Mass shootings spell opportunity to gun-grabbers.    But the old media tricks that progressives use to manipulate public opinion are now so familiar that Second Amendment civil libertarians are able to expose, debunk, and even turn them against the progs.    The horrendous school shooting in Parkland, Florida was immediately seized upon by the media-political cabal of progressives to activate their propaganda machine, but other than lifting the spirits of the gun-grabbers, it's not going to change anything.

Former president Barack Obama rolled out the hoary old slogan "commonsense gun control legislation," conveniently omitting mention of exactly what such legislation would mandate.    The message is that we must pass something now! – otherwise we won't feel good, and otherwise we might see the downsides of the actual plans.

Added urgency was provided by a brand-new highly misleading statistic produced by Michael Bloomberg's Everytown for Gun Safety, which was featured in most MSM reports, claiming 18 school shootings so far this year.    Now, that sounds really alarming, but the figure could be totaled only by counting accidental discharges harming no one, a suicide in a car parked near a school, and other exaggerations.    The Daily Wire so thoroughly debunked this claim that even Comcast property CNBC was forced to acknowledge the stats as "disputed."

President Trump quickly offered an alternative approach, that of strengthening mental health measures to identify and protect us from people who are so deranged as to want to slaughter innocents in mass numbers.    The mental hospitals in this country were largely emptied at the behest of progressives, who bought into notions that insanity is a bourgeois means of oppressing people of alternative mentality.    The possible role of the mass drugging of young males with psychotropic drugs remains to be explored by serious researchers interested in understanding why mass school shootings have increased, even as firearms availability has decreased.

The media's role in glamorizing school shooters and thereby encouraging copycats remains to be taken up by the POTUS, but perhaps he will push back on this front when he visits Parkland today.    Daniel Greenfield explains:

"The copycat phenomenon is real," Andre Simons, of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, asserted.    Even Mother Jones noted the Columbine Effect in which the infamous school shootings inspired 74 others. One group of researchers found that up to 20 or 30 percent of attacks can be influenced by previous attacks.    Statements and writings by mass shooters serve as anecdotal evidence that the copycat effect is real.    The media's obsession with mass shooters creates more of them.

There is statistical evidence that teenage suicides spread.    That's why the media doesn't cover them.    The exception is when that teenager brings a gun to school and opens fire.    Mass shooters want publicity and the media wants to dismantle the right to private gun ownership.    Don't blame the NRA, blame NBC.

All the Democrats demanding that something be done about suspending parts of the Second Amendment have to face the unpleasant reality that they could have passed whatever legislation they wished during the first two years of Obama's first term, when they controlled a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and absolute control of the House.

All the manufactured hysteria will not amount to anything practical, other than lifting spirits among the people who hate the president, hate guns, and hate red states and rural people.