“The latest victim of gun violence in America is the daughter of an Olympic sprinter, one of the fastest we’ve ever had in America, named Tyson Gay,” New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica [above] writes. “Her name was Trinity Gay. She was 15 when she came out of the Cook Out restaurant in Lexington, Ky., on South Broadway near the University of Kentucky campus, at which point early Sunday morning her future Second Amendment rights did her no good at all when somebody started shooting from a nearby car.”
As TTAG commentators lament, we never hear aboutĀ “car violence” or “knife violence.” Yet those who support civilian disarmament constantly refer to “gun violence” — as if the gun itself is somehow responsible for the carnage created by someone wielding a gun.
“Misdirection is a form of deception in which the attention of an audience is focused on one thing in order to distract its attention from another,” wikipedia.org informs us. It’s the stock-in-trade for gun control advocates. In this case, Mr. Lupica wants to distract us from the person or personsĀ who shot Trinity Gay. And goes to extraordinary lengths to do so.
Trinity Gay was in the worst possible place in America: She was somewhere. She was out late, absolutely, took the bullet at around 4 in the morning outside Cook Out. But in the end the hour doesn’t matter and the neighborhood doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is another gun in the wrong hands. That is all it took to turn South Broadway in Lexington into the most dangerous neighborhood anywhere.
Ms. Gay wasn’t just “somewhere” when she was gunned down by [suspected] gang bangers. She was in Lexington, Kentucky. For reference,Ā neighborhoodscout.com gives Lexington a safetyĀ rating of 9 out of a possible score of 100. With 1062 reported violent crimes per year.
While I’m not blaming the 15-year-old athleteĀ for being in the wrong place at 4am, Lupica’s efforts to dismiss the circumstances surrounding her death are disingenious at best, intentionally misleading at worst.
Truth be told, these circumstances don’t matter — to Mr. Lupica. Like all gun control advocates, he willfully discountsĀ any variables that don’t lead to the simple conclusion that guns are theĀ problem. That removing guns from society is the answer to “gun violence.” Like this:
What happened to Tyson Gay’s daughter can happen anytime and anywhere, middle of the night or middle of the day. The latest wrong place at the wrong time turned out to be 855 South Broadway, Lexington, Ky., because that’s where the guns were.
More precisely, more importantly,Ā that’s where the bad guys with the guns were. But Mr. Lupica ain’t got time for that. Nor does he have any time for the idea of armed self-defense against bad guys.
You are constantly told, by the National Rifle Association and all of its shills and tame politicians that the only way to solve gun violence is with more guns. You’re told that all we need in America is more armed shooters, defensive shooters, at the ready when more bad guys go on the offensive. Now you want to ask all these people how things would have been different for Trinity Gay if she somehow had been carrying a gun when she came out of that restaurant.
WhileĀ NRA supports gun rights, it makes no claim that arming Americans is the way toĀ reduce or eliminateĀ firearms-related crime.Ā The NRA constantly beats the drum for eliminating “revolving door justice.” It supported Kentucky’sĀ 2011Ā Public Safety and Offender Accountability Act, which freed up prison space for violent offenders.
Again and in any case, it’s classic misdirection. Mr. Lupica would have us believe that because Ms. Gay’s life couldn’t have been saved by an armed defender, there’s no need for Americans to be armed in their own defense.
On some level, Mr. Lupica knows he’s on shaky ground. Which is why he incudes a defense of gun control referring to Mrs. Clinton’s notoriously anti-gun rights platform (which includes a new “assault weapons” ban and the repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Firearms Act).
Hillary Clinton doesn’t want to abolish the Second Amendment, another fiction from this campaign. She doesn’t want to take away everybody’s guns. She just wants to take guns away from whoever was in that Dodge Charger in Lexington Sunday morning, the last of Trinity Gay’s life. Whoever had the gun in the sports car with the tinted windows.
What are the odds thatĀ the people who gunned down Ms. Gay were already banned from legal firearms possession? What areĀ the odds that making it more difficult for law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms would reduce the likelihood of violent criminals being armed?
As the Brits say, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear; gun control is not supported by the facts. Mr. Lupica’s willful ignorance on the subject shows just how pig-headed gun control advocates can be. Then again, what else could they be?
Here is where is starts: http://healthyinfluence.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/gun-violencemessaging-guide-pdf-1.pdf
What an interesting skim-read. Its a lot to swallow and I still had the urge to dry heave. Any chance TTAG could crowd source a comparable document?
Here’s something to start with: http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2016/07/daniel-zimmerman/pro-freedom-playbook-gun-owners/
Maybe the fastest man in the world should have kept a closer eye on his 15 year old daughter who was shot on a parking lot at 4AM. What the hell was she doing out at that hour? As for Lupica, he’s another New York based writer who lives in a liberal echo chamber.
One of the biggest recent casualties of the POS liberal_progressive_communist_globalist (D) thinking sold by Mr. Lupica and the parrot cage liner distributor that he works for is Venezuela. Even some of the communists wish they had enough guns to f-up the communists running the country. Oh well, it’s fun (and somewhat ironic) to see sh_theads fight to the death over toilet paper.
At 2AM she posted a comment about gunshots. At 4AM she was shot and then was driven to the ER in a private car not by EMS. I maybe a bit old fashion but nothing good could come from a 15yo girl hanging out at 4AM. The shooters who fired the pistol at her is at fault, but this is not a case of she was in her bedroom fast asleep when she was murdered. Maybe had the parents been monitoring her social media comments they would have told her to come home at 2AM and she would still be alive. And one of the 3 that have been caught is a felon, shocker right?
“She doesnāt want to take away everybodyās guns.”
Yeah, she totally doesnt. She just wants to make it illegal to own some of them based on cosmetic or ergonomic features, make it illegal to load them with as many rounds as you see fit, make it prohibitively difficult to pass them down to your children, eliminate your right to own them based on a secret government list with no due process or defined guidelines for inclusion, and male or easy to bankrupt firearms manufacturers with frivolous lawsuits.
But clearly she isn’t trying to take then away, guys! After all, there are people for that. She won’t get her hands personally dirty…
Mostly it was the hands, not the gun. Also, stupid place with stupid people doing stupid stuff? My 15 year old will not be coming out of an establishment on the wrong side of midnight except under my supervision. And protection. Armed protection. Last note… who hears gun shots and sticks around?
“She just wants to take guns away from whoever was in that Dodge Charger in Lexington Sunday morning, the last of Trinity Gayās life.”
Hmmmm… I wonder if there are any other prohibitive measures the government has taken to keep inanimate objects out of the hands of the people which might give us some insight as to how effective gun PROHIBITION might be. Hmmmmmm…
Who was it that said that that the only thing we can learn from history is that we never learn anything from history?
Nothing to do with “keeping guns out of the hands”, he admits, right here she wants to *TAKE* guns out of the hands of a guy in a “Charger” “sports car” (WTF is that?). I would like to hear how she is going to take the guns out of that killer’s hands. Without “coming for my guns”, that is. She might be lying. He might, as well.
My home was broken into , I ran the scum off. Less than 1/2 mile from the police station. I then learned and studied and became a responsible gun owner. That was 20 years ago , and I have been demonized by mass media ever since.
Media bias has been around and mentioned by NRA and others , but now more people than ever ( including non gun owners ) can see how bad it is. It’s not just ‘ news ‘ either , the very fabric of pop culture Tee – Vee and movies have been weaponized to push an ” all guns bad – all the time ” fairy tale narrative. We ALL need to keep deconstructing hack ‘ journalism .’
My 15year old wouldn’t be running around at 4am…but what do I know not being a drug-test failing Olympic sprinter ? As if somehow I’m responsible for young thug criminals shooting her with illegally obtained g ns…
I LOL’d. Maybe he’ll volunteer to move in. At 3 AM.
“But in the end the hour doesnāt matter and the neighborhood doesnāt matter.”
That’s complete bulls#it, because that sort of thing just doesn’t happen at any time in my current neighborhood, nor in most neighborhoods in which I’ve lived here in the wild west.
“her future Second Amendment rights did her no good at all when somebody started shooting from a nearby car.ā
If you’ve gotten bushwhacked, you just might be screwed, no matter your age or rights.
“Hillary Clinton doesnāt want to abolish the Second Amendment”
No, but everything falling out of this miserable-excuse-for-a-human-being’s mouth literally tells me she does not support my individual right to keep and bear arms, and may indicate she thinks she needs to attempt to instate some sort of firearms confiscation program.
This man, Mike Lupica, may be emotionally underdeveloped, certainly hoplophobic in my humble opinion, and definitely a person worthy of ignoring into public non-existence.
Looked into that neighborhoodscout website. It’s true that it lists Lexington as a “9” on a scale of 1-100, with 100 being safest. But, that’s for the entire city of Lexington, good and bad neighborhoods all combined. If you isolate just the specific neighborhood that includes 855 South Broadway, it’s listed in light purple — the darker the color, the “safer” the neighborhood. So neighborhoodscout is listing that 855 South Broadway neighborhood as one of the most crime-ridden in all of Lexington.
From this we can presume that it is a very, very bad neighborhood indeed.
Possibly a good area to buy drugs! Or to hire underage hookers.
“She was 15 when she came out of the Cook Out restaurant in Lexington, Ky., on South Broadway near the University of Kentucky campus. . .”
Had it been a little earlier, say . . . 15 years, then the evil (D) could have killed her at Planned Parenthood for a modest fee to her mom, and later sold her parts for medicine and food.
We get it, the evil (D) likely killed her but satan demands that the (D) collect on the transaction.
AT LEAST SHE WILL
(ALTHOUGH DEAD AND UNDERAGE)
STILL GET TO VOTE (D) [IN SEVERAL STATES AND TERRITORIES]
I am certain that there are medications that could help with your condition.
Again, and still, at least Truth didn’t say I was “wrong”.
That’s a glowing endorsement. Thank you.
Lupica is a little weasel who sucked as a sports reporter and shows even less talent as a social commentator.
“The only thing that matters is another gun in the wrong hands.”
Let’s be clear here: an evil person who had no regard for the sanctity of human life killed the young woman. What we should be talking about is how there are so many evil people among us who have no regard for human life.
Hint #1:
Husbands and wives who have a committed, loving, and healthy (both mentally and spiritually) relationship and who are committed to raising children with love, boundaries, and responsibility turn out exceedingly few thugs, rapists, and murderers.
Hint #2:
Men and women who shack up willy-nilly in selfish, uncommitted relationships and produce children who raise themselves without love, boundaries, and responsibility become almost all of the thugs, rapists, and murderers that walk among us.
Mr. Lupica’s tripe is a feeble attempt to blame an object and excuse the adults who produce the monsters who assault, rape, and murder us.
I live in Lexington, and he is blowing smoke.
First, Lexington is very safe with the exception of about 5 or six small urban decay areas. The district covering CookOut on http://www.neighborhoodscout.com includes 2 very small but very poor areas near the UK campus that are functional DMZs, and a train line notorious for being a walking path for drunks at night (look up Christopher Maier and Holly Dunn Pendleton).
The area CookOut is in also used to be a no-go at night because of the warehouses on Angliana Avenue and Tattersall’s empty barn space. All of those places are now gone, and gated apartment complexes abound. Even the (rumored) Russian Mob warehouses on the other side of the tracks have been torn down. The entire area is nearly 100% gentrified. While CookOut isn’t a place I’d go to late at night myself (too new), I’ve regularly gone to the Tolly Ho a couple of blocks away.
Taking someone to the hospital via private transport isn’t all that dumb. At that time of night (especially if you ignore traffic lights), you’re less than 5 minutes from the UK Chandler Hospital, the best trauma hospital in town. If you can contain the bleeding, you’re much better off transporting yourself. The problem is, they didn’t. The girls didn’t know that Ms. Gay was bleeding out from a neck wound, and it would have been better had they stopped the bleeding and wait for an ambulance (or even better, stop bleeding and drive) instead of rushing to the ER without applying first aid.
If anything, this stands as proof that good people need to be armed, because the bad guys are willing to go anywhere, not just “their part of town”.
It’s rock solid proof that there are evil POS everywhere, and if it’s your neighborhood and your concerned, or it’s not, but it’s just that your gender transition is going slower than you expected and you’ve got a lot of time on your hands so you’re taking a moment to try to sell us your “We’re f’d up, we need to fix you” crap, then save it. It would be more productive to rid the world of those selling the notion that you can protect anyone on the individual level.
I live in KY – those involved were drug dealers & felons, that is already well known around here. His gun was obtained illegally, what further law that would have made it “illigaller” would have helped?
She had every right to be there at 4am, but there is not a .00001% chance you will see my 15 year old there, then!
The premise is ridiculous BS. Right now I’m in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle and it’s 1:05 pm. My chances of getting shot are zero. I’m downloading Seattle police report data, but somehow I don’t think I’m going to have to eat my words.
No, but you might be forced to view hipsters wearing ‘ironic’ concert tees while riding fixies and sporting heroic beards and handlebar mustaches. š
Every damn day…
“The premise is ridiculous BS. Right now Iām in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle . . .”
Figures. That explains a lot, actually.
“…at which point early Sunday morning her future Second Amendment rights did her no good at all when somebody started shooting from a nearby car.”
Did he just inadvertantly make a case for arming 15 year olds?
We should have background checks! On people who are interested in breeding children they cannot afford or instill discipline on. Same song and dance, unmarried mothers with no job, no education, no home, no money, having kids with guys who aren’t going to be around. Those kids get raised in communities with like-minded kids who have no discipline instilled on them who only value rap music and basketball. They have no shot at secondary education because their parent(s) aren’t responsible enough to have thought of that 18 years ago. So they get out of high school, don’t want to work or have no skills to work and become criminals and gang members. Right now 1 in 9 African American kids has a father in jail. It’s self perpetuated poverty! We hear it every day, “I cannot take care of my kids working for minimum wage!” Well, you shouldn’t have had 4 kids without a husband that you cannot afford to feed and take care of!!! If you want to eliminate crime, you need to eliminate people’s ability to have kids they cannot afford or take care of, but I and others have no interest in paying to raise your family nor do we have any interest in paying for them to go to jail.
“If You Cant Feed Your Baby (Yeah, Yeah)
Then Don’t Have A Baby (Yeah, Yeah)
And Don’t Think Maybe (Yeah, Yeah)
If You Can’t Feed Your Baby (Yeah, Yeah)
You’ll Be Always Tryin’
To Stop That Child From Cryin’
Hustlin’, Stealin’, Lyin’
Now Baby’s Slowly Dyin”
Michael Jackson “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin'”
Michael Friggin’ Jackson knew this!
As a black gun owner I will ask the question so I can’t be called a raaacist.
Why was this teenage black girl out alone at 4am??? On a school night???
Was she scoring drugs for her dad or some other adult relative?
Was her father sleeping off his drug intoxication that libertarians support, and she snuck out of the house??
Does this black father know about black on black crime????
As far as Mr Lupica goes he is just another white liberal enabler who happily supports welfare and gun free zone government housing for single parent mostly black families.
Sounds not atypical for child of a rich/famous parent. I remember seeing a fantastically effed-up 13 year-old Drew Barrymore stumble into Beverly Center on several occasions, and she wasn’t the only “kid” I’ve seen living like a rockstar at 13-15.
As Fitzgerald wrote, the rich are different from you and me. Even back in my prep school days, the sophisticated 15 year old girls at the other Catholic school down the road had been to Europe, had some dalliance with at least one of their mother’s employees, not to mention that cute waiter from the club in France, a boyfriend in college, and could hoover up a rail of Peruvian flake faster than Tony Montana.
Though some black athletes do have a tendency to pick some sketchy friends (because they themselves are sketchy), I don’t know that I would extend that to the kid. Sounds like pretty standard 15-with-some-famous-parent behavior to me.
There was a child in Boston (i think she was 9) shot outside an apartment building at 1AM a few weeks ago. It’s called bad parenting by people that shouldn’t be parents!
Why is Iron-Glare Mike, there, so spun up about the tool, and not the hand that held it?
“The only thing that matters is (“a weapon” – ed) in the wrong hands. That is all it took to turn South Broadway in Lexington into the most dangerous neighborhood anywhere.”
Over 300,000,000 guns in citizens’ hands killed no one, that hour, or, indeed, that whole day. I think he’s got the determining thing wrong, here. Try the substitution. “The only thing that matters is a gun in some target-shooter’s hands.” Indeed. What matters are the hands that hold it.
You don’t want people killed using guns, don’t shoot the guns at the people. See, simple. Same goes for bats, knives, cars, feet, and poisons.
I do question Iron-Glare Mike’s agenda. With a little research, the commentators here on TTAG have identified that the shooter was a known gang-banger, the location not the best, and that this happened 5 min from a hospital … that they didn’t try to get to.
What’s the proximate “cause of death?” Remarkable obliviousness and passivity. In a world not wrapped in cotton, being oblivious, stupid, and passive will eventually kill you. How many kinds of preparation and awareness could have changed the result here? Arm yourself, maybe; stay away from bad people doing bad things, maybe; some first aid skills, maybe.
Or maybe the poor, dead girl thought whatever she was doing was worth the risk.
I’d like a world where kids could remain oblivious, stupid, and un-prepared and do whatever they want. I don’t know how to make that happen.
My exit question for Iron-Glare Mike, there: Say we get all the guns banned, somehow. How’s that work out? I suspect the odds for pretty much everybody in Chicago are pretty bad.
Emotionalism makes for bad law & worse comments. First, dearest sympathies to the Gay family. Sad loss of girl whose life was just starting. Wrong place & wrong time can happen to us all. There is no magically safe neighborhood. Save the Monday qb of parenting for another day. As for the de facto urge to go to our pro gun corners? Time to at least hear Mr. Lupica once. As for the Lupica’s of the world? It would be nice if they heard more than sound bites & buzz words from our side? Is there a middle ground or are we locked in this endless abortion like civil war of pro & anti gun?
I used to think there was a tenable middle ground, but I was wrong. It’s depressing, but true. This is an endless tug-of-war — and if we stop pulling against them, they’ll drag all of us over the magic line. And take away the rope.
Ah, the NY Daily News…..rambling and arrogant leftist hysteria for those living in the snow globe that is NYC.
This is extremely sad, but let’s face it; teenagers are stupid, and one of the best things ever heard and what I live my life by was “avoid stupid people doing stupid things in stupid places”. Teenagers don’t tend to follow that very well. Also, why was a 15 year old girl out at 4 a.m.?
Beats me. I’m still trying to grasp Anthony Wienner’s thought process. Or why Ken Bone is a anybody?
They blame the NRA yet they never seem to recover a membership card from the perps when they are finally aprehended. Just like they blame the NRA for places like Baltimore… you know… that conservative enclave of card carrying NRA insurrectionists.
You remember that time when all those NRA members stormed those Clinton and Sanders rallies and rioted? Me neither.
I never got that either. What the hell does the NRA have to do with any of this?
After extensive research I have found,conclusively that firearms, of any ilk, do not possess the inherent ability to operate automobiles, so study implies I must conclude that without automobiles and their enablers this tragedy would never have happened. The unrecognized fact that both automobiles and firearms are inanimate objects, posing literally no danger until human impetus is applied, eludes Little Mikey. It is time to use honesty here,if humans were not involved no one would be dead or wounded. It time to ban humans.
I made it to “NOTHING MATTERS BUT THE GUN YOU HEARTLES”
And had to stop. You, Sir, are confused.
What an odd little man this Mike Lupita is. To take this entire story and strip it bare of any context. Just leaving us with a metal and polymer object and that’s the entire explanation for him. No intent, no parental culpability…. nothing but the lack of gun control and none of this would have happened.
You know the guy must have graduated high school since he’s a journalist and a HS diploma or GED is required for that job at larger news services. So we can’t blame his lack of education. Maybe it’s his word processor that’s to blame.