In their quest to control the narrative over every aspect of “things they don’t like”, Slate writer Justin Peters pens up a style guide on “How to Report on Unintentional Child Shootings.”
For those of you who haven’t followed my reporting on this topic, I believe that most accidental child shooting deaths in this country are not accidents at all, but the devastating consequence of a lax approach to gun safety on the part of parents or guardians.
On this point, he is absolutely correct. However, his solution is government mandated “safe storage” laws, as shown by his next statement.
The closer you look at stories of this type, the more similarities you find between them—the guns in question are typically left out in the open, rather than in a gun safe; the parents or guardians often overestimate their kids’ expertise with firearms—and the more preventable they appear. Reporters can help raise awareness on this topic by giving these stories more attention than they might initially seem to deserve.
Or, as those who know that the media drives stories that fit their agenda would paraphrase it, “help raise awareness until some astroturf group can get enough attention on the subject to pass some rights denying legislation.”