National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch said Thursday that members of the media “love mass shootings” because it provides high ratings.
“Many in legacy media love mass shootings. You guys love it,” Loesch said when addressing a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland. “I’m not saying that you love the tragedy, but I am saying that you love the ratings. Crying white mothers are ratings gold to you and many in the legacy media.”
Loesch’s comments come hours after she appeared at a CNN town hall with students, teachers, and parents affected by last week’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
At CPAC, Loesch questioned why CNN didn’t host town halls in Chicago, which has a high rate of gun crimes, or in sanctuary cities.
She also suggested the network deliberately kept members of the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps from asking questions during Wednesday’s town hall.
“There are thousands of grieving black mothers in Chicago every weekend and you don’t see town halls for them, do you? Where’s the CNN town hall for Chicago? Where’s the CNN town hall for sanctuary cities?” Loesch said. “… If it bleeds it leads, but it has to be the right people from the right communities at the right time.”
Loesch said that much of the conversation in the wake of last week’s shooting has centered around the need to ban assault rifles, but said often times when mass shootings occur, law enforcement including the FBI misses red flags that would’ve prevented the gunmen involved from purchasing firearms.
“We will not be gaslighted into thinking that we’re responsible for a tragedy that we had nothing to do with,” Loesch said of the NRA. “It is not our job to follow up on red flags. It is not our job to make sure that states are reporting to the background check system. It is not our job. A failure of law enforcement is not a failure of the law. It is a failure of enforcement.”
The NRA spokeswoman specifically criticized former FBI Director James Comey, who in 2015 said the gunman who killed nine at a church in Charleston, S.C., shouldn’t have been able to purchase a gun. Comey said errors were made during the background check process that ultimately allowed the shooter to buy a firearm.
“You know James Comey, when he wasn’t busy taking direction from Loretta Lynch as to what to call Hillary Clinton’s investigation or writing his self-aggrandizing memoirs, he said they made a mistake,” Loesch said. “Maybe if you politicized your agency less or did your job more we wouldn’t have these problems.”
