Rex Huppke courtesy Chicago Tribune
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President Trump and the NRA live rent-free in the heads of many who oppose them. And Trump and the NRA sell newspapers. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Chicago Tribune, in an editorial, doesn’t pin the blame for the carnage at the Nashville Waffle House on the killer.

And blaming the killer’s father for apparently returning his son’s guns to him after police had seized them doesn’t sell newspapers, either.  No, in these times, when the Tribune struggles to stay solvent, it falls back on bashing Donald Trump and the NRA for the Waffle House massacre to bring in readers and web traffic.

From the Tribune:

We should be able to eat waffles in peace — but Trump and the NRA accept this kind of terrorism. …

We’re told by the National Rifle Association and the politicians they fund that the only defense in any of these tragedies would be more guns. Armed teachers. Armed churchgoers. Armed music lovers. Armed waffle eaters.

The National Rifle Association stands as the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, founded after the Civil War. It advocates for the Second Amendment rights of all Americans, even those who work at the Chicago Tribune.

The politicians the NRA funds? Members of Congress that have received barely $3.5 million from the NRA over the past twenty years, combined. That’s $175,000 per year on average. Or about $400 per member of Congress. George Soros no doubt wishes he could buy congressmen’s votes for $400 each.

Even if you add up all of the NRA’s political contributions and lobbying expenditures, Politifact reports that the NRA has spent just $203.2 million since 1998.

Contrast that with the $1.7 billion – that’s billion with a ‘b’ – in political spending by labor unions – in just 2016.  Of course, labor union money is as clean and pure as the wind-driven snow.

At the same time, most Americans, have come to understand that the only thing that stops bad people with evil in their hearts is a good guy with a gun. Or, in this case, one courageous and lucky individual named James Shaw who counter-attacked when the shooter’s rifle jammed. Kudos to the heroic Mr. Shaw, pictured below, for stopping the killer.

Chicago Tribune Blames the NRA and Trump for Waffle House Murders

The Tribune’s Rex Huppke works hard to blame Donald Trump as part of his click-bait piece…

In fact, President Donald Trump’s only action on guns was signing a law last February that did away with a regulation President Barack Obama put in place that made it harder for people with mental illness to buy a gun.

Yes, Donald Trump signed that bill into law. It passed with bipartisan support through Congress. The act ended the Obama-era practice of portraying Social Security recipients who get help with their financial matters as “mental defectives,” barring them from gun ownership without due process.

After all, in Huppke’s Windy City world, everything bad is Trump’s fault. And concepts like freedom and liberty take a back seat to feelings.

He writes:

What do you call it when people are made to feel unsafe in the most public of places?

He then shares this gem:

A 29-year-old man from Morton, Ill., is the suspected shooter, and police say he used an AR-15-style … rifle, the same type of firearm used in the Parkland school shooting (17 dead), the Texas church shooting (26 dead), the Las Vegas music festival shooting (58 dead) and the Orlando nightclub shooting (49 dead).

Nevermind that the government failed to seize the Parkland killer’s guns despite dozens of run-ins with him. Or how not one, not two, but four Broward County Sheriff’s Deputies – armed to the teeth – waited outside while the killer slaughtered innocent kids inside. Apparently writing about government incompetence doesn’t blow Mr. Huppke’s hair back.

He overlooks the fact that the San Antonio church shooting ended because good guy gun-owner, Stephen Willeford interceded, barefoot, with his AR-15 to stop the carnage, probably saving lives.

We still don’t know much about the Las Vegas murderer, other than he was a certifiable lunatic.

Huppke finishes his indictment using a bona fide Islamic terror attack in Orlando, Florida as justification for banning America’s favorite rifle, the AR-15. Never mind that police at the Pulse Nightclub waited for three hours as people bled out inside.

So as Huppke sees it, because the government cannot protect us from lunatics and terrorists, we should surrender our right to keep and bear arms so people like him can feel safe while he eats his waffles.

That makes sense.

Chicago Tribune Blames the NRA and Trump for Waffle House Murders

We know how well that worked out for them, right?

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41 COMMENTS

  1. I used to read the trib years ago before they went leftard pushing Barry Soetoro. Hard to fathom how effed up they are now. At least the evil Dem bill to “license” gun dealers failed to get a supermajority override today…no one ever blames GOA or SAF. WAH😄😎😏

    • They didn’t override the veto? I haven’t heard. I read that the downstate democrats refused to cave because they dealers were their friends and they didn’t want to put them out of business.

    • It makes as much sense to blame the Trib, Oprah, the Whig Party and all Border Collies. Welcome to the United States of Absurdity where reason has given way to lunacy.

      • I agree with your observations!! This world has gone CRAZY with PC and Liberalism!!

    • The fibune has been down the tubes for a long time now at least 22 years. In 1996, the editorial board under the stellar leadership of Ann Marie Lipinski decided that writing about criminals as being victims of police and prosecutorial misconduct garnered more sales than writing about the actual victims of crimes. The initial crime would have the victim listed and the crime committed but after that when the case got close to trial, the victim would no longer be a factor in the equation. The same holds true with defendants charged with gun offenses. It no longer is their fault but the fault of the gun store or the person who’s house they stole the gun from for not properly locking the gun up at night. The criminal becomes the victim and society is to blame.

    • Who is Barry Soetero? Why can’t you use the legal name of the racist, anti-Christian, antisemitic, anti-Constitution, anti-America, anti-capitalist Muslim socialist traitor, Barack Hussein Obama, Junior?

      • Barry Soetoro IS his legal name; he was adopted by his step-father, Lolo Soetoro, when they lived in Indonesia, where BS (such appropriate initials) was raised and went to muslim schools. Barry Soetoro is also the name used on all of those private off-shore accounts where he has hidden the BILLIONS of $$$ he has stole from us, the American taxpayers. What do you think he was doing during his time in office – he was robbing us BLIND!!

  2. He did miss an important connection – the Republicans in Congress, and at the State level, as well as Mr. Trump, have been waffling like crazy since Parkland. With “all options in the table,” and Mr Marco “we need gvpo!” Rubio who is open to the idea of a “hi capacity magazine ban”, various traitors by the name of Scott, etc, the waffles are actually on the attack, we need protection from waffles, as the Second Amendment is apparently not clear enough verbiage to protect itself or our liberty.

  3. Also it should be noted the killer in Orlando didn’t use an AR15. Media dishonesty at its finest.

  4. [One of] The true reasons for the shooting at the Waffle House,

    IS THE SAME REASON THAT IT ONLY ENDED DUE TO HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT.

    It’s because some ASSHOLES

    W R O N G F U L L Y

    made some people think that they were protected, and therefore didn’t have to protect themselves on an individual level.

    Some evil POS (D) have some skin in that game, as well as some Federal and State Policing authorities.

  5. I Notice they do not blame RYDER Truck Rentals for 10 killed in Toronto by a snackbar.

    ‘Setting the stage for a ban on all AR – 15’s and semi – autos. / The Danger of letting Anti’s ” Re-Define ” terms at will.

    Trump’s Regulations Can Affect AR-15s
    But there’s another problem: If the proposed regulations can erroneously deem AR-15/bump stock fire to be “automatic fire,” then a future anti-gun administration could easily deem AR-15s as full automatics under those circumstances.After all, under 26 U.S.C. 5845(b), any firearm that can be “readily restored” or “converted” to fire automatically IS a “machinegun.” Period. End of story.And, as with bump stocks, there would be no grace period or grandfather clause for post-1986 semi-automatic rifles.So please contact Donald Trump and tell him that the implementation of his proposed regulations would turn between 500,000 and 20,000,000 law-abiding gun owners into immediate felons.You can email him, tweet at him or call him at (202)-456-1111 or (202)-456-1414.
    Sincerely,
    Michael Hammond
    Legislative Counsel
    Gun Owners Of America

    • Also, shouldn’t they be blaming AAA (They condone driving vehicles”) the truck manufacturer (“They built the murder weapon”) and the Highway Department (“They put the road there…”).

  6. The NRA is a great target for these idiots. Attacking gun owners as a group would have problems as the liberals want all minorities to feel the need for the Dems. Attacking the NRA with 5 million members out of 140 Million gun owners allows them to still hope that the other 135 Million who own guns will sit back and fail to vote for the 2nd amendment. WE need to recognize that the NRA is the best face we have in congress and increase the membership by a factor of 5.

    • I generally agree. In this case, if his dad knew, or reasonably should have known, that his son was an immediate threat, then he is also culpable. That’s a big IF.

      • I don’t know if we need the “immediate” qualifier. Dude thought Taylor Swift was stalking him. He complained to police about crowds of people, 20 or 30, barking like dogs outside his home. He trespassed into a public pool wearing a woman’s pink bathrobe and his underwear, then exposed himself to the lifeguards, yelling “I’m a man!”

        This was not a grey area. Whether or not he had any immediate plans to harm himself or others, he was clearly non compos mentis .

  7. The Chicago Tribune is trash, but it’s not fair to paint the NRA as small or weak when it comes to political donations. I mean, the NRA-ILA gave $30 million to Trump alone.
    The NRA’s strength is their legislative outreach combined with targeted PR campaigns. Those are usually over $200 million a year, and unlike many of the “angry rant of the day” causes the left comes up with, legislators know that the NRA is going to deliver that level of expenditures on one single cause every single year. They are able to directly mobilize far more than just their significant membership with that amount of spending. They are a powerhouse in membership, but also in finances.

    • I get it. You hate the NRA but now you are just flat out lying. The NRA has spent $203 million on direct and indirect political lobbying, donations, and outside spending not every year but FROM 1998-2016. Almost 2 decades.

      And before you claim fake news here are two articles on NRA spending. From Mother Jones and Politifact. Both of these groups also hate the NRA and would have loved to report $4 billion spent be the NRA but that would be lying.

      https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/nra-national-rifle-association-money-influence/

      http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/oct/11/counting-up-how-much-nra-spends/

      • Fact is that the NRA is tiny potatolets in the realm of campaign spending, compare to energy, tobacco, and pharma, they’re a rounding error.

        NRA is powerful because they motivate a large, reliable voting block. Not because they pay off lawmakers.

        • That was my point. The previous poster claimed the NRA spent $200 million a YEAR when the real figure is closer to $10 million a year. Compared to many other special interest groups that is indeed tiny. And it demonstrates that a pool of 5 million ready voters is a huge deal.

      • Freeheel, please go ahead and actually look up the NRA-ILA’s spending reports. You’ll see I’m quite accurate. Don’t post Mother Jones, post the actual spending report. It’s easy to find. It’s online. Do the work.
        Also note that you are comparing apples to oranges when you compare direct spending to a political candidate to PAC funds spent on legislative issues. Hence the reason I specifically pointed out the NRA-ILA and the term “legislative outreach”. That is how it is defined in their own spending reports.

      • Freeheel, I just realized you said only 10M spent by the NRA.
        Maybe you don’t understand how campaign finance works, don’t know what a PAC is, or how funds are reported, and if so I will be able to give you the benefit of the doubt on your number.
        Even so, it is way off.
        Let’s just assume that the multiple NRA affiliate organizations that exist to provide funds to candidates don’t exist. I know they do because I’ve donated to them in the past. Let’s pretend that parts of the organization that are specifically set up to lobby don’t exist, and only count hard dollars spent on legislative action by the NRA proper. For one single election cycle, that number is $40M. Include the PA issue dollars spent by the NRA in that single election cycle and you get up to $90.
        And that doesn’t count the soft dollars, which is always a majority of a PACs spending in the benefit of candidates.
        Do the work. The internet is a thing. Here’s a freebie. Everybody gets one.
        https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4210859-8-16-2017-AuditFYEnding2016.html

        The NRA is powerful. It’s powerful because it has a strong member base, AND because it has a strong financial base. This is not a bad thing. This is a good thing. Stop playing the underdog. Stop playing the victim.

        • I purposely quoted mother jones. Because if anyone would exagerate NRA political spending it would have been them. Get it? Now The article that the TTAG posted that we are commenting on says “all political contributions since 1998 $203 million”. Divide by 19 and you get ~$10 million. You want to exaggerate NRA spending. We get it. You also say Dripping Springs is “40 miles outside of Austin” when using the internet, yeah that’s a thing, says it is 16.3 miles from center to center. And you contend that you “had to drive 45 minutes to the county line to get beer”. Why didn’t you just drive 8 minutes and 200′ past Nutty Brown road to the gas station that has sold beer there since 1983? You sound like a typical progressive. What’s next there has been 18 school shootings since January?

        • Freeheel, you couldn’t even be bothered to read the actual financial statement from the NRA. Instead of reading the NRA’s actual audited financials you are basing your argument off of media reports.
          Way to double down on stupid.
          As far as where Dripping Springs is, I couldn’t even get to a highway in 15 minutes, much less Nutty Brown. Don’t get where a Post Office is located confused with where people actually live.

        • Freeheel, I apologize. I did not realize English is not your first language. When someone says “40 mins”, that doesn’t mean miles, that means minutes.

      • The scariest thing about all these journalist is that they are mostly bought and paid for. No grit of their own in thinking for themselves. Why would they they disarm an ARMY of citizen gun owners that could literally save this country and their lives, or grand children’s in a challenge on our soil.

        It is just plain arrogance to think this country could not be challenged by an alliance of countries like China, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, and Syria.

        They should read “Behold A Pale Horse” Written by William Cooper 1991. One paragraph that has an eerie sort of connection to todays school shootings….

        The government encouraged the manufacture and importation of
        military firearms for the criminals to use. This is intended to foster a
        feeling of insecurity, which would lead the American people to voluntarily
        disarm themselves by passing laws against firearms. Using drugs and
        hypnosis on mental patients in a process called Orion, the CIA inculcated
        the desire in these people to open fire on schoolyards and thus inflame the
        antigun lobby. This plan is well under way, and so far is working perfectly.
        The middle class is begging the government to do away with the 2nd
        amendment.

    • The hypocrisy of the liberal Chicago Tribune is beyond belief. Young blacks have been shooting each other on weekends for years in Chicago. Where is/was the Chicago Tribune on that issue?/ Same place Obama was: MISSING IN ACTION!! Kanye West is right , Chicago, Obama’s home, remained the most deadly city as far as shootings during his eight years in office!! Nothing changed!! The Tribune in attacking the NRA ignores the fact the NRA has over 5 million US members, many of them DEMOCRATS!! Believe me, most of them will drop the Democratic Party before they leave the NRA!!

  8. “In fact, President Donald Trump’s only action on guns was signing a law last February that did away with a regulation President Barack Obama put in place that made it harder for people with mental illness to buy a gun.”

    This is a very common lie on the left. It says more about lie spreading on that side than it does about anything else. Hey, maybe they can resurrect the lie/ disinformation campaign about Glocks not being detected by metal detectors. They used to love spreading that one around.

  9. This Never would have happened if the cops would have went to House of Pancakes, so I’m blaming the two hungry police officers, they had a choice, and chose unwisely.

    • Wrong shooting. The two cops were shot in Florida at a Chinese restaurant by a man who then did everyone a favor and killed himself in his car. The shooting at the Waffle House was the schizo with an AR who killed 4 and wounded 4 more before he was disarmed by an unarmed customer.

  10. So let me get this straight, it is Trump’s fault for not signing strong gun control legislation that hasn’t passed Congress and hasn’t been presented to him for signing or veto? How does that work? And at the same time, I bet the Trib would have an absolute cow if Trump started passing laws they didn’t like by executive order fiat, arguing that he had no authority to do so.

  11. Why would he blame the NRA??? According to a bunch of delusional a$$hats that frequent this website the NRA is anti-2nd Amendment.

  12. Lets have a level of honesty here. Illinois has Mandatory Background Checks. The dad took custody of the guns after his kid was in a fucked up state and he had his FOID pulled. If you took possession of your kid’s guns after he tried to make his way into the white house, don’t you think that you’d damn well better keep him away from them?

    Not only that, but to look back at the feds the guy’s boss told him

    Then again how many bangers on the south and west sides get armed in a similar way by a family member or friend who hooks them up with a gun despite knowing they shouldn’t?

  13. The only ones to blame are the perpetrator, who did this horrendous shooting, and the Waffle House for making their restaurants “gun free zones”, which is nothing but an invitation for goofballs like this, and leaves their patrons defenseless against such actions. It is a shame that this stupidity continues on.

  14. Why did those people die at waffle house.
    Because the kid that had the guts to stop it.. wasn’t armed and had to.wait for the opportunity.

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