Anthony Gucciardi
In yet another ‘summer shooting’ involving a killer who is now being referred to by the media as the ‘Empire State Building shooter‘, recently-fired gunman Jeffrey Johnson fired on a co-worker before being gunned down by police outside of the Empire State Building in downtown New York City. A total of 9 bystanders were wounded and sent to a local hospital with expectations of survival, but what was the cause of their injury? The Empire State Building shooter may have actually had only a single target (according to virtually all the mainstream media sources at near the bottom of the page) — a co-worker which was gun downed before the incident.
What makes the Empire State Building shooter case quite different than the Batman shootings and the Sikh shootings is that the Empire State Building shooter appears to only have had a single target. The bulk of the wounded suspects seems like it was the result of a chaotic incident of police fire intended for Johnson, with potentially all of the injuries reportedly as a result of the police fire. Even Bloomberg admits that Johnson may have not shot any of the bystanders himself:
“Investigators were attempting to determine whether Johnson shot anyone beyond his initial target. Some of the surviving victims could have been hit by the two police officers who returned fire, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.”
Major organizations like Reuters are already labeling it a mass shooting comparable to the Batman shooting and the Sikh temple killings, stating:
“It was the third mass shooting of the summer in the United States.”
Does this make it okay? Certainly not. This is an absolutely tragic event and Johnson most certainly displayed a mentally unstable and nefarious intent to kill another human being and return fire to police. The key aspect we are examining here is how the media is looking to turn this case into another mass shooting event without actually detailing the facts in the ‘readable’ area of the article. Instead, they stick these key facts far down below the opening paragraph and summary.
What this does is cause hysteria and label it another mass shooting to those who read headlines or the first paragraph summary. Why is this important? Because Johnson is stated to have used a semi-automatic weapon, which has led anti-gun proponents to immediately begin calling for stricter gun control and regulation. Considering it’s already illegal to be carrying a semi-automatic weapon in downtown New York City, it’s quite obvious that Johnson really isn’t a law-abiding citizen (these stricter regulations would only affect law-abiding citizens).
This latest ‘mass shooting’ as perpetuated by the mainstream media may be the final straw in terms of gun control and regulation, and we may see many individuals like New York’s Mayor Bloomberg go into overdrive in using this incident as a catalyst to push along the legislation. I would urge you to remember that the main point of this piece is to highlight that the mainstream media will take anything and spin it to not only generate the most response, but to further along an agenda.
