It has become customary, in the immediate aftermath of mass shootings, for the left to call for more gun-control. One new and disturbing trend, however, involves disrespecting the victims based upon their real, or assumed political orientation. Basically, the left has a message for shooting victims who happen to vote Republican: You had it coming.
Sadly, the body-count for Sunday night’s massacre at a country music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada may not yet have stopped rising. So, far, 58 fatalities have been reported, with over 500 more people wounded or otherwise injured. This prospect did not deter a CBS legal executive from taking to Facebook to point out that the concert-goers probably had it coming.
Conservatives Fair Game in Shootings?
Hayley Geftman-Gold, or Haley Lattman, who identifies herself on Facebook as VP, Senior Counsel, Strategic Transactions at CBS, decided that victims of the shooting did not deserve sympathy because they were probably Republicans. Here rationale (and I use the word sarcastically) is that Republicans oppose tougher gun-control measures. Therefore – as Geftman-Gold is clearly implying – they probably deserve to be shot:
“If [Republicans] wouldn’t do anything when children were murdered [at Sandy Hook] I have no hope that the Repugs will ever do the right thing. I’m actually not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are republican gun-toters.”
This is not the isolated sentiment of some radical leftist blogger. Geftman-Gold held a senior position at CBS. Her views may well reflect the prevailing view at the network. Former CBS news anchor Scott Pelley voiced a similar view in response to an earlier shooting. In June of this year, a Bernie Sanders supporter opened fire at a congressional baseball practice, with the intention of killing several Republican congressmen. One of those wounded, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, recently returned to Congress but has not yet fully recovered from his injuries. Pelley said, of the shooting, “it’s time to ask whether the attack on the United States Congress Wednesday was foreseeable, predictable and, to some degree, self-inflicted.”
A Mainstream View?
Pelley was not alone in his repugnant views. MSNBC’s Joy Ann Reid responded to the June shooting by lecturing Republicans on their policies, as if to tell them that their opposition to Obamacare and their views on same-sex marriage somehow justified the attempted mass-murder. She dismissed Scalise’s shooting with a fictional portrayal of him as a racist. “…t’s a delicate thing because everybody is wishing the congressman well and hoping that he recovers, but Steve Scalise has a history that we’ve all been forced to sort of ignore on race.”Unlike the June shooting, where the attacker’s political motivation quickly became clear, the Las Vegas shooter’s motives are not known, at this point.
In her comment, Reid uses the word “but” to say, in effect, “he deserved to be shot.” There is no other reasonable way to interpret her meaning.
CNN’s Jeff Zeleny is, apparently, another leftist who believes that the level of sympathy afforded shooting victims should be dependent upon the political views of those victims. “Something else I think to keep in mind,” he said on the network Monday, “a lot of these country music supporters were likely Trump supporters.” There was really no appropriate reason to give voice to this assumption. Read between the lines, however, and Zeleny is implying that, since those targeted were probably Trump supporters (and, by extension, probably pro-gun), the shooting was not quite as tragic as it otherwise would have been.
In fairness to CBS, it should be noted that Pelley was finished, following his comment and the network fired Geftman-Gold Monday. Apologies and firings never erase the comments or the beliefs that drive them, however. Words matter, as many leftists like to remind us. For all their supposed tolerance, a certain number of leftists have decided to measure the value of human life according to political alignment.