More Gun Deflections From The MRC

How else did the Media Research Center try to distract from gun violence? Quibbling over the definition of a mass shooting, lashing out at Beto O'Rourke and rejecting Matthew McConaughey's unity message, among other things.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 8/31/2022

One way the MRC has been lamely fighting back is through quibbling over the definition of what a mass shooting is. Nicholas Fondacaro -- who has falsely smeared as liars anyone who failed to use his very narrow definition of a mass shooting -- was at it again in an April 18 post:

Following a weekend of multiple “mass shootings,” the liberal media rushed to exploit the dead to push their demands for increasingly-unpopular gun control legislation. Part of their efforts to scare people into giving up their Second Amendment rights was to parrot a dubious analysis that claimed there have been between 130-148 mass shootings so far this year.

So, it begs the question: if there really were that many, why have only a fraction of them been reported on nationally? The simplest explanation is there haven’t been that many mass shootings and they’re being inflated to make things seem more horrendous than they really are.

When reports of a “mass shooting” break, the common understanding is that a person went to a public place (school, shopping center, est.) and started shooting indiscriminately with the intent to kill as many as possible. But what the liberal media are currently citing is data from the Gun Violence Archive, a supposed “independent” aggregated of incidents involving guns.

“And as the overall number of shootings have increased, there's been a dramatic rise in mass shootings,” reported ABC’s Pierre Thomas on Monday’s Good Morning America. “Look at these numbers. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 417 mass shootings in 2019. By last year the number spiked to 693. That's an incredible 66 percent jump.”

“We're now in an era where we can say mass shootings are chronic, sustained, and sadly routine,” he added with a graphic that claimed there have been 139 so far this year.

According to their website, the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), uses this peculiar definition of “mass shooting” for their methodology: “FOUR or more shot and/or killed in a single event [incident], at the same general time and location not including the shooter.”

Fondacaro didn't explain exactly why that methodology is so "peculiar," beyond making his side look bad. So he called out a fellow pro-gun activist (and former MRC employee) to nitpick that tally away and push a stricter, more right-wing-friendly definition:

NewsBusters reached out to the founder of The Reload, Stephen Gutowski to get an understanding of where this definition of “mass shooting” GVA uses came from. He says it was “popularized by gun-control activists on Reddit” and it “increases the number of mass shootings by a factor of ten or more.”

“It can also be misleading for most readers since many of the mass shootings are not similar to high-profile shootings like Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, or Parkland,” he warned.

Fondacaro also reminded us that he also whined about defining mass shootings a year ago. He was at it again two days later, again smearing any number that was greater than his own as "false":

As NewsBusters laid out on Monday, the “mass shooting” statistics peddled by the Gun Violence Archive are objectively misleading according to mass killings researchers and gun experts. But the truth wasn’t reached for comment on struggling CNN+ and Reliable Sources Daily on Tuesday and host Brian Stelter demanded that the media push the false statistic that there have been “145 mass shootings in the U.S. already this year.”

Stelter began the segment by admitting “‘Mass shooting’ sometimes has a very specific connotation. People think of mass killings. Maybe a dozen or more killed.” But he then campaigned to throw out that understanding in favor of a vaguer and ambiguous definition to jack the number up:

Fondacaro is lying. The GVA number is not "ambiguous"; it's quite clearly defined. Still he whined that "GVA admits to intentionally stripping out the context," though he didn't explain why context matters. People aren't any less dead because he demands their deaths be counted differently.

After the Buffalo grocery store shooting in May, Kevin Tober wildly escalated the inflammatory rhetoric in a May 16 post, linking back to Fondacaro's posts and declaring that anyone who didn't agree with the MRC's narrow mass-shooting definition is lying:

On Monday’s CBS Evening News, anchor Norah O’Donnell began and ended her broadcast by lying and pushing her leftist gun control agenda in the aftermath of the horrific mass shooting at a Buffalo grocery store on Saturday.

“Tonight, this is a community in mourning -- ten people were killed, three injured, eleven of them were black,” O’Donnell announced at the top of her program, before repeating an outright lie that has been previously debunked by NewsBusters: “it was a deadly weekend here in America -- the United States has seen 202 mass shootings so far this year, four of them happened on Sunday.”

In reality, there haven’t been 202 mass shootings in America this year.

Again: The number is not a lie, let alone the "easily debunked lie in order to scare viewers into giving up their Second Amendment rights" Tober called it later in his item. Tober is the liar here.

After the mass shooting of schoolchildren in an elementary school in Texas, Tober played his desperate deflection game again in a May 24 post:

The bodies weren't even cold after the heartbreaking mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas in which eighteen elementary school children and one teacher were killed when NBC Nightly News decided to spread misinformation about the number of mass shootings in the United States this year.

National correspondent Gabe Gutierrez started off the shameful segment by noting that “this is the deadliest school shooting in the U.S. since the Parkland rampage in February of 2018. As has become common now, there are already growing calls to stop gun violence which has been especially brutal this year.”

[...]

Despite what NBC and Gabe Gutierrez tell you, there have not been over two hundred mass shootings.

[...]

The other common-sense response to NBC’s absurd claim is if there have been that many mass shootings, why hasn’t NBC reported on all of them?

NBC and Gutierrez should be ashamed of themselves for pushing fake statistics hours after eighteen young children have been shot to death.

Good question from Tober, but aimed at the wrong people. Why won't the MRC report every mass shooting? Why does it fall to other non-right-wing media outlets to have to report them? And shouldn't Tober be the one who should be ashamed of spreading lies about legitimate and clearly defined statistics solely because they make his political side look bad?

Fondacaro spent part of a May 25 post ranting at "The View" co-host Whoopi Goldberg for saying that "We are 145 days into the year, and there have already been 212 mass shootings in America," huffing: "NewsBusters has already debunked the GVA’s deceptive methodology." Again, the only deception happening here is Fondacaro trying to falsely discredit numbers he doesn't like.

Curtis Houck served up a June 6 post complaining once again that the GVA's numbers made guns look bad:

On the Monday morning broadcast network newscasts, ABC, CBS, and NBC continued to promote the inflated definition of mass shootings from the Gun Violence Archive in light of weekend shootings in Chattanooga, Tennessee and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, claiming there were 13 weekend mass shootings. And, worse yet, they absolved far-left cities and prosecutors from being a reason for spikes in crime.

The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as an event in which four or more people are shot and/or killed (minus the gunman), but as we’ve discussed “confusing” with the definition of gun violence even includes things such as home invasions, accidental shootings, using a gun in self defense, “and everything else.”

For one story, our Nick Fondacaro spoke with The Reload’s Stephen Gutowksi, who said Gun Violence Archive’s measuring stick “increases the number of mass shootings by a factor of ten or more.”

The MRC, of course, can't have that kind of increase, so it attacks the numbers.

After the Independence Day gun massacre in Highland Park, Ill., Emma Schultz claimed in a July 6 post that CNN's Laura Coates "introduced fabricated data from the anti-gun rights Gun Violence Archive to back up her opinions stating that “there have been 319 mass shootings just this year and 17 in the first four days of July.” Nope, Emma, those numbers aren't "fabricated" all all, regardless of what your ideology tells you.

Beto bashing

When Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke confronted Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott following the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, and accurately pointed out that he was "doing nothing" to prevent further mass shootings, the MRC quickly pivoted to attack O'Rourke and anyone who noted the accuracy of his remarks. Alex Christy kicked off the whining:

After Texas Democratic gubernatorial nominee Beto O’Rourke made a fool of himself by selfishly interrupting the Wednesday press conference where Texas officials updated the public on the Uvalde school shooting, MSNBC’s Katy Tur declared the officials were wrong, because it is partisan and Chuck Todd added Republicans should be aware that they live in a glass house.

Coming out of the press conference, Tur declared America doesn’t care about murdered children, “It is not a good day to be with you. It cannot be a good day when we live in a country that shrugs its shoulders children as are being murdered.”

Christy also claimed that "Tur also falsely added that AR-15s are designed for war." In fact, they were.

Houck nonsensically used O'Rourke's real first name in an attempt to dismiss him as a "failed presidential candidate":

Wednesday afternoon’s press conference on the Uvalde, Texas school shooting descended into shenanigans during what should have been a solemn occasion to update the public on the investigation when Democratic gubernatorial candidate Robert O’Rourke heckled Governor Greg Abbott (R) and other elected officials, blaming them for the murder of 19 children and two teachers. Naturally, the broadcast networks refused to speak out against O’Rourke’s antics and barely acknowledged O’Rourke’s party ID.

[...]

To her credit, correspondent Janet Shamlian conceded that not only was O’Rourke’s stunt “very clearly staged,” but it was planned well in advance thanks to “two people across the aisle from me” who saved him seat so he only had to enter just prior to the start of the press conference.

[...]

ABC also chose to not give [Lt. Gov. Dan] Patrick the light of day and instead followed O’Rourke’s charade outside. While carrying his remarks, ABC included a (D) in a chyron.

We don't recall Houck ever calling Ted Cruz by his real first name, Rafael.

Christy returned to whine that late-night TV hosts "praise[d] Beto O’Rourke’s stunt in the push for gun control. P.J. Gladnick thought it was a big deal that a reporter admitted that O'Rourke's interruption of Abbott was planned (as if that has never happened in politics) and also insisted on using his first name:

On Wednesday, just as a press conference about the tragic school shooting in Uvalde featuring Texas Governor Gregg Abbot was commencing, it was rudely interrupted by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Robert Francis O'Rourke who attempted to upstage the event. Was this a highly inappropriate political stunt by a losing candidate? Well, according to CBS reporter Janet Shamlian it was "very clearly staged" by the O'Rourke campaign.

[...]

As could be predicted, this case of honesty by a CBS reporter on what transpired at the press conference caused outrage by many on the left.

Michael Ippolito, meanwhile, melted down over Teen Vogue defending O'Rourke:

Following the horrific shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Governor Greg Abbott (R) held a press conference Wednesday that provided details about the deadly shooting. As important information was being discussed, Beto strode to the front of the audience and interrupted Governor Abbott bawling that the mass shooting was his fault.

He’d turned a grim press conference into political theater. Beto was escorted out of the conference, booed by parents and community members. To Teen Vogue, though, Beto is a hero.

[Writer Emma] Specter depicted Beto as the voice of an angry community. “It was cathartic to see O’Rourke express some fraction of the frustration and rage that people across the country are feeling in the wake of the shootings in Uvalde, Buffalo, Laguna Woods, and every other U.S. city that has become associated with a senseless and unimaginably traumatizing mass shooting,” she wrote.

[...]

Teen Vogue is sensationalizing those who stand on massacred children.

Days after the incident, Clay Waters was still whining about O'Rourke in a June 5 post:

It looks like Democratic hopeful Beto O’Rourke’s run to unseat Republican Gov. Greg Abbott will be greeted with the same partisan enthusiasm by the New York Times that it showed when O’Rourke failed to knock off conservative Sen. Ted Cruz despite massive out-of-state help in 2018.

Witness reporter Jazmine Ulloa’s piece in Saturday’s paper, “For Beto O’Rourke, Talk of Gun Control Has Become Both a Political Risk and Reward.” Beto's grandstanding at a press conference now looks....good?

Waters went on to sneer, "His talk of confiscating your AR-15 doesn't sound so tone-deaf any more?" and denied that O'Rourke's anger was "resonating" in the state. On the other hand, if it wasn't resonating, the MRC would not have devoted so much time and space to repeatedly attacking him or anyone else who's just as angry about mass shootings as he is.

The McConaughey "unity" embrace (but not for guns)

The MRC loved actor Matthew McConaughey when he at least didn't hate Donald Trump. In 2017, it cheered him as among a group of actors who "have urged accepting President Trump and moving forward." Gabriel Hays gushed in a May 2020 post: "Not all Hollywood stars are partisan hacks. Some, like Matthew McConaughey, want to see a brighter future for all Americans, regardless of their political affiliation." He then touted how McConaughey appeared on Fox News "to urge political unity between Americans in order to defeat the virus."

All that unity talk, however, did not keep the MRC from going full Gestapo on McConaughey when he said things that deviated from right-wing orthodoxy, particularly when he unity talk turned to guns. Hays lashed out at him in 2018:

According to Matthew McConaughey, assault weapons are not “alright, alright, alright.” But banning them is.

The 48-year-old actor spoke at the Austin, Texas March for Our Lives, stating that he was there because he’s an American citizen, a proud Texan, a March for Our Lives believer, and, most importantly, because “I’m a father and I’m a husband.” Though he claimed that he wasn’t advocating for gun control, he asked that Second-Amendment supporters “take one for the team.”

McConaughey, a famous face at the gun-control rally, announced that he didn’t attend for the sake of subverting the Second Amendment, but that he wanted America to acknowledge that it is in the middle of an “epidemic.”

[...]

He concluded his speech by telling the audience to come together, and avoid the partisanship plaguing the issue: “This is an issue anchored in purpose for all of us. It’s not anchored in politics, it’s anchored in purpose.”

After all, maybe conservatives’ disagreement on the gun issue is just bitter partisanship, and not a valid point of view. And hey, with leading-man charm that intoxicating, how can any gun-owner say no to his list of demands? Nice propaganda there, Hollywood!

McConaughey's stance on guns was a reason Tierin-Rose Mandelburg dismissed talk of him running for Texas governor in a March 2021 post: "Oh, boy. Having a net worth of $140 million just isn’t enough for McConaughey. We may have another celebrity on the ballot in the coming future." We don't recall Mandelburg having any problem when TV celebrity Donald Trump ran for public office. Hays lashed out further at McConaughey's gun stance as a reason to oppose him as governor the following month:

Apparently Matthew McConaughey would be a popular contender against Governor Abbot (R-TX) in the upcoming gubernatorial race, but people who have a soft spot for the “nice guy” need to realize that McConaughey might not be so good for the freedom Texas prides itself on. ... Despite the nice guy appeal, Governor McConaughey would also fall right in line with Dems’ gun control ambitions.

When McConaughey spoke out about the gun massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas -- his hometown -- and argued for sensible gun regulations, the MRC went into full-blown Gestapo mode again. Wallace White ranted in a June 6 post:

After Uvalde, many Hollywood celebrities have taken it upon themselves to spout off platitudes on gun control and how everyone needs to be on board with the liberal cause. If you aren’t on board with gun-grabbing, then you are an evil person who wants children to die. Matthew McConaughey in his recent plea has taken these talking points and bubble-wrapped them under the guise of moderation.

According to Deadline, McConaughey is calling for “enacting background checks, Red Flag Laws and age upping the requirement on semi-automatic firearms to 21.” He says that he only supports “gun responsibility.” It doesn’t take an expert to realize that propositions such as Red Flag laws at the federal level are anything but moderate, but extremely radical.

Red Flag laws, in essence, allow the government to strip private citizens of their legally-purchased weapons because they’ve been deemed “at-risk”. The problem lies with who gets to deem who as “at-risk” and what criteria can constitute an “at-risk” individual. The untapped potential for tyranny is ripe with laws such as these. No wonder the radical left are champions of it.

McConaughey has been quite reasonable about issues in the past and has at least shown a willingness to talk with and debate with conservatives. That much is commendable. However, it is clear that he has a misunderstanding of the potentially catastrophic consequences of Red Flag laws for the 2nd amendment and freedom across the nation.

White didn't explain why gun rights are more important than saving a person's life from the threat of an unstable armed individual.

When McConaughey appeared at a White House press briefing to make the same plea, Kevin Tober was the designated hater in a June 7 post:

On Tuesday, Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey took to the White House podium to plead for Congress to pass stricter gun control laws in the aftermath of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde. As per their usual arrangement, the evening news broadcasts were more than happy to act as stenographers for the leftist agenda.

ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News all lead with the McConaughey rant and the ongoing negotiations on Capitol Hill over gun control.

With all the drooling over McConaughey's support for tougher background checks and other measures that the media supports, what's interesting is that they left out his call for restraint on "sensationalized media coverage."

Tober didn't explain why the murder of 21 people, 19 of them children, should not warrant sensational coverage or why the MRC's rabid absolutism in ranting about even the slightest regulation of guns -- which conflicts with its earlier praise of him in calling for unity and common ground -- was not sensationalizing the issue.

Miscellaneous defenses

In a May 26 post, Margaret Buckley whined that MSNBC's "Morning Joe" detailed what it called "The Conservative Playbook for Deflecting Anger After Mass Shootings" -- which, of course, is exactly what the MRC has been following:

New York magazine writer Jonathan Chait then joined in on the conversation with Brzezinski reading an excerpt from his article: "The Conservative Playbook for Deflecting Anger After Mass Shootings." She went on reading that through the steps of this “playbook”, Republicans attempt to “to locate solutions outside of gun control. And blame Democrats for opposing them.”

When asking Chait about this article he replied “That's a great point on mental health.”, agreeing with Brzezinski that conservatives love to use it as an excuse for mass shootings, labeling mental health as a “distraction” from what really has to be done.

Do Joe Scarborough and friends really think that ranting and whining about the GOP will bring about positive solutions? Or are they just trying to fill up their three-hour duration by throwing harmless insults at those who don’t agree with them?

Throwing insults at those you don't agree with? Buckley just described the content of the vast majority of NewsBusters posts.

Alex Christy spent a May 27 post whining that a CNN host fact-checked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's false statements about gun violence and insisting it was unfair that he was taken literally:

While attempting to fact check Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday on his claim that there is no correlation between gun laws and gun deaths, CNN Newsroom host Alisyn Camerota failed to not only consider what Abbott actually said, but cherry-picked her statistics in an attempt to prove him wrong.

During an interview with State Rep. Nicole Collier, Camerota read a quote from Abbott, “One of the things that your governor said on Wednesday was that ‘there are more people shot,’ he said, “’every weekend in Chicago than there are schools in Texas. We need to realize that people who think maybe we can just implement tougher gun laws, it hasn't solved it in Chicago and L.A. and New York, it disproves that thesis,’ he said.”

Abbott’s point was about gun violence that occurs so often in Chicago that national reporters have stopped talked talking about it, but a rare school shooting gets all the headlines.

However, Camerota decided to talk about all gun deaths in the entire state, “Actually, he's wrong, Texas is the state with the highest amount of gun deaths. Here's the graphic. Texas is number one. Far and away, of all of the states with gun deaths. Then California, Florida, Georgia, Ohio. And so it seemed as though he was casting a lot of blame in different directions, but he wasn't talking about guns in Texas changing anything.”

Christy offered no evidence that Abbott was speaking metaphorically or that he should be judged only by whatever his "point" allegedly was and not by what he actually said -- which is what Camerota did.

Another May 27 post by Aidan Moorehouse declared that nobody had any right to deny guns to the shooter who racked up quite the body count in a Uvalde, Texas, classroom because he passed his background check:

The shooter, tragically, passed his background check and was of age to buy a gun, and an 18-year-old buying a gun on his birthday in much the same way a 21-year-old would go to a bar would not be seen as unusual in rural Texas. Sure, it's easy for Costas to say “we know now” that the shooter was a deeply disturbed individual, but to call it insane for the gun dealer to have sold legal firearms to someone who had passed his background check is lunacy.

Just as it did after his speech following the Buffalo massacre, the MRC lashed out at President Biden again for making a speech following the Uvalde massacre, bashing news coverage of it for not spewing hate at the president like a loyal right-wing outlet would in a June 3 post by Houck:

On Friday, the “big three” broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC each led off their morning newscasts with laudatory praise for President Biden’s latest remarks calling for mass gun control, trumpeting it as “an impassioned” “urgent plea” for Republicans to capitulate to the demands of this “emotional” President.

ABC’s Good Morning America was the most insufferable. Co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos boasted: “President Biden's address to the nation on gun violence. Emotional and urgent. The President called on Congress to act, saying we cannot fail the American people again.”

Loyal Biden supporter and White House correspondent Mary Bruce replied that “Biden knows the fight” for gun control “well...and he’s trying to use the power of the presidency to keep up the pressure on Republicans in Congress” “emotionally pleading with Washington to do something and asking the question that so many Americans ask themselves after every one of these shootings: will this finally be enough?”

Bruce continued to lament as she did nothing to offer even a scintilla of a Republican response: “After three decades of congressional inaction, Biden is painfully familiar with the difficulties of gun reform, blaming Republicans who have been standing in the way.”

Houck did not explain why he tagged Bruce as a "loyal Biden supporter." after all, he would never tag Peter Doocy as a "loyal Republican supporter."

The upcoming January 6 hearings are not the only subjects being unnecessarily dragged on and on by the liberal media. On Thursday’s edition of Morning Joe, viewers had the privilege of seeing Scarborough and friends once again continue ranting about the GOP as monsters unmoved by children killed in mass shootings.

When reacting to Congressman and assassination attempt survivor Steve Scalise’s (R-LA) speech about gun control, where he compared banning guns to banning airplanes after 9/11, the show’s hosts acted absolutely appalled; with Mika Brzezinski commenting that it was “unspeakably stupid.”

[...]

Scarborough then circled back to Congressmen Scalise’s 9/11 comparison attempting to throw TSA regulations in his face. “TSA regulated the hell out of air travel,” Scarborough exclaimed, “You would get checked at the gate. Like, you had to get patted down. You're still getting patted down. Liquids -- Mika and I just traveled. Liquids taken out.”

Gun reform and post-9/11 are completely different things, Joe. It is widely accepted that those TSA “pat-downs” are mostly theatrics. Not only that, but when tested for the real thing, the TSA actually fails to catch most prohibited objects.

Of course, Buckley won't make the parallel argument that if we shouldn't have gun laws because people will violate them, then abortion shouldn't be outlawed because women will still have abortions regardless. Instead, she whined further: "Viewers always get the same spiel from these people: Republicans equal bad, Republicans equal evil." Change "Republicans" to "Democrats," and you have the daily spiel put out by Buckley and the MRC.