Media Hype of Gun Control

I came to the realization that what seems to be the driving force behind the gun control debate seems to be the media.  The media needs to talk about "something."  They need to attract attention.  They need this attention to make money, so naturally they will mention gun control, which is a topic that will surely draw that attention.  What is more troubling is that even though they bring up the topic, they fail to be interested in reporting on the facts, and in some cases completely disregard the facts.

I've run across a number of articles following the Aurora shooting where it is painfully obvious that the journalist publishing the piece failed to even cross check their article.  In one article, they label the weapon used as an 'AK-47 style' rifle, which to anyone who knows anything about the AK-47 or the AR-15 will tell you, are not similar at all.  Another article pointed out that the guns were obtained online without background checks, which again is totally false.  Yet another article claims these assault weapons are the very ones that the military uses, completely and utterly false.  You cannot start a debate on a topic with false facts, and expect an honest debate to take place, so why do we let our media get away with this?  Whatever happened to doing your research before publishing something?

We need to stop media from dictating what issues we talk about today.  I am not saying that we shouldn't have an open or honest debate on gun control, but it should be just that - open and honest.  We should not let the media tell us that this is about guns.  The story here should be, why didn't anyone around this guy raise any flags about his behavior in those four months when he was planning this?  Why is the media not focusing on that fact?

The guy, Holmes, also had explosives, and had booby trapped his own apartment.  Why is that not a cause for concern? He could have easily blown up his entire building and everyone in it.  Why is there no talk about this?

And think about this; when the Trayvon Martin incident took place, infused in the national dialogue was the idea that race was a factor.  Turns out it wasn't, but it sure did grab a lot of attention that way.  Even Obama capitalized by saying that if he had a son, he'd look like Trayvon Martin.  We don't need media spinning stories in a way that grab our attention.  We need them to report facts, not fabricate them for us so that we pay attention.  We need to hold our media accountable.  We need to demand that these so called journalists lose their jobs.

The true tragedy here is that not one of these so called journalists will lose their jobs and that the public will accept their misinformation as fact to form their own opinions of the situation.  If we base our debates on lies and misconceptions we will solve nothing.