'Vice' Misleads Readers on YouTube Shooting

A YouTube sign is shown across the street from the company's offices in San Bruno, Calif., Tuesday, April 3, 2018. A woman opened fire at YouTube headquarters Tuesday, setting off a panic among employees and wounding several people before fatally shooting herself, police and witnesses said. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

The latest shooting has confuzzled the left somewhat. You can almost hear the screams of “but my narrative!”

Since the narrative of the white, disturbed male with an AR-15 isn’t working, here, the media has mostly dropped this like a hot rock. But then comes Vice, predictably, with a new narrative: “California’s Gun Laws May Have Saved Lives at YouTube.”

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Assault rifles, or AR-15’s, have been used to carry out some of the deadliest mass shootings in America, so when San Bruno police department got word of shots fired at a YouTube campus Tuesday, they feared the worst.

“We may have thought that we were going to encounter someone with maybe a rifle or something like that,” said San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini.

But in this instance there was no assault rifle. Instead, a 39-year-old female vegan activist, after practicing at a shooting range, drove to YouTube armed with a Smith & Wesson 9 millimeter semiautomatic handgun that she had purchased legally and licensed in her name. After opening fire and wounding three people, none fatally, she turned the gun on herself.

Ok, first, as we all know, AR-15s are not assault rifles, but expecting a Vice “reporter” to care might be asking a bit much. Second, the shooter bought the gun legally, despite California’s strict gun laws.
But please Vice, do tell us how the state’s gun laws were so effective.

The state … bans the sale or manufacture of ammunition magazines that can hold more than ten cartridges or rounds, which gun owners sometimes use to accessorize their assault weapons and unleash bullets in quick succession.

Yes, because all gun owners are just mass shooters in waiting. This is something right out of the Alinsky playbook; demonize your opponents. It doesn’t matter that 99.8 percent of all gun owners will never commit a crime. But by golly those magazines will turn the law abiding into fiends, fiends I tell you!

“Certainly we were better off that she had a 9 millimeter handgun instead of an AR-15,” said Stanford University law professor John Donahue. “We are always better off in these mass shooting incidents if the person doesn’t have a high capacity magazine.”

Donahue is one of the coauthors of a flawed study which tries to link right-to-carry laws to increases in crime. He’s hardly an unbiased source. Never mind that California’s violent crime rate is the 15th highest in the nation.

In a rare fit of honesty, Vice admits that bans don’t do a thing to lower violent crime.

The research shows that assault rifle bans don’t decrease the number of gun homicides, they do make mass shootings with four or more casualties less likely.

Really? Which study? Inquiring minds want to know. Also, let’s not forget that the Virginia Tech shooter, who killed 32 people, used handguns, not a so-called “assault rifle.” Conveniently, Vice left that little fact out.

Acquiring any kind of firearm in California is also much more difficult than it is in other states. For example, if you want to buy a gun, you have to take and pass a written safety test that costs $25. Regardless of your place of purchase, your application to purchase a firearm will be sent to the state’s Department of Justice for a background check. If you’re cleared, after ten days, you need to get your gun microstamped, which means the firearms serial number will be imprinted on every bullet casing it fires. Only then will you be able to take it home.

Hmm. This doesn’t seem to have stopped one deranged woman from walking into the YouTube headquarters, shooting her boyfriend and three others before turning the gun on herself.

California was also one of the first five states to adopt a “red flag law” which seeks to keep guns out of the hands of those who have a history of violence, domestic abuse, violent ideation or mental illness which leads relatives or law enforcement to believe they may inflict harm upon themselves or someone else. In this instance, police said that they had no indication or suspicion that the shooter planned to do something violent, and therefore there was nothing that would have triggered the process by which a court can confiscate someone’s guns.

Really? Because last I checked, even CNN is reporting that her family contacted police and warned them, but the cops did…nothing.

This is typical leftist twaddle from beginning to end.

On Tuesday, talking heads on NRA-TV pored over the scant information publicly available about the YouTube shooting and gunwoman. NRA correspondent Chuck Holton argued that California’s strict gun laws didn’t make a difference in the YouTube shooting. “Liberals are always trying to fight the last battle and not the next one,” said Holton. “In this case, age restrictions wouldn’t have done anything. California has a ban on assault rifles. They have a ban on high-capacity magazines. There’s a 10-day waiting period for any firearm purchase.”

Yup, California would be a typical gun grabber’s wet dream. Except for the fact that none of it worked. None of it ever works. At the end of the day, the shooter, not the gun, is responsible. But personal responsibility is beyond Vice. So millions of people who have done nothing must be punished for the actions of a few.

As the late, great Robert Anson Heinlein said:

Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.

The gun grabbers routinely reveal which sort they are.

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