When the Newton School massacre occurred, the bodies of the 26 victims were not even cold when the mainstream press call for and advocated for more laws restricting firearms. To the press, the victims did not matter at all. Their lives did not matter. What mattered to the press was having a story to promote an agenda. I was not in the least bit surprised, considering that 78% of all mainstream journalists favor stricter gun control laws, according to a survey of journalists done by the Los Angeles Times. To the press, the story represented a vehicle to advocate a position.
What the mainstream press chooses to ignore is that the issue is not gun control per se; it is and forever will be about mental illness, and how we as a society deal with individuals who have these afflictions.
Adam Lanza, the Newton shooter, showed that he suffered from mental health problems, yet educators and others failed to convince Lanza to seek treatment. It is the same with the Virginia Tech shooter, the Aurora shooter, the Columbine shooters, the Portland shooter, and the Arizona Shooter who almost killed Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.
All the mass shooters that I have described suffered from mental illness, and in all these cases, the press called for more gun control and not the real culprit.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 60 million Americans suffer from some kind of Mental Illness or another, yet only a small percentage of individuals are seeking treatment. Most of this is not only due to lax laws, but because society at large places a stigma on anyone that has a mental health problem or seeks treatment for it. It is also a fact that if society does try to house or force a person to seek treatment, there will be forces that will cry foul and claim that civil rights have been violated.
Even if the mainstream press succeeds in getting all guns banned (which is what they want), the effort will be futile. Until society focuses on trying to help the mentally ill, there will be other tragedies that will occur. Count on it.