The NYT plays dumb about the Pittsburgh cop massacre
April 06, 2009 9:24 am ET by Eric Boehlert
The local Pittsburgh press this weekend was bubbling with reports about how the shooter was a fan of fringe, online conspiracies, and was afraid Obama was going to take away his guns.
Richard Andrew Poplawski was a young man convinced the nation was secretly controlled by a cabal that would eradicate freedom of speech, take away his guns and use the military to enslave the citizenry.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
He slept with a gun under his pillow in a basement room filled with firearms and ammunition, convinced that Jews controlled the media and President Obama was scheming to take away his arsenal, friends and relatives said Saturday...[A friend] said Poplawski usually was affable and kind, but grew angry recently over fears Obama would outlaw guns.
The local AP dispatch:
Police Chief Nate Harper said the motive for the shooting isn't clear, but friends said the gunman recently had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.
But readers of the Times have been left clueless about whether radical rhetoric from the right about Obama might have prompted Poplawski to ambush three officers and murder them outside his apartment. In fact, in its lone dispatch on the shooting, the Times announced, "No one could explain why [Poplawski] did what he did on Saturday."
We're not sure that's accurate.
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The NRA absolutely loves this. They want a paranoid populace that fears the government is becoming too powerful. Their sales go way up. You would think the NRA would release a factual statement about Obama's true positions on gun rights. But the NRA is not interested in a truthful conversation about a Democratic president's view on the 2nd ammendment. they prefer chaos and gun sales.
I'm a gun-owning Democratic progressive. I frequent several gun shows a year and even have a membership at a local shooting range. At the run-up to the election the outright lies/propaganda distributed by the NRA was amazingly disgusting. There were NRA-sponsored placards plastered everywhere stating how Obama was going to take away our gun rights. I saw first-hand firearm distributors purposely lying to their myopic right-wing base to make more sales. I was looking at a M4-variant of the AR-15 and the salesman came up to me and said "You better buy that now, because if Obama gets elected he's going to ban them". At another booth I was looking at the new Springfield XDs and the salesman told me I better buy one now because Obama is going to outlaw high-capacity magazines. I overheard another handful of similar examples for months up to the election.
Now, we have the radical right like Becky and am hate radio, who takes advantage of the stupidity of the average typical conservative, by lying to them and continuing to screech that Obama is going to take our guns.
Sadly, Obama's once misspeak of the radical right clinging to their guns is coming to fruition. How many more of these conservative terrorists are going to be allowed to murder Americans before the Faux Network and am hate radio talkers are held accountable?
I previously made the point on one of the other items that the NRA loves spreading propaganda when a Democrat is in charge because gun sales spike. As soon as the election was over there was a story in everybody's local newspaper touting the increase in gun sales since Obama was elected. The dealer was always saying, "People are worried Obama is going to take away their guns." I am not sure about your paper but their was no angle in our story about how the NRA's heated rhetoric and propaganda directly correlate to higher gun sales. It is a shame that people don't say, "He doesn't want to take my gun he just doesn't want Assault rifles being mass produced and ending up on our streets killing our citizens and police officers."
I don't think ANY newspaper would have the guts to publish that angle. They would be promptly smeared, attacked, and then labeled as some far left dishonest propaganda outlet.
I wish someone had the guts to scratch the surface and peal back this onion to see how much of a roll the gun manufacturers were involved in spreading this propaganda. They were and still are making a killing. Their mark-ups over the last year have increased remarkably, and sadly, people DON'T CARE. The public are paying 10, 20, 30% (and higher) over the 'sticker price'....at gun shows (where you usually save 10 to 30%)! Fear is a powerful and easy tool to manipulate the right. The last 8 years certainly taught us that.