I’d like to say that no one is ever going to accuse CNN of leaning toward supporting the Second Amendment. I’d like to say that, but I can’t. Yet the only reason I can’t is that some people are pretty dense. Anything other than what they think is an appropriate level of hate is interpreted by them as support. It’s true of just about everything.
These people tend not to be particularly rational, though.
Anyone who actually uses their brain can see that networks like CNN are in the bag for the anti-gun left. In fact, they’re not even trying to hide it.
On Monday morning, CNN’s New Day show devoted a segment to letting gun control activist and frequent guest Fred Guttenberg trash Republicans and cheer for Democrats to enact more gun laws, supposedly to stop the kinds of shootings that happened over the past weekend.
After running a full report on a spate of shootings, co-host Brianna Keilar fought back tears as she introduced Guttenberg and asked for his reaction. Even though the piece that ran gave no indication of the details of how any of the criminals acquired their guns, the anti-gun activist immediately began by hinting that stricter laws would have prevented the crime wave:
My frustration — my fury is directed right now at those in Washington, D.C., who keep watching this happen and won’t do anything. Listen, Brianna, this weekend was predictable. We have — those of us in the gun safety movement have been warning that this moment is going to happen, and it’s going to continue because the last administration unleashed this gun surge through COVID, and as we come out of COVID, we have all these new gun owners and all these new guns. They said guns were the solution. So here’s my advice to anybody who wants to put an end to this. Right now, today, pick up everyone you know working in the gun safety movement and find out what we can do.
Tearing into Republicans, he added:
The Republican party — I saw it last week, I testified in Congress — they have checked out of governing. They do not want to be a part of stopping gun violence. They do not want to be part of saving lives. It’s time for the Democratic party to go it alone. We have do this. This will keep happening if we don’t change what we’re doing.
Keilar gave no challenge to his claims as she followed up by inviting him to complain that President Joe Biden is not doing enough:
This is, unfortunately, what we see from the mainstream media. Someone like Fred Guttenberg, who understands nothing about the Second Amendment, gun rights, or much of anything else except that he lost his daughter to a maniac is allowed to go on and on completely unchallenged, yet that’s not how it would have shaken out if the guest had been different.
Can you imagine CNN allowing Gun Owners of America’s Erich Pratt to talk about gun rights completely unchallenged? Hardly. There would have been pushback by the host and we all know it. We’ve seen it over and over, so we’re not just playing with hypotheticals here.
Yet Guttenberg can go on and on with his anti-gun rhetoric without any resistance.
Now, this is a problem. People who watch CNN aren’t getting the whole picture. They’re getting Guttenberg’s rhetoric and no counterpoints at all, not even a half-hearted attempt at articulating the pro-gun position. That makes people think this is actually a mainstream view and there really isn’t a reasoned response to it.
Hardly.
Fred Guttenberg doesn’t represent anything except those who support radical gun control. CNN was wrong for giving him a pulpit and absolutely no resistance. The problem is, I don’t see CNN actually giving a damn. Not in this day and age when they’re not even trying to pretend to be a neutral, unbiased media platform anymore.
