Rampage Nation: Newsweek plays dumb about the Pittsburgh cop killer
April 16, 2009 10:21 am ET by Eric Boehlert
The weekly has a big spread in this week's issue about how the issue of gun control has been left alone by Democratic politicians, even after the recent wave of killing sprees. As somebody who recently criticized the press for ignoring gun violence, and failing to use the shooting rampages as a time to address gun control, Newsweek does deserve credit for its piece.
Still, there is a mjaor problem with the piece. The first is that Newsweek uses for its peg, the tale of Richard Poplawski, who's accused of killing three Pittsburgh policemen who responded to a routine domestic disturbance call at Poplawski's apartment.
Here's what Newsweek reports:
It was the deadliest day in the history of the Steel City's police department. When police finally apprehended and questioned Poplawski, he was without remorse. "He said he wishes he could have killed more Pittsburgh police officers," says a cop who was on the scene but asked not to be identified talking about an ongoing case.
So according to Newsweek, Poplawski was just a nut who snapped when the cops came to his apartment. Newsweek then quickly segues into its dissection of the politics in play. The problem is the local Pittsburgh press was stocked 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 Newsweek are left clueless about whether radical, baseless rhetoric from the far right about Obama might have prompted Poplawski to ambush three officers and murder them outside his apartment. Newsweek's article examines the politics involved in the gun control debate and gun violence in America and focuses on how little Democrats are doing. Newsweek though, completely ignores the role conservatives are playing in the issue, and specifically how some are stoking false fears about a so-called Obama gun ban.
I'm as puzzled today as I was the moment I heard it, that the Pittsburgh cops took this guy alive. I'm surprised at that, and don't know the reason for it.
Also, there's nothing conclusive that's ever going come from any analysis or investigation of this murderer's twisted mind: whatever you come up with, however insightful or true, is irrelevant of and inapplicable to all things... because whatever thing about this guy's mind you'd point to, as the reason for his doing what he did, you will then find millions and millions of other minds afflicted and desposed the same way: and yet in 99% or greater of those other cases (cases of social alienation, or delusion or depression or even a raging antagonism toward authority, even insanity), in those millions and millions of other minds similarly disposed, you will most times find no guns and no violence and no murder... how do you explain that?
Me, rather than see any detailed accounting of this guy's mind, I'd think it was far more valuable to have a detailed accounting of where and how and from whom he got an AK-47, to shoot three unsuspecting Pittsburgh cops to death at his door, while they were simply doing their job and never had a chance to shoot back... and again, I don't know why this guy was taken alive: he obviously has a serious problem with his head, for which the JUST treatment should have been several pieces of lead.
The rumor is he bought his weapons nearby in an area called Wilkinsburg and yes our local media published a great deal about his rants about gun, obama & his posts on racist web sites
I've not researched this particular question, but where and from whom any killer got his firearm, is a top priority question for cops investigating any gunshot murder... they find that info out often the same day of the shooting, but the next day at least, and if not then, they keep on the matter until it's resolved: where'd this guy get his firearm?
And to neglect that question and it's Public Record answer, to neglect it in media reports, is strange and even suspicious, as it ignores something in a published media account of the murder, that the investigators involved want answered definitively, as soon as possible.
And isn't any talk about anything called "gun control", just talk about the distribution and sale of firearms?
Of course it is.
Why would the facts of where and from whom this cop-killer got his AK-47, why would that be ignored or downplayed or spoken softly of, in media reports?
Why would rumor or speculation ever take the place of facts, from the Public Record, in this particular matter?
You know what the acronym NRA stands for today, but do you know what the NRA stands for?
Don't give me any of that "grassroots" bullchit for an answer... the NRA stands for the unregulation or deregulation or less regulation, of the manufacture distribution and sales of firearms, period.
It's a trade lobby, pure and simple... and aren't we talking about the trade of firearms, when we talk about "gun control"?
Isn't it the trade of firearms that cops are investigating, when they set themselves to finding out just where and from whom that murderous phuck got an AK-47?
It's only a matter of Public Record, but it's all but ignored by our commercial media.