Celebrities who double as gun control proponents were largely silent following the shooting at YouTube’s San Bruno, California, headquarters. Their silence was likely the result of the fact that they could not parlay the shooting into something supportive of more firearm restrictions.
Think about it — celebrities went gun control crazy following the October 1, 2017, Las Vegas attack. Julianne Moore, Emma Stone, Melissa McCarthy, Adam Scott, Laura Dern, and others even took part in a Everytown for Gun Safety PSA, in which they urged opposition to proposed concealed carry laws as a result of the attack.
And celebrities called for more gun control within hours of the November 5, 2017, Texas church attack. Such celebrities included Sarah Silverman, Stephen King, Josh Gad, Chelsea Handler, Joy Reid, Adam McKay, among others.
Following the February 14, 2018, Parkland school attack, celebrities came out in droves for gun control and they brought their friends. They expressed their solidarity with student gun control advocates, praised the idea of a national march for gun control, and George Clooney, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Jeffrey Katzenberg pledged $500,000 each to help fund the march.
Yet, after the YouTube HQ shooting what did we hear? … Crickets.
Sure, actor Michael Ian Black blamed the NRA and called for more gun control before the facts of the shooting were known. Actress Alyssa Milano appeared to blamed the NRA as well. But these two proved to be outliers. The usual Hollywood suspects remained eerily quiet and a few, like Judd Apatow, just retweeted the crazy gun control comments Michael Ian Black was churning out.
Why the silence? After all, three innocents were shot with a firearm in an attack that seized the nation’s attention.
The answer is found by understanding the common denominators in stories onto which leftist celebrities usually seize.
For example, Las Vegas, the Texas church, and Parkland all feature white male gunmen. This fits well into the left’s lexicon and furthers their opportunity for discussing certain other political categories — like racism, white privilege, etc.
Also note that an AR-15 was used in Vegas, Texas, and Parkland. This, too, is a convenient fit into their “assault weapons” or “assault rifle” phraseology, and it furthers the left’s opportunity to claim that AR-15s have become the “weapon of choice” for mass shooters.
Then came April 3, and news began pouring in about an active shooter at YouTube HQ. A collective gasp filled rooms where celebrities sat and talked, as they waited to see if this would be the attack that finally put their gun control push over the top. But as they waited, the news faltered. The shooter was a female. Moreover, she was Iranian. And she used a handgun instead of an “assault weapon.”
It was learned that the YouTube HQ shooter had passed a background check for her handgun and had registered it with the state, per California law. Additionally, Breitbart News reported that California already has every law that has been proposed as a solution to the Parkland attack — including gun confiscation orders — but none of these laws stopped the YouTube HQ shooting.
So celebrities moved on, choosing silence over the option of drawing attention to a shooting that highlights the impotence of every gun control law they support, demonstrates the weakness of the claim that AR-15s are the “weapon of choice,” and deviates from their preferred category of “white male shooter.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
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