Week 1: Assignment and Response to Classmates

ThursdayOct 5 at 8:26pm

Manage Discussion Entry

Going to try this again.

On Sunday, October 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and injured hundreds in the attack as he fired from his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the south end of the Las Vegas Strip.

The heart-breaking, senseless slaughter is the deadliest mass shooting so far.

The story is not blatantly political, but as happens, and rightly so, the issue of gun control comes into focus. I was surprised to hear so many media shots of people warning not to politicize the event by starting to talk about gun control too soon.

My Facebook feed was flooded with familiar ‘guns don’t kill people’ memes, as well as post featuring stats on both sides of the issue.

An opinion piece posted on the Washington Post’s news site took offense to all the warnings, sharply pointing out the well-known ties between Republicans and National Rifle Association.

I believe the media does influences public opinion in regards to the issue of gun control, but not by much. Americans have strong issues on both sides. The political parties do the same thing with this issue as they do with every issue. They take advantage of peoples fear to win votes for their party and stay in power.

I have never talked to anyone, from either side of the aisle, that thinks guns should be illegal. Likewise, I have never talked to anyone, from either side of the aisle, that thinks the current state of things in this regard does not need tweaking.

I find the current President’s habitual attribution to any news story that does not reflect his own opinion on any given issue as ‘fake news’ troubling. In doing this, he paints his own portrait as an insecure leader that has little respect for the media, and even less confidence in the American people to sort things out. He proves himself to be a high-level panderer himself.

I feel that the media has presented balanced coverage of both sides of the issue of gun control, if you take the time to read the whole of any article on the issue. There are plenty of pieces to read and ponder on both sides of the issue.

Graber, D. A., & Dunnaway, J. (2015). Mass Media and American Politics (Ninth ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.

Scarborough, J. (2017, October 5). The GOP’s silence insults the dead. Retrieved October 5, 2017, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gops-silence-insults-the-dead/2017/10/05/cfa1bafa-aa0e-11e7-850e-2bdd1236be5d_story.html?utm_term=.307d7e4a7791