Leftists exploiting other people's pain for their political gain only works for certain tragedies.
You've seen it happen hundreds of times: when a tragedy strikes somewhere, and if it fits the profile, the ghouls of the gun grabber lobby jump on it faster than Hunter Biden on crack. Along with the propaganda media, they go into overdrive with wall-to-wall coverage to squeeze as much emotional mileage out of the situation as possible, always exploiting other people's pain for their political gain. Except that only certain tragedies will do, because when you traffic in fear, logic and common sense are nowhere to be found.
The latest example of this phenomenon occurred in a Walmart in Traverse City, Michigan, where a 42-year-old man, acting alone, attacked people with a folding knife, wounding 11 people on Saturday.
Pro-freedom patriots quickly predicted that this story wouldn't last more than a day and that it was likely that the propaganda media would bury the fact that 'a good guy with a gun stopped it.' As Colion Noir notes, the media is working hard to keep that a secret.
The Fear Flow Chart
You can just imagine the reaction amongst the gun-grabbers as news of this tragedy came in over the wires. While they secretly salivated at the prospect of using this to their advantage as always, the news quickly turned dark -- at least for them.
Problem one for the gun-grabbers was that only a knife was used. While this is always a concern for normal people, it's not for those hyper-focused on civilian disarmament. Sure, they've tried the absurd idea of 'knife control' in the UK, even though most rational people know that inmates in every prison can arm themselves with 'shivs' made of any material that will hold an edge.
Then things went from bad to worse for the antigun lobby when it was revealed that the perpetrator was subdued by a 'good guy with a gun.’
It’s almost as if they have a 'flow chart' to quickly determine whether a story blankets the airwaves or is dropped in half a news cycle with one or two perfunctory reports.
It's guaranteed that when mass murderers use guns, it will garner excessive coverage, and if it involves the ever demonized and undefined "assault weapon," it will be wall-to-wall. As studies on the well-researched subject of Media Contagion indicate, making the perpetrator a media "hero" to the next mass murderer almost guarantees another tragedy within an average of 13 days. But the bad news for the ghouls is that it wasn't the dreaded "assault weapon" or even a firearm, and the rampage was stopped by what the antigun lobby tells us doesn't exist: 'the good guy with a gun.'
In this case, the perp used a knife, and he was subdued by a civilian carrying a gun -- the exact opposite message of the gun-grabbing Left. In some cases, the propaganda media is doing its best to downplay the importance of having an armed civilian on the scene to stop an attack, offhandedly referring to one of several shoppers that surrounded the perp as including one who was 'holding a gun,' in their perfunctory coverage of the story.
Citizen Involvement
The problem for the gun-grabbing Left is that a 'Good guy with a gun' completely undermines their civilian disarmament agenda. Instead, they've developed Orwellian-level obfuscation with phrases such as "citizen involvement," which only cryptically convey part of the story:
The sheriff said a deputy arrived at the Walmart within 3 minutes of a 911 call being made about the stabbing and took the suspect into custody. The sheriff credited "citizen involvement" with apprehending the suspect.
In other cases, the propaganda media worked over time to completely hide how the suspect was subdued, even though there is video of this event accompanying the story in question.
Video obtained by CNN appears to show several people confronting a man in a Walmart parking lot, yelling at him to “throw the knife” away and lay on the ground. It’s unclear in the video, taken from a distance, whether the man is holding anything or throws the alleged knife away. The video also appears to show several people attending to a victim nearby.
As predicted, the story has quickly faded from the headlines, with memeorandum and memeorandum river only showing a few stories from the evening of July 26, 2025. Braden from Langley Outdoors Academy went through an extensive live stream on Sunday afternoon, noting that Derrick Perry was the 'good guy with a gun' who stepped in to stop the attack and save lives, and detailing non-coverage of the story by media.
Feeding on Fear
The bottom line in all this is that the leftist gun grabbers always have to rely on fear because they have nothing else. That's why they have to move quickly after a tragedy, while emotions are running high, because none of their ideas make any sense the rest of the time.
It's why they absurdly demonize inanimate objects as having the ridiculous ability to murder people randomly and without human manipulation. They won't say that part out loud, but that is their implication whenever they spew the propaganda term 'gun violence.'
It doesn't make sense on a logical level, but neither does the idea of 'protecting' people by taking away their means of self-defence.
D Parker is an engineer, inventor, wordsmith, and student of history, former director of communications for a civil rights organization, and a long-time contributor to conservative websites. Find him on Substack.
Image: Pexels