Facts ruin bad arguments. So let these facts sink in for a minute. According to the FBI, in 2016 murderers using handguns killed 7, 105 Americans. That same year, murderers using any kind of rifle—muzzle-loading, breech-loading, lever-action, bolt-action, or even the left’s dreaded AR-15—killed only 374 Americans. The FBI’s long-term data also reflects this unsurprising disparity. Of the 63,061 murder victims in the United States between 2010 and 2014, a total of 30,114, or 48 percent, died from handgun wounds, while 1,530, or two percent, died from rifle wounds. It almost appears as if some natural law dictates a 20:1 ratio over time between murders involving handguns and rifles. But after the Parkland, Florida, school massacre, America’s news oligopoly—taking its cue from a mob of social-media-savvy teenaged revolutionaries—lost sight of where the carnage lies. The Valentine’s Day tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School stole the limelight from the thou- sands of murder victims whose bodies clog up inner-city morgues. Clearly, dead white high-school students resonate better with advertisers than tattooed gang-bangers.
Gore Vidal prophesied “around-the-clock television and its horror of ‘dead air’” in a November 1965 Times Literary Supplement essay as a key driver of today’s imbecilic media circuses. In order to fill the natural vacuum...