Media Narrative Agenda
Reuters: Omaha massacre unlikely to alter gun laws
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Once again there has been a mass shooting in the United States, this time in a Nebraska shopping mall. Once again there is no national outcry for gun control.
Associated Press: Mall employee describes deadly shooting
New details also surfaced about the gunman.
State officials said Hawkins spent four years in a series of treatment centers, group homes and foster care after threatening to kill his stepmother in 2002.
Finally, in August 2006, social workers, the courts and his father all agreed: It was time for Hawkins to be released — nine months before he turned 19 and would have been required to leave anyway.
The group homes and treatment centers were for youths with substance abuse, mental or behavioral problems. Altogether, the state spent about $265,000 on Hawkins, officials said.
The aftermath of Wednesday's killings left some who knew Hawkins questioning if more should have been done.
So the narrative emerges. More gun control, more mental health intervention. As usual, the media narrative is driven by the media agenda. The gun used was stolen from the gunman’s stepfather.
Omaha World Herald: Hawkins' stepfather, owner of rifle, was in Thailand Wednesday
While Robert Hawkins was killing Von Maur employees and shoppers with his stepfather's AK-47, the stepfather was vacationing thousands of miles away in Thailand, according to the stepfather's family and people familiar with the shooting investigation.
Although Hawkins' mother, Maribel "Molly" Rodriguez, was divorced from Mark Dotson, she and Hawkins had access to Dotson's Bellevue home while he was away, said Eric Dotson, Mark's brother.
Hawkins, 19, apparently took the rifle from a closet and put it in his car while his mother was gone for a while, Eric Dotson said.
And the officials in charge of Nebraska’s Health and Human Services rendered every bit of treatment and support allowed by law.
Omaha World Herald: HHS says it did its best to treat Hawkins
Hawkins received care at several residential treatment centers, a group home and an agency-based foster home, children and family services director Todd Landry said Thursday.
"I believe all appropriate services were provided when needed and for as long as needed," he said. "Based on our review, this tragedy was not a failure of the system to provide appropriate quality services for a youth who needed it."
The mall, meanwhile, was a “Gun Free Zone”.
But despite the massive news coverage, none of the media coverage, at least by 10 a.m. Thursday, mentioned this central fact: Yet another attack occurred in a gun-free zone.
Surely, with all the reporters who appear at these crime scenes and seemingly interview virtually everyone there, why didn’t one simply mention the signs that ban guns from the premises?
Nebraska allows people to carry permitted concealed handguns, but it allows property owners, such as the Westroads Mall, to post signs banning permit holders from legally carrying guns on their property.
The Reuters story contains an astonishingly misleading statement by a fellow from the Brookings Institution:
"Although people who favor increased gun control in the United States are a substantial majority, those who oppose it are far more intense in their opposition and far more likely to vote on the basis of that issue alone," said Bill Galston, senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
The latest Gallup polling I was able to find does not show that at all:
"In general, do you feel that the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict, less strict, or kept as they are now?"
Those results show a very slim majority (51%) that answer the question with “more” in 2007 (without specifying what "more" actually means, of course). That number has been shrinking steadily since 1990 when it stood at 78% in favor. Furthermore, another question flat-out trumps the first one:
"Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?"
That one gets 68% “should not” up from 55% in 1990.
The gunman broke the existing laws by stealing the gun in the first place. He broke the existing laws yet again when he entered the “Gun Free” zone. The gunman was treated by mental health authorities to the tune of more than a quarter of a million dollars. But the media and the anti-gun zealots will try to paint this as the need for still more laws/restrictions/bans/government intervention. That is a shameful twisting of facts to advance an agenda.
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Buck Naked Politics — Friday, 7 December , 2007 @ 1:01 pm
By feeblemind, Friday, 7 December , 2007 @ 1:02 pm
I wondered if anyone would notice that it was a ‘gun free zone’. I wonder if the shoppers feel safer today when they see those silly decals on the doors of the mall. The madness hasn’t escaped my little county. They have those stupid things on our courthouse doors. I have been meaning to ask my county commissioner about them. Now maybe I will remember to ask. Gun free zones……fuh!
By guy, Friday, 7 December , 2007 @ 1:51 pm
“The gunman broke the existing laws by stealing the gun in the first place. He broke the existing laws yet again when he entered the “Gun Free” zone”
Not to mention that the gunman broke existing laws by killing unarmed shoppers. I’m not a nebraska resident, but I assume they’ve had laws banning murder on the books for a while.
By Tom, Friday, 7 December , 2007 @ 5:26 pm
Just because murder and theft are illegal doesn’t stop them from happening. So much for the enlightened society certain political type keep foisting upon us…