One of the more challenging things to do when you write an article, particularly if it’s not just a hard news piece, is how to start it off. You need to be able to grab attention right off the bat, and a lot of times, writers like myself will use a story. People like stories. It’s something encoded in our DNA or something.
There’s a reason the entertainment industry is so big. It’s because most of it is about storytelling mediums, even if the story is nonfiction.
It’s also why narratives are so important in politics.
Regardless, starting with a story makes a lot of sense if you’re trying to sway people with what follows. The mainstream media loves to do this, either by including a victim’s story or the story of someone who lost a loved one, when it comes to discussing guns.
And a story out of Louisiana is no different. Here’s how it starts:
Less than a mile from a century-old mill that sustained generations in this small town north of New Orleans, 19-year-old Tajdryn Forbes was shot to death near his mother’s house.
She found Forbes face down in the street in August 2023, two weeks before he had planned to move away from the empty storefronts, boarded-up houses, and poverty that make this one of the most troubled places in the nation.
Naketra Guy thought about how her son overcame losing his father at age 4 and was the glue of the family. She called him “humble” and “respectful,” a leader in the community and on the football field, where he shined.
…
Firearms are the No. 1 killer of children in the U.S., and no group suffers more than young Black people. More Black boys and men ages 15 to 24 in 2023 were killed in gun homicides than from the next 15 leading causes of deaths combined.
Rather than bolstering efforts to save lives, officials in the federal, state, and local government have often undermined them. KFF Health News undertook an examination of gun violence since the pandemic, a period when firearm death rates surged nationwide. Reporters reviewed government reports and academic research and interviewed dozens of health policy experts, activists, and victims or their relatives. They reviewed corporate earnings reports from gun manufacturers and data on the industry’s donations to politicians.
They also included a story about how the mayor was elected at age 23 after promising to address the violence, but has been arrested and accused of being part of a drug trafficking ring that used the proceeds of narcotic sales to buy guns. The mayor, obviously, denies the allegations, but it’s an important point to consider.
See, let’s talk about the murder of Tajdryn Forbes for a second.
A short time after his murder, 18-year-old Chaston Dyson was arrested for his alleged involvement in Forbes’s murder. In May 2024, Dyson was indicted for his role in a drive-by murder in May 2023. It apparently took nearly a year for law enforcement to tie Dyson, among others, to that murder, during which time Forbes was also killed.
Using a story like this is supposed to somehow garner sympathy for Forbes’s family, and not without cause. It sounds like he was an innocent kid who was killed for no reason, though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn otherwise, simply because this town seems to have major problems, but that’s what it looks like from here.
Yet the attempt is to go after Trump for rolling back anti-gun efforts and so-called “violence prevention strategies” that clearly didn’t do anything to prevent this act of violence.
Furthermore, this was an 18-year-old guy who is accused of the killing–there doesn’t seem to be any information on a trial–and who apparently committed this act after being involved in a previous murder. How did he get a gun if these laws are so vital? Long guns aren’t the preferred tool for these kinds of people, so I doubt he got anything lawfully.
Again, this seems like a law enforcement failure in this particular community that has a major crime problem.
I’ll also not that while FFF Health News is taking a “public health” approach to this issue, they’re also illustrating the problem with taxpayer money going toward initiatives that treat so-called gun violence as a public health crisis. They seem to always think regulation should be part of the answer, and that’s simply not the case.
And using a particular story, no matter how legitimately tragic, doesn’t help when it’s clear the laws already on the books were ignored.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners, so-called gun violence, and the Second Amendment, all so they can push the whole “public health emergency” thing, which will lead to more and more restrictions, all “for your own good.”
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Read the full article here
