Very little can come out of tragedy. Most of the time the best you can hope for is what not to do, which is seldom little comfort to those who were affected.
Please let them grieve
I would imagine that is the case right now with a shooting instructor being accidentally kills by a 9 year old girl there is really little to take away. There is very little comfort for the victim’s family and certainly very little for the poor girl. My heart goes out to both families and before the blame game kicks off I wanted to make a view observations.
Lopsided coverage
A quick search of the story came up with 18 million hits from an incident that happened less than 24 hours ago. I see that just about every major news service has picked up the story and rightfully so, it is a tragedy that needs to be reported. However, here is the rub that I have and why I am so cynical. If you do a similar search of Muhammad Ali Brown you will only get about 6 millions hits from an incident that happened earlier this year and was recently charged on August 20th with aggravated first degree murder.
What’s the difference
If you compare the two stories, the accidentally shooting gets what can only be described as completely lopsided coverage. Why do you think that is? Is it because the circumstances of this 9 year old girl were unique, that the instructor who was there to ensure her safety was killed. Was it because a video of the incident went viral on the internet? These are all good questions, but honestly I don’t think they make up for the rather large lopsided coverage. One theory could be that Muhammad Ali Brown went on a coast to coast killing spree taking the lives of four people, gunning them down in cold blood as vengeance for the US’s action in the middle east. This self styled jihadist has nothing to hide, he is more honest than our politicians as to his motives that much is perfectly clear.
Thoughtful speculation
So, why does Brown not get the same coverage, the same attention? Is it because he is black? Is it because he is muslim? Is it because the “just kills” don’t fit into the current narrative of a peaceful religion? I would love to know the reason why, the justification. I think the public has a right to know. How is it that a religious mass murderer can somehow not justify the same coverage of this poor 9 year old girl? It is absolutely tragic both incidents and one theoretically shouldn’t be any more important than the other. So how do you explain it then?
What is the rationale
This lopsided prejudice can only be agenda driven in my opinion. We have two conflicting issues. On the one side, we have an example of a radical jihadist who perpetrated gruesome acts, albeit not as gruesome as having your head cut off. We certainly wouldn’t want to offend anyone’s by drawing attention to this “isolated” incident is the rational I’m sure. On the other side we have a liberal media with ties to gun control seizing on an opportunity to make a point, to say “I told you so”. If there is another logical justification I would really like to hear it and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
We should allow these families the opportunity to grieve, we should review the incident to see what could have been done differently if anything at an appropriate time and we should take steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again. The real question is which incident am I referring to?
Amen.