[quote=@mdk] Within two minutes of turning on CNN, I was watching a fear-mongering gun control lecture. So I switched to Fox, and they were running a fear-mongering Obama/terrorism lecture. Gosh, I wonder if maybe we're so divided because everyone keeps trying to rile us up against each other? [/quote] The media politicization doesn't help, I agree. I don't know if it is avoidable though, short of everyone growing wise to it. And that all the news stations were playing footage of that man that was gunned down in his own car... yeh, that certainly played a part. This is how this situation played out for me actually. First short break at work I walk out and see in the main hall, where they have CNN and Fox playing on every other screen, that both stations are showing the raw footage of the man that was gunned down in his car. I go back to work. A little while later I go out and see the protests are going in Dallas. I go back to work. At lunch, I go out and the news is about the sniper shootings. So yeh, I'm sure the showing of such graphic and emotional footage as a man dying while a cop holds him at gunpoint... that certainly stirred the pot. But at the same time that incident did happen, it isn't a media invention, like staged on the moon or something. And it is hard to avoid hearing of cop shootings every week anymore. People have been calling for police reform, and though body cams have come into fashion because of it, these things keep happening. I have been saying for a while that this shit was going to come to a head and some guy was going to think "Oh shit, society won't reign in these cops, either I kill them or they kill me." And here it is. I don't want to see violence here, not against dudes in their cars and not against cops monitoring protests. But this shit will only escalate if we take the "Cops need to come down harder" route rather than the "Oh shit maybe we need reform" route. And I have no doubt the former is the one that will win out, to the detriment of everybody involved, since all militarizing the police will do is cause more deaths, and then more violent reprisals. For the record though, I agree the fact this shit always becomes a second amendment issue or terrorism issue is BS. It seems it always goes that way because that is all the media knows how to talk about, and we end up avoiding any deeper issues because of it.