We’ve talked a fair bit about the Washington Post and their questionable decision to run photographs from mass shootings. Graphic photographs.

I said I didn’t think it would really change all that many minds.

But the folks at the Washington Post disagreed. In fact, many who favor gun control disagreed.

They’ve wanted this sort of thing for years, laboring under the belief that none of us on this side of the fence really knew AR-15s are dangerous. They don’t get that such weapons aren’t much good if they’re not dangerous.

Others might well have opposed the release of these images, but they’re not going to let a good opportunity go to waste.

The difference is meaningless, really, so I don’t actually care which applies to these folks.

One Uvalde nonprofit organization is applauding a recent Washington Post article centered around AR-15 weapons and their role in mass casualties.

…

“Our hope as a foundation is that current Texas lawmakers as well as those influencing policy relative to school safety & gun control overall across the country will heed the information the article highlights & act accordingly to increase protective laws for our students and communities, shared The Uvalde Foundation Kids.”

The whole purpose of what happened is to try to shock people into supporting gun control, and I’m unsurprised that an anti-gun organization is seizing on what they did to try to advance just that cause.

However, what these folks really don’t get is that the issue isn’t what kind of guns were available. The issue is that there are broken people out there and we’re doing a pretty poor job not just identify them but also getting them help. Focusing on guns, or a particular gun, isn’t productive.

It’s notable that the Washington Post only focused on shooting where AR-15s were used and not, say, Virginia Tech, where the killer committed the worst school shooting in modern American history without a single AR-15.

Why is that?

If this were about the truth, it shouldn’t matter. What’s more, if this group were really about the truth, about really stopping these kinds of shootings, that’s something they probably should have taken issue with, don’t you think?

Either way, this is what the Washington Post wanted. They wanted to step up the pressure and they wanted to create a situation where people would speak up and speak out, demanding a ban on these particular firearms.

The truth is that the Washington Post has formally given up any pretense of neutrality. They’ve declared war on our gun rights, seeking to pull these particular rifles from our very hands, and they don’t care how disgusting they need to get.

The Uvalde Foundation Kids are just the kind of people who they wanted to fire up with this stunt, a group that can’t see beyond their own tragedy and recognize that the issue isn’t about guns and it never was.

And when one of the nation’s largest newspapers is feeding into that, well, this is what we get.