re: #256 Anymouse 🌹

The NRA did spread conspiracies about Columbine and VA Tech, but they were the more garden-variety “liberals are coming for your guns” type.

Bill O’Reilley came out with a conspiratorial book on Reagan being shot by GHW Bush (Bush had the most to gain). Others spread conspiracies that it was neo-Nazis who shot the president.

The only real difference between older conspiracies and newer ones is we have an Internet to spread them, where before you needed a Mimeograph machine.

I’m talking explicitly about the conspiracies that denied these events even happened. That’s what I’m talking about. The survivors of Columbine and VA Tech weren’t told that they were crisis actors by people associated with the mainstream right. Don’t get me wrong. The Dems are coming for your guns is sick and it’s been a constant but what imo made Sandy Hook to me the start of something really awful was the political targeting of the survivors.