Some downplay Bloomberg’s call to disarm minorities
With some media, it’s not so much what’s said that is newsworthy, but who said it.
Anti-gun billionaire and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is taking some heat for telling an audience in Aspen something that, had a conservative or gun rights advocate made the same contention, there might be screams of racism, critics are saying.
According to the Aspen Times, which covered an event at the Aspen Institute, Bloomberg contended that 95 percent of homicides in this country have some things in common. He said they involve minority males between the ages of 15 and 25, either as victims or perpetrators. He then reportedly argued for cities to disarm this group.
But to read the version of the story reported by WCBS, one would never know it happened. The CBS flagship station apparently picked up the story from the newswires and pared it down, eliminating the part about Bloomberg’s anti-minority rant.
According to the Aspen newspaper’s original story, Bloomberg told the audience, “These kids think they’re going to get killed anyway because all their friends are getting killed. They just don’t have any long-term focus or anything. It’s a joke to have a gun. It’s a joke to pull a trigger.”
The ex-mayor, who has invested $50 million in a lobbying group called Everytown for Gun Safety, also criticized marijuana legalization in Colorado. That remark has drawn sharp criticism from pro-pot activists.
Wedding picture gun causes Walmart flap
Mitch Strobl is a passionate man. He loves his God, he loves his fiancé, and he loves hunting and the shooting sports. His career is dedicated to producing curricula that teach millions of folks how to hunt, shoot, and handle firearms safely.
So when Mitch met Stephanie Wehner, it was only natural their dating included sharing the passion for hunting and the shooting sports. When the couple decided to get married, they took engagement photos which included these passions. One in particular shows Mitch with a Ruger Red Label shotgun broken over his shoulder—it’s the first gun he bought on his own with his own money. It’s a treasure he plans to hang on to all his life, just like his beautiful, soon-to-be new bride.
As a news clip from Dallas’ WFAA TV showed, sharing those passions and those photos with the guests at Mitch and Stephanie’s wedding reception was the plan. Then came a bump in the road.
Stephanie took the digital photos to a local Walmart to have them printed for the display she was creating, but an associate at the store refused to print the image with the shotgun in it because in her mind and interpretation of store policy, “It promoted gang cultu
Gang culture? A man and a woman in the photograph? What about them says “gang culture?”
Being intelligent, level-headed people, it didn’t take long for them to figure out what to do. As Mitch concludes in his interview, “we’re just going to print it elsewhere.” Practical, reasonable, get it done, and move on.
However, it’s important Mitch and Stephanie brought this affront to public attention through this news story. The calm, respectful way they did it shows them to be thinking, clean-cut, passionate, fun-loving people leading everyday lives. It shows the world that these are the kind of people the shooting sports world is mostly made of.
No protesting with signs outside the Walmart store. No ranting and raving. No language that had to be bleeped from the interview. While to many pro-gun supporters and rabid anti-gunners this kind of statement may be too milquetoast, it’s exactly the kind of message that plays very well with the largest group in the middle—the ones whose votes ultimately determine our future.
Walmart later announced that the associate who refused to print Mitch and Stephanie’s photos was misinformed, and that Walmart has no policy against printing photos with guns.
Bryant Gumbel statements attack NRA and hunting
Bryant Gumbel, whose typically blunt and opinionated television persona has become his trademark, pointed an angry finger at the National Rifle Association in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Mediaite.com reports.
“There are a few things I hate more than the NRA. I mean truly,” the “Real Sports” host told the magazine in an interview posted online recently.
“I think they’re pigs,” Gumbel, 66, continued in a rant against the nation’s largest gun lobbying organization.
“I think they don’t care about human life. I think they are a curse upon the American landscape. So we got that on the record.”
His remarks came after he was questioned about a story he had reported last year on the “eat what you kill” movement, Mediaite noted of what led the former “Today Show” host to engage in his rant.
Gumbel said reporting that segment for his HBO program was his first experience “around killing and guns and hunting” and not simply a gun story.
Apparently his sheltered existence didn’t really prepare Gumbel for real life. He is probably one of those people who thinks the meat in a restaurant, supermarket or butcher store somehow gets into those plastic wrappers without ever having left a footprint upon the surface of the earth.
