


Let's hear it from people who don't necessarily consider Wilcox a Dupe of the NRA:

But many in law enforcement have misgivings over concealed carry, worrying that would-be heroes may do more harm than good in tense situations where split-second judgments are necessity.

"It’s very hard to speak ill of someone who died doing what he thought was right," said Kevin Quinn, a police officer in Chandler, Ariz., and president of the National Association of School Resource Officers, which represents police assigned to schools. "But was (drawing a gun at Miller) the best option? In hindsight, obviously it was not."
Police officers are trained to have total awareness of their surroundings in such situations and not just focus on the active shooter, Quinn said.
"How a police officer responds is much different than a civilian with a gun,"

Quinn said, noting that NASRO opposed the NRA’s post-Newtown plan to train armed civilians for school-protection duty.

(Note also that the edited quotes don't support the UNquoted last sentence.)

All of which belabors the point.

Was Wilcox a trained gunfighter?  No, probably not.   On the other hand, we're not convinced that all LEOs are trained gunfighters, either.

Was his decision to step in and try to "Stop The Violence" (which we naively thought was the goal of the VPC) the "best option"?

Absolutely not!  Not if Wilcox had his own personal self-interest at the apex of his decision-making process.



 (But then, not everybody thinks of themselves first; personal physical courage is a rare psychological dysfunction not familiar to Liberal Theorists.  Never having experienced it, they can't be expected to understand it. For them, such thoughts are dismissed as cognitive dissonance, and immediately dismissed.)

We are talking about a man who put his own safety at risk to stop the murder of others.
His reasons aren't pertinent.  Whether it was a Walter Mitty Moment or the ultimate self-sacrifice for the good of his community, we can only be sure that he saw his duty, and he did it.

For that matter, when shooters walk into a store, just because one walks past him that doesn't mean they won't shoot him anyway.

One might say the same things about Soldiers on active duty who go to the world's Hot Spots.
Is that their "best option"?  Who knows why they do that?

Are THEY dupes of the NRA, or of some Recruiting Officer?  Did they read too many adventure books, watch too many war films, or actually read the Constitution?     Or did they just see a job that needed doing, and decide that that they could help get it done.

Are self-sacrificing acts of courage, honor and duty now so rare in America that the pusillanimous press feels free to mortify the memory of these brave men and women?

As far as the authors of this "News Story" (not it is NOT an "Op-Ed" article) are concerned, there is an old Arabic saying which seems applicable here:

"May the fleas of a thousand camels infest their scrotums"
... if they have scrotums.