Inevitability has reached the shimmering Manhattan newsroom headquarters of wavering media behemoth CNN, as the network, which received a vital infusion of audience growth during the 2020 election and the Covid-19 pandemic, is once again enduring a self-induced plateau of stagnation. With a complete absence of journalistic integrity aside, the corporatized town crier founded by Ted Turner, has launched a tri-weekly brief focused on news in China, and while the allegiance to the Communist party is notable from the boardroom, pandering to the proclivities of Beijing is an open source codebase for disaster. It doesn’t help matters for the much scrutinized and largely incredulous organization, when the left-leaning syndicate inadvertently published the logical fallacy of gun control activists, while making an almost cohesive argument for bolstering mental health resources to combat violence and in doing so, nullifying the myth that guns kill people.
Somehow, a pair of reporters and a team of editors allowed a veritable gem to slip through the censored channels of the private informational node, and into the public sphere, as an article citing an exploding epidemic of knife violence in China could possibly be the result of the stringent firearms restrictions mandated by Xi’s totalitarian regime.
The story titled “As America struggles with gun violence, China faces its own public safety threat: mass stabbings” went live on June 9th, and relies on the vehicle of rhetoric and propaganda piggy-backed directly from Beijing’s PR ministry such as, “the US should learn from China.” in a not so subtle and lame attempt to admonish and tarnish the Second Amendment. The authors recognize that Chinese residents constantly endure a restrictive amount of surveillance through the eyes of 330 million HD facial recognition cameras, however insinuate that statistics released to the press by the government reflect truth, a dangerous position considering that propensity of bureaucrats to blatantly lie about the inception of the Coronavirus among other issues by skewing “official” data points. Clamoring for mental health reform, the article takes an interesting turn, as the content diverts from the usual cookie-cutter response by the press to immediately demonize tools of self-defense.
Speaking of figures, the coin-flip probability of a gun control media entity eventually exhausting every conceivable narrative in framing Second Amendment advocates as extremist militants was eventually going produce content that accidentally supports a reasonable premise to understanding the complexities and variables surrounding law-abiding self-defense. A series of simple tosses yielding heads and tails could not predict such an outcome, as the coin landing on its side and indicating a variable of quantum limbo is regularly overlooked as a result.
After concluding that recent surge of knife attacks in the mainland is not just an anomaly, but not likely, considering the existence of a functioning Chinese police state, the writers make this murky assumption that is puzzling. “But while China’s strict control on guns has sharply reduced the number of casualties in public attacks, it has seemingly failed to address the root causes that repeatedly trigger these types of tragedies.” The presumption is highly contentious and vacuous, as the source of the data, if there is any at all, raises questions, and the logical fallacy of the statement is overshadowed by a call to action to understand human nature.
Over the last decade plus, the second most populated country on the planet has seen its share of tragic stabbings, including the horrific injury to 28 school children in 2010, as a knife-wielding madman invaded a Taixing City kindergarten.
In postulating that underlying societal issues and the human condition are responsible for violence, and not inanimate objects that require a facilitator to protect or to harm, at least entertains the inkling of a thought that criminal assaults with weapons is a step in the right direction, though the pathway is still heavily biased. But this is where the buck stops as the omission of factual parallels is evident.
The abject failure of the article in not mentioning an exploding wave of knife attacks in places such as the UK, where gun rights have been largely diminished, and in response to the spiking murder rate elected officials are now considering bans on certain blades, indicates a considerable detachment with reality. In the hierarchy of armaments, if not guns, knives, and if not knives, then rocks. CNN really backed themselves into a corner on this one, as the piece was not filed under the editorial tag.
The entire reverse ladder restrictions shows that no matter what factors lead to a tragic incident, the participant of participants will improvise with what tools are readily available. If that happens to be a two-by-four with a protruding nail that will regulated on the streets of London in five decades more power to the individual combatant with the quickest draw. Of course the precedent has already been set in nations choosing to suppress the basic rights of citizens that the criminal element who treats policy on a document, while like paper, is entitled by the indifference and arrogance of government.
Add to this metaphor the iron clad rule of overbearing and corrupt politicians at every level of the Communist party, and the population wary of the nightmare for insubordination, that a quick and painless death is a luxury, when given the alternative of a life sentence at a forced labor camp imprisoning both the body and the mind for eternity. In this intolerable environment of mistrust and pathological devotion to the party for the sake of self-preservation, violent crime still persists, even without the amenities of free will or inalienable rights and freedoms.
Is there a crack in the foundation of CNN, where ideologues are finally willing to capitulate, though cryptically, that guns do not main or kill without human interaction, and inherently bad people with violent tendencies exist? Or is this a simple mishap that was bound to happen thanks to the watered-down language of subjective news content customized for the key demographics of the network?
The answer depends on the flip of the coin.