Those of us who believe in real news and journalistic integrity have been familiar with the alternative facts (the term “fake news” has almost become cliché) spewed out by the right-wing Breitbart News Network and conservative commentator Alex Jones for a while now.
I typically don’t pay attention to either mouthpiece, because they operate in a different universe.
However, my niece brought an article to my attention penned by AWR Hawkins, the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio.
In a recent column, he attempted to debunk a Stanford University professor’s suggestion that an unarmed person is more likely to stop a mass shooting than the proverbial “good guy with a gun.” As most reasonable people know, the “good guy with the gun stopping the bad guy with a gun” scenario is a myth.
To the professor’s point, the person who steps up and stops a shooting is most likely to be an unarmed civilian like my friend and hero Pat Maisch, the grandmother who wrestled away a fresh magazine of bullets from the man who shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. Maisch is real, not some made up phantom.
In his column, Hawkins lists every recent mass shooting, including my daughter Alison Parker’s, and states that in just about every case there was the omnipresent good guy there to intervene. It’s right out of the gun nut playbook. After reading this nonsense, I wrote to Hawkins.
Mr. Hawkins:
I’m Alison Parker’s father and occasional target of the rag known as Breitbart. Normally, I don’t pay attention to the bullshit offered up by you and your associates, but your recent post was brought to my attention. You listed all the actions taken by “good guys with guns” during mass shootings, including my daughter’s, saying the shooter was “being chased by good guys with guns.” Your piece suggests that there was a civilian involved in all these take downs when in fact the only “good guys with guns” were LAW ENFORCEMENT.
If, as you attest, there were phantom good guys chasing my daughter’s murderer, I’d love to meet them. Funny, the Virginia State Police and Franklin County Sheriff’s Department never mentioned any, and they’ve been more than forthcoming.
I expect nothing less than this kind of nonsense from shills like you, Alex Jones, and others of your ilk. It epitomizes fake news and hoaxes. You’ve got a big audience and like you, they all live in their grandmother’s basement.
After I sent the email to Hawking, I realized I forgot to include one member of his audience who doesn’t live in his grandmother’s basement. In fact, when he’s not on the golf course, or in the citrus tanning bed, this audience member lives, for the time being, in the White House.
