Now that I think about it, nobody gets shot in Pixar movies. I wonder if movies about violence vigilantes need to be regulated…
He just couldn’t help himself. Learning of the horrible Batman theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado, ABC reporter Brian Ross got on the air and reported a possible “tea party link” with the killer, James Holmes, and if you don’t think this sent a thrill up his leg, I have some gold mine shares to sell you. Anything to smear conservatives: why was he looking at tea party web pages, any more than PETA sites, or Parcheesi fan sites? Because, you see, the tea parties are violent—don’t you remember? They inspired that guy to shoot Gaby Giffords! Where else would you expect to find a madman killer?
It was fantasy, of course, and Ross and ABC duly apologized, but never mind: it worked. Confirmation bias is a sure thing. I was in a Food Court at LAX today, and heard someone at the table next to me eating similar unidentifiable swill say, “Did you hear? One of those tea party guys shot all those people!” I finally got to my room in Sun Valley (it was easier to get to Mongolia than Sun Valley) to check what she was talking about. So you see, Brian? Mission accomplished!
Others are politicizing the Aurora shooting in only slightly less outrageous ways, mostly with the sadly predictable rush of anti-gun advocates to point to the slaughter and say, “See? Guns bad.” Then comes the related cognitive dissonance trick, linking gun rights to automatic weapons to madmen and criminals using such weapons to the tragic deaths resulting from said use, hence Republicans and conservatives are really allied with killers and murderers, which gives us some insight into their true character.
I’m sure Brian Ross approves.
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Facts: Huffington Post
Graphic: Shout Omaha
Ethics Alarms 
Sometimes you can see the train wreck coming, can’t you?
Well put, Mark!
I talk about Ross and a few others here.
One could easily claim, with the same amount of evidence, that James Holmes was a relative of Katie Holmes, who was excluded from the second and third films, and implying that the shooting was in retaliation for that.
Ross is as much an ethics dunce as Margie Phelps .
What does everyone think of this question: Is there ANY correlation between reporters and “news” organizations and their rush to be “first” — and big pharma, insider trading, manufacturers of faulty, corner cutting materials and standards and getting sued for violating said rules & regulations – both as the “cost” of doing business? That’s what this Ross & ABC, and CNN & Fox did with the reporting on the Supreme Court’s Affordable Care Act a few weeks ago.
Do you think that’s how they look at it? And how’s that measure up on the ethical scale? Harumph!
It might not be related in deed, but it may be in the Thought Structure™ behind each of their actions. I’ll be writing a post for publication Monday morning with a similar bent – let me know what you think.. Jack?
In a word, YES, it’s the exact same phenomenon. The risk is worth the reward.
There’s politicizing — which is troubling, but sometimes necessary and natural — and then there’s ‘religiousization’. For example, Texas Rep. Gohmert’s comments on the Aurora shooting. He said “We’ve told God we don’t want him around.” According to the Washington Post, Gohmert said, “he believed that the country’s move away from its Judeo-Christian beliefs was responsible for God withdrawing his ‘protective hand’ from the country.”
It’s sad to see people using tragic events purely as a means to an end, be it political or religious; however, when something like this happens, it unsurprisingly sparks conversation about why such events occur and whether or not there’s a way to prevent them. Obviously gun control should be a part of that conversation.
Of course gun control should be part of the conversation. I went into a fishing/hunting shop to get my fishing liscence this season (which I couldn’t, thanks to Maryland’s absurd policy of not accepting federal ID. I was officially a stowaboard on the boat. Shhh!), and was rather shocked to see that you could very legally buy everything from AR-15s to FN-P90s. Something tells me that nobody actually needs a submachine gun with 50-round capacity for hunting or self-defence.
What kind of ID does Maryland require/accept for one to vote? Those are some mightily protected fish in those parts!
So what if they do not need it?
Why does gun control need to be part of the conversation, I think this case is a clear example that this guy would have found way regardless if guns were available or not. Don’t get wrap around the ridiculous assault weapon jargon, it is meaningless in terms of how a gun functions, and in reality it just means a scary looking semiautomatic. There is something wrong with this guy; to blame anything but this guy for his actions is unethical. It doesn’t matter if he was part of “pick a group” I think it is fair to say that he is not representative of said group due to his actions.
I disagree that it is unethical to blame anyone/anything else but this guy for his actions. People do not act within a perfectly self-contained bubble; they are influenced by inside (brain chemistry) and outside (opportunity) factors.
Certainly, I can understand the need to place blame squarely on his shoulders for practical purposes; however we should not forget that certain conditions within James Eagan Holmes’ brain – which may very well be outside of his control — led to his fateful decision to kill. Once his plot was hatched, the opportunity for him to act on his sick and twisted desires is made all the more possible by ready access to assault weapons. It would be hard to do what he did with a baseball bat or a knife.
Don’t the people that make assault weapons (specifically designed for killing other human beings) deserve some of the blame? Or what about those law makers that make it easy for people to acquire such weapons? Don’t they deserve some of the blame too? I think so.
I would love to understand how this is the fault of gun makers. Did they pull the trigger with his hands on it? Did they put a gun to his head and tell him to kill or be killed?
Do you blame McDonalds for making people fat? Is it the car company’s fault if a drunk driver crashes into someone and causes a death?
Lots of people answer yes to all those questions. It’s the “we can’t just do NOTHING!” problem. If a crazy person decides he wants to kill people, there are plenty of ways. Guns make it a little easier. A guy with a baseball bat could kill 5 or 6 before anyone stopped him.
That’s a good question Joshua. Let me try to explain my thinking.
McDonalds products are designed to provide nutrition, car company’s products are designed to provide transportation. Now, one could argue that they may succeed — or fail — in varying degrees, but the purpose of the product matters. Not all guns are designed to kill people, but some are expressly made for that purpose. You don’t hunt deer with assault weapons. When a company designs a product with the purpose of killing people, it follows that when those products are used for the very purpose they are designed for, you — the producer — bear some responsibility.
The degree to which your product has a potential for harm, in relation to its useful, benevolent potential creates a sort of math as to the sum of responsibility companies should bear for the outcomes of people using those products. Therefore I would argue that McDonalds does bear some responsibility for selling unhealthy products that they know cause people more harm than good. However, their product — and those of the car companies — have many more redeeming qualities than those of the gun manufacturers.
If you think about big tobacco in those terms, you would see that they too bear some serious blame for the damaging effects of the products they produce. Products that have very little useful purpose, if at all.
Anyway, that’s my thinking. I hope you can see the logic, even if you disagree.
Which gun companies bear responsibility for the killing of Kenneth Chamberlain?
I’m afraid I don’t know what brand of gun was used, nor the type and purpose of the guns in question.
Yardley,
What do you think the difference is between an assault weapon and a hunting rifle?
One is termed ‘assault’, one is termed ‘hunting’. So there is at least one a difference in the specification and intended use. Otherwise they could all just be called hunting rifles, no?
As for definitions, a quick Wikipedia search produced the following: Assault weapon is a term, often used by gun control advocates, typically referring to firearms “designed for rapidly firing at human targets from close range.”
Can you specify what that difference is?
The difference is the name/specification/terminology. That was the difference I was pointing out.
The problem with the whole assault weapon terminology is it is specifically designed to mislead, very successfully I might add. The weapons he used were semi-automatic. It sounds really good for politicians to say they are working to ban assault weapons, but in reality what they are talking about are scary looking guns, the only real distinction. They want everyone to believe that when they say assault weapons they are talking about automatics, but they are illegal without a special license. A license that is very difficult to get.
Thanks for the clarification Steve.
You are still placing blame on a company which had no direct control over the tragedy caused by one mentally ill person. Guns are a tool regardless of how you describe them.
We cannot blame a company for the misuse of a product. Even if that product is supposedly designed to kill people.
And to help further understand your reasoning, can you explain your equation to figure out the harm to usefulness in products such as guns or cars?
“Not all guns are designed to kill people, but some are expressly made for that purpose.”
Yardley, you are partly correct on this point. The purpose of the type of gun you refer to here is to allow a person of small stature and/or physical strength the ability to kill another person who does have the size/strength to kill the smaller & weaker person (or who is also armed), thus giving the smaller/weaker person a chance at surviving a conflict with a bigger/stronger assailant–“leveling the playing field” if you will. It gives a similar ability to kill multiple assailants in an analogous situation.
More importantly, it allows a smaller/weaker person to credibly threaten the life of a bigger/stronger assailant(s) whose intent is injury but not murder, acting as a deterrent to the assailant by changing the risk-vs-reward of carrying out the attack.
This is the useful, redeeming quality of this type of weapon.
–Dwayne
Did those lawmakers who provided funding for those who killed Kenneth Chamberlain deserve some of the blame for his death?
Law enforcement and gun regulations are two different things.
How so?
Micheal, I’m sorry, but if you can’t see the difference between enforcement and regulation, I’d be wasting my time trying to explain it.
Yardley, the reactions that stem from political and religious foundations are both natural, even if unnecessary; I don’t think of either as any more or less troubling than the other. Both types of reactions lead to appeals to authority, ultimately. Do you agree?
No argument on gun control. (If you knew me well, you’d know I just said something that previously would have been unthinkably unexpected.)
I agree.
Purely innocent (I hope), but you conflated the reporter’s and killer’s names in the first paragraph with Jim Ross.
Jeez. Thanks for pointing that out. Where’s my edit button!?
Just as a reference, here is a link to the a transcript of Gohmert’s statements: http://gohmert.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=303954
Fixed. I almost did that the whole way through—I knew a “Jim Ross.”
Good article in Politico about Ross’s history of blunders and grandstanding being offset, supposedly, by really good work on other stories. Truly a “cost of doing business” attitude.