At Victory Girls, we pick on Salon writer Amanda Marcotte a lot. She deserves the disapprobation. Our Darleen nailed Marcotte just two days ago. You can read her epic take down here. We are back to take another swing because Amanda has just burped up another column, “U.S. gun laws are causing mayhem and mass murder — and Republicans couldn’t be more thrilled”, worthy of criticism. Honestly, where does Salon find these writers? Amanda and Lucien Truscott IV?

Amanda has her knickers in a knot because there was a shooting on her street, where she had been the night before. Amanda doesn’t blame the city, the mayor, the local constabulary, or bad parenting. No. In the world of Salon and Amanda Marcotte, Republicans are giddy about shootings. Huh?

…People buy guns, which leads to more gun violence, which leads to more gun sales, and so on and so forth. Next thing you know, there are shootouts on South Street because everyone thinks they’re in some goddamn action movie.

This works out great for the gun companies, who are booking record profits. It’s also working out for Republicans, who happily exploit all this gun violence to sell paranoid, racist voters a story about how it’s all the fault of Democrats, “wokeism” and Black people. Sometimes this gets very explicitly white nationalist. As Roger Sollenberger of Daily Beast reported over the weekend, Blake Masters, the Donald Trump-endorsed GOP candidate for Senate in Arizona, gave an interview in April in which he summed up what he thought was the cause of gun violence: “Black people, frankly.”

I have never heard of Blake Masters. You can read his full quote here. I know what he was trying to say, but he said it badly and comes off racist.

As to Republicans “happily” exploiting gun violence, bah. Republicans did not tell the police in Uvalde to stand around with their thumbs up their bums. Republicans were never the ones screeching “Defund the Police”. That is what convinces people to purchase firearms. People, of every shade, see police being defunded, police being afraid to ask, homes being broken into and they want their own protection.

Democrats exploit violence.

Of course, other Republican propagandists are a bit more subtle — though only a little bit — in their race-baiting, blaming “woke” prosecutors for crime instead of evoking racist stereotypes directly. Fox News is, of course, blaming Philadelphia’s progressive district attorney, Larry Krasner, for the shooting. Right-wing media has also been hyping a recall election focused on similarly progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin. As the Washington Post notes, violent crime “remains at some of the lowest levels it has been in four decades” in San Francisco, but that hasn’t slowed down the GOP narrative one bit.

“It is nothing more than a new version of the Southern strategy,” Krasner told Business Insider. “They’re saying ‘big cities, lawless,’ except all the big cities they’re talking about are very Democratic and have huge Black and brown populations.”

Marcotte, like most Salon writers, uses coded words like “Fox News” and “right wing media”. Maybe the reason why Republicans don’t evoke racist stereotypes is because those stereotypes are in the minds of people like Marcotte. Amanda is the one who sees racist white people behind every word. Maybe she should look in the mirror. Maybe Marcotte needs to expand her circle.

In the clip below, Maj Toure, a certified black man, explains how gun free zones encourage vile and violent shooters:

Here another certified black man, Colion Noir, explains gun statistics:

The Truth About Gun Violence By The Numbers

Watch The Full Video Here: https://t.co/Rl1Cwf0cnM pic.twitter.com/fhxqOvnTlm

— Colion Noir (@MrColionNoir) July 19, 2019

If Mr. Toure and Mr. Noir are too manly for Marcotte, here is an article on growing black gun ownership from National Public Radio:

Sharis and Russell are part of a growing cohort of African American gun owners. Nationwide, surveys found that 25% percent of Black adults owned a gun in 2021, up from 14% just six years ago.

The state of Missouri doesn’t require a license to buy a gun. And most adults can carry firearms without permits in many public places across the state.

But even gun enthusiasts say that the newest generation of gun owners sometimes lack the training and information they need to keep themselves safe around firearms — especially when it comes to suicide prevention.

Both Maj Toure and Colion Noir are big advocates of firearms training.

My point is that if Republicans were giddily pimping gun violence to push white nationalism they wouldn’t be excited for black gun ownership. The reverse is true.

Amanda Marcotte is wrong again, and incapable of learning. She takes aim, but misfires every time because she uses the wrong ammunition.

Featured Image: James G. Milles/Flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons