It has been three days now since the carnage in Virginia Beach unfolded, and if you were looking for answers from the major media outlets about a reason for the violence, you have probably been out of luck so far. Any information has been hard to find, but some of it has been slowly trickling in.
It now appears that the shooter was facing discipline at work, but resigned first. Virginia Beach Police Chief James Cervera locally took control of the narrative early: “He will be forever referred to as the suspect because our focus now is the dignity and respect to the victims in this case and to their families.”
Local ABC affiliate, ABC13, ran a story titled, ‘Virginia Beach shines light on victims, not mass shooter’. Virginia Beach’s deputy city manager of public safety, Steve Cover, discussed the strategy, “We wanted to control that narrative.”
Some Democrat presidential candidates, on the other hand, ran with a completely different narrative. ‘Mayor Pete’ and others chose to go with the gun control angle.
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Another horrific shooting shocks the nation, this time in Virginia Beach. We grieve with those impacted even as we await more information. Already, this much is clear: it is unacceptable for America to remain the only developed country where this is routine. We must act.
— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) May 31, 2019
Kamala Harris tweeted “we cannot continue to stand idly by.”
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Heartbroken for the victims and their families of the Virginia Beach shooting and grateful for the first responders on the scene. This senseless act of violence should not be normal. Too many communities have been shattered by gun violence — we cannot continue to stand idly by. https://t.co/JC4L7glGtE
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) May 31, 2019
Although it’s a completely different situation, and not exactly comparable since he was a professed white supremacist, one can simply look at the tragedy of the despicable murderer Dylan Roof, who they made famous rather than “focusing on victims” then. Roof has since received the death penalty for his crimes, as he should have, as all murder and violence is the lowest and most evil form of humanity.
This just highlights how, even though in all murders the same result is that innocent people die, the media spins narratives to determine what outcome is drawn from the public’s perception of what happened. Cory Booker chimed in with his bit on gun violence without mentioning the shooter at all below.
Cory Booker tweeted “we can & will pass commonsense gun safety laws to end these tragedies.” It has been established though, that the gunman was former military with no criminal history so it is unclear what gun laws beyond a total ban could have prevented this. It’s also strange that the narrative is about “focusing on the victims” due to the fact that most of them were white and the shooter was black. If the reverse was true it would be an extreme racially charged story and the shooter would be “infamous” by now.
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11 people dead. My heart breaks for those killed in another senseless act of gun violence & the loved ones of the victims whose lives are now shattered. We have the power to stop this—we can & will pass commonsense gun safety laws to end these tragedies. https://t.co/twaqJ99l95
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) May 31, 2019
There was even some already pushing an idea that maybe the shooter, DeWayne Craddock, would not have killed as many people if he didn’t have a silencer on his gun. This just seems ridiculous and unimaginable that they would focus on something as minuscule as a silencer on a very common .45 caliber handgun instead of the shooter himself and why he might have committed this crime. See Facebook post below by verified Facebook user “Steve Aveson”.
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