The horrific massacre at a Connecticut school on Friday raises troubling and complex questions about ethical, spiritual and legal issues related to mental illness. However, a quick reading on DailyKos – the pulse of the mainstream progressive Democratic grassroots – shows that while some there are trying to grapple with the real underlying issue of stopping violent, criminal behavior by the mentally deranged, the primary obsession is predictably with controlling and banning guns.
The gun OCD starts as soon you are try and access DailyKos.com, where a pop-up banner won’t even let you look at the site until you deal with it. The banner is marked “Daily Kos Action” and reads “Now is the time to talk about gun control” and “Sign the petition asking President Obama to help start a national conversation about gun control.” It shows a photo of President Obama wiping a tear from his eye.
It should be pointed out that this ‘popup petition politics’ is smart and a good use of internet marketing strategies by DailyKos. Yes, it’s shameless. However, it’s effective. they are creating a media event; a ‘petition’ that will surely get thousands of signatures and then will be used to point out the groundswell of support for gun control. The Left is very, very good at this sort of thing and the Right needs to learn to be better at it if they want to rack up some media victories.
Once you’re into DailyKos, a quick look at the “Hot Tags” – the most frequently used tags of current topic interests – tells the tale. As of 1:30pm East on Sunday 12/16, here are the Hot Tags on DailyKos and the number of times they are used; Gun Control (178), Recommended (138), Guns (125) community (94), NRA (81), Newtown (74), Sandy Hook (72), gun violence (61), Connecticut (39), violence (39).
The Top Recommenced Dairies give you the same sense of the grassroots liberals are thinking:
Dianne Feinstein To Introduce Assault Weapons Ban On First Day Of Congress starts with “Thank you, Dianne Feinstein.”
DailyKos regular MeteorBlades says advertising is the problem; a bigger one than the shooter, he says in It’s not just a few mass killers who are sick and twisted. Some gun manufacturers are worse
An article by BrooklynBadBoy called Louis Gohmert illustrates the problem perfectly also illustrates the problem with DailyKos writers perfectly; the last paragraph is:
The conversation we need to have is beyond gun control. We need to start talking about being a less armed society generally. Who ought to have access to lethal weaponry and who shouldn’t (which i suspect is most of us). And if that means the Constitution ought to be changed (or at least reinterpreted), then so be it.
This is how the liberal grassroots is thinking on the subject. They are getting exactly the politicians and the media they deserve. God help us all.
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