The narrative of any shooting is a confusing jumble for the first few days, and anyone can get caught with their informational pants down, from Moms Demand Action, to the NRA. Any news source should be considered likely to get at least a few things wrong in the rush to get to print. Police often even make erroneous statements in the early aftermath. As we’ve seen numerous times a claim of “suspect in body armor” can rapidly turn out to be “suspect in Wish dot com airsoft vest”. High stress situations and a financial incentive to be the first to report can’t help but produce inaccuracies.
That said, we’re awarding Shannon Watts, of Moms Demand Action, a gold star for not only failing to take this sort of information deficit into account, but running with whatever narrative suits, even as the story changes dramatically. Initially, Ms. Watts announced that a crazed gunman, who naturally must have been spurred into criminal action by the ever-nefarious NRA, was facing murder charges, presumably rightly in her mind. Just over a half day later, when the story developed enough for her to learn that the shooter was a Person Of Color, naturally this depraved murderer morphs into a lawful shooter who was being railroaded by the racist Texas police.
While it’s inescapable that racism exists, and can impact police decisions, the skill and acumen Ms. Watts displays on the Moms Demand twitter account in changing both direction, and horses midstream makes one wonder if she has a secret background in rodeo. At least as a clown, certainly.
