After a gun massacre, the Media Research Center never wants to talk about the gun part – and that happened again after a shooting at Florida State University in April in which two people were killed. Nicholas Fondacaro huffed in an April 17 post that one student was too non-right-wing for his taste:
Seemingly itching for another anti-gun show trial like the one he “moderated” after the Parkland shooting (and won an award for), on Thursday, CNN’s Jake Tapper decided to target gun rights by once again exploiting an hours-old school shooting (Florida State University) for political gain. He trotted out 20-year-old Jayden D’Onofrio to be the voice to push for gun control with him. But while Tapper claimed his guest was just an average FSU student, D’Onofrio had a long history of being involved in Democratic Party politics and was even in the running to be the party’s vice chair in the state.
[…]If D’Onofrio’s (20) “eloquence” and extensive knowledge of guns laws and tax holidays making their way through the Florida legislature make you raise an eyebrow, it should. A NewsBusters investigation discovered that D’Onofrio was not the average FSA student Tapper had portrayed him as.
In fact, the reason D’Onofrio knew so much about the tax holiday was because he spoke out against it to Florida Senate’s Finance and Tax Committee just days ago.
Fondacaro didn’t explain why being a non-right-winger automatically disqualified D’Onofrio from discussing a gun massacre. Instead, he whined that “What it looks like is CNN trying to pass off a covert liberal activist on their viewers.” Also, Fondacaro probably shouldn’t be bringing up that CNN “anti-gun show trial” given that he was responsible for spreading a lie that CNN scripted questions at the forum — something he has never apologized for doing.
Brad Wilmouth used an April 19 post to grumble that another non-right-winger — one who actually knows whereof he speaks on the issue — had an opinion on the shooting:
On Thursday’s Katy Tur Reports on MSNBC, fill-in host Jose Diaz-Balart gave an unchallenged forum to anti-gun activist Fred Guttenberg to trash President Donald Trump and Republicans after the shooting at Florida State University. Guttenberg became a vocal anti-gun activist after he lost his 14-year-old daughter Jaime in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in 2018.
As Guttenberg recalled that he knows several FSU students who were also attending the high school in Parkland back then, he referred back to a clip of President Donald Trump from earlier in the show and showed his disdain for the President’s recent actions to loosen gun control:
[…]Diaz-Balart did not push back on this first jab at Republicans as the MSNBC host merely responded with a rambling question in which he asked his guest what he would say to the families of the victims in this shooting. Guttenberg eventually got back to lambasting Republicans as he complained about efforts in the Florida legislature to loosen gun laws.
Wilmouth made no effort to defend Florida’s attempted loosening of gun laws, or why the FSU massacre isn’t an argument against doing so.