Posted on 08/06/2019 4:58:31 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Around the same time that the media was focused on the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, 60 people were shot in Chicago over the weekend. 24 of those people were shot in four hours.
Baltimore reached its 200th murder victim of the year during its “Ceasefire Weekend”.
4 people were killed in 4 days in Kansas City. 6 men were shot in Philly during the filming of a rap video.
Even in Toronto, 15 people were wounded in shootings over the weekend. Over 350 people have been shot this year in the Canadian city which has gun control, no NRA, and none of the usual excuses.
This tide of violence has received less media coverage because it challenges the false claim that, as a CNN op-ed once put it, mass shootings are a “white man’s problem.”
"I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country," Rep. Ilhan Omar claimed on Al Jazeera.
"We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men," Don Lemon had previously claimed on CNN.
"White Men Have Committed More Mass Shootings Than Any Other Group," Newsweek had argued.
The perception that mass shootings are a “white man’s problem” lingers around the country because white mass shooters tend to get more publicity. And, the twisted young male who goes on a public shooting spree fits a certain kind of media narrative. But when we actually study the mass shootings that took place in 2019, it’s clear that Patrick Crusius and Connor Betts are not the norm, but aberrations.
Mass shooters have no particular ideology. Crusius and Betts were opposites ideologically. (Though both cared deeply about the environment.) Nor are mass shooters a white problem or a black problem. Over the same bloody weekend, William Patrick Williams, who is African-American, appeared in court after being arrested by the FBI for planning to shoot up a Texas hotel with an AK-47 rifle.
Looking at the data from the Mass Shooting Tracker, widely utilized by the media, as of this writing, of the 72 mass shooters, perpetrators in shootings that killed or wounded 4 or more people, whose race is known, 21 were white, 37 were black, 8 were Latino, and 6 were members of other groups.
51% of mass shooters in 2019 were black, 29% were white, and 11% were Latino.
Three mass shooters were Asian, two were American Indian and one was Arab.
These numbers are if anything vastly understated. As many as half of the mass shootings that took place in 2019 thus far remain unsolved, but they often took place in black areas and claimed black victims.
White people make up 61% of the country’s population, followed by Hispanics at 17.8%, and African-Americans at 12.7%. In that context, white people are actually dramatically underrepresented among mass shooters, as are Latinos, while African-Americans are highly overrepresented. But that may be because Latino gangs, like MS-13, are less likely to use handguns in public shootouts. And white organized crime groups, like the mafia, no longer carry out attacks like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
Much of this country’s gun violence is really gang violence. And shooting your enemies is a tactic. White organized crime groups make their victims disappear. MS-13’s victims are beheaded and buried in parks. Black gang members open fire on each in major cities. The perpetrators are sometimes never caught. When we distill the problem of mass shootings to its statistical roots, it becomes a gang tactic.
Would the media really like to argue that beheadings are preferable to shootings as a tactic? Were the people buried under Whitey’s house better off than the gang members shot on a Chicago street corner?
Beyond gang violence, the list of mass shootings includes family murder-suicides carried out by both white and black perpetrators, though white family shootings were more prevalent, and workplace shootings by both white and black perpetrators, though black workplace shootings were more common.
Bias is a factor in the overreporting on white mass shooters, but there are different kinds of media biases. Beyond political bias, there’s also narrative bias. The media’s objectivity isn’t just undermined by political agendas, but by the entertainment value of a story from its own privileged perspective.
The media finds a story about a shooting in a small town interesting, but a shooting in the inner city boring. A shooting at a Garlic Festival is a novelty while a shooting at a house party in Chicago isn’t. But the pursuit of novelty creates its own narrative which makes it seem as if mass shootings happen in unlikely places, because they are more memorable, than in the big cities where they actually happen.
And yet some mass shootings were inherently newsworthy, but were never reported.
DeWayne Craddock, a Virginia Beach government employee murdered 12 people at his workplace. The victims were both white and black. Even though Craddock was the deadliest workplace mass shooter of 2019, there’s been very little coverage of his case.
Craddock’s killing spree got far less coverage than Santino William Legan’s attack on the Gilroy Garlic Festival even though he killed 4 times more people than Legan did. White mass shooters like Legan are seen as more newsworthy because they make a better case for gun control due to the fact that they are likelier to use heavier weapons. Legan brought a rifle to the Garlic festival. Craddock used .45 handguns. And he used them more effectively than Legan used, what the media is calling, an assault rifle.
Heavier weapons may make for a better political agenda, but they aren’t necessarily deadlier.
Then there’s a mass shooting story out of Detroit that would have scratched two of the media’s political itches, homophobia and gun control, but was instead buried because the shooter fit the wrong profile.
In June, Devon Robinson shot two gay men and one transgender man. The shootings, which took place during Pride Month, according to a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, targeted and killed the victims “because they were part of the LGBTQ community.” Had Devon been white, there’s little doubt that there would already be a play, a movie and a monument to his victims. But instead it’s been buried.
The Robinson shootings demonstrate how the media negotiates its own intersectional cover-ups. As does the very different coverage of the political orientations of Patrick Crusius and Connor Betts.
While mass shooters can come from any race or political belief, the one thing that unites them is a desire for publicity. Mass shooters often admire and track the “high scores” of other mass shooters regardless of their motives and politics. What they really want to do, above all else, is kill.
Seung-Hui Cho, the South Korean immigrant, who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, wrote of being inspired by the Columbine killers, and claimed that he wanted to die to "inspire generations of the weak and defenseless people". Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook school shooter, was inspired by Anders Breivik, a Neo-Nazi mass shooter, even though he had nothing apparently in common with him.
What mass shooters like Cho and Crusius really want is to be celebrities. And the media makes that happen. It broadcasts their manifestos, plasters their photos everywhere, and makes them famous.
And then the next mass shooter uses them as his inspiration.
The left is immune to facts.
*************
Immune to facts, logic and the lessons of history. They are like petulant, spoiled children who just want what they want, and they lash out any anyone who stands in the way of their impulsive demands.
We must treat them like the immature children that they are.
“51% of Mass Shooters in 2019 Were Black: Only 29% Were White. No, mass shootings are not a “white man’s” problem.”
Well, that’s a real bummer for the media narrative. I guess the only way to deal with the real facts of the matter is no ignore this piece of information.
Fake news promoting racism against whites is routine. Greenberg does an excellent job of countering the narrative calmly and objectively. He is always worth reading.
Whoops! Make that Greenfield.
A gang banger who shoots up a Sunday BBQ attended by other gang bangers and hits 4 or more people is not a "mass shooting" according to the MSM, even though it happens almost every single weekend in Chicago.
A white dude that posts a manifesto then shoots up a Walmart is a "mass shooting" according to the MSM.
sasve
According to the photo montage above, the racial breakdown is...
68% black
22% white
10% hispanic/other
While 2% were Blue and the other 18% were Green.
When one adds drug related shooting in the 'Mass Shooting' category; what ELSE would you expect?
There are OVER 3,000!
We have sown the wind; and are now reaping the whirlwind.
NO one in the crowd had a gun of their OWN for protection?
The police are only minutes away...
In MY WALMART in Greenfield, IN you can see folks OPENLY carrying!
Mark Twain: “No amount of evidence will ever persuade and idiot.” In this case, a LOT of idiots with a nefarious agenda.
I see...
Bookmark
Bookmark
I think you're right. The term "mass-shooting" is getting bastardized just like "racist". Here in WI last week there were 5 people murdered in two separate residential locations by the same man. Looks like a family dispute or something. But WISN in Milwaukee keeps reporting this as a mass shooting. Not the same as El Paso !
A little tidbit.
I have a friend who has a 17 y/o Autistic son. Her son is prone to violent outburst. So far they have all pretty much been confined to self harm and harming his mother when she intervenes. She has been trying for 3 years to get him committed to a residential institution where he can be treated, cared for and kept away from others he might hurt. She has had no luck. Why, because the state says he has rights. He has limited verbal skills and probably a 50-60 IQ. He is barely above the level of a three year old in terms of self care, but stands 6’ 3” and weighs around 210 lbs. His mother’s greatest fear is that someday he will kill her or someone else during one of his rages, but no one seems to care.
I know he is an extreme case, but the mindset is the same for all these time bombs. You can read the stories here about the classmates in Dayton who knew Betts was going to do this someday. Bottom line, it’s much easier to scream about guns than to come up with the political will and money to address the real problems.
Yeah, but I can see why in most people’s minds it’s two different categories. One is random and psychotic — shooting up a bunch of strangers. The other is gangbangers out for revenge or whatever, which of course is terrible but there’s at least an understandable motive and it’s not perpetrated against random people.
Daniel Greenfield has great courage or an extremely thick skin... we need to stand with him.
OK, how do we define mass shooting anyway? It has been defined as the murder of 4 or more people.
Do these shootings in Toronto and by blacks qualify as mass shooting if less than 4 people are killed by an assailant?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.