In the past few weeks, Colorado Springs and San Bernardino have joined the contemporary American lexicon as shorthand terms for mass shootings. These locales will live in infamy alongside Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Virginia Tech.
You can see the deep rifts that define American culture in the diametrically opposed ways various media outfits and grandstanding politicians represent the perpetrators of these horrific crimes. This divide goes beyond the argument between the NRA, with its thoughts-and-prayers-but-no-laws brigade of bought-and-paid-for pols, and people who want to enforce that pesky “well-regulated” part of the Second Amendment.
Differences in how criminals from different backgrounds are depicted by the media and by politicians should be front and center in this conversation…