Prime Minister has been on the teevee saying, "Our gun laws WILL change."
He went on:
"We don't know the circumstances yet behind these firearms, or exactly what type they were," Alpers said. "But it does seem the photographs that have been released so far strongly suggest that they are semi-automatic rifles, which are the weapon of choice for these shootings."
At this point in our post-2016 political climate, certain things are all too predictable. It will somehow be blamed on our "gun culture," on President Trump, on video games (the shooter claimed Spyro the Dragon taught him about "ethno-nationalism"), and you bet your sweet bippy, on the NRA. Expert #1 will tell Anderson Cooper how Proposal A would have absolutely prevented this, and Expert #2 will perform deep psychological analysis on the shooter while lacking any actual data from which to do so.
I remember Columbine. In a rush to get THE SCOOP, the media managed to turn those two dinks into national folk heroes, and they created a false narrative that the kids were responding to bullying. Despite being completely disproven, most people still think it's correct.
Everybody's going to pore over his every published word. They're going to make armchair diagnoses and claim the mantle of expertise on something we really
can't understand. All the while, they're giving the shooter exactly what he wanted. Great job.
As for the NRA blaming, somebody's going to "uncover" that the NRA has some "involvement" with the shooting culture in New Zealand. They'll point out the fact that the NRA has shared instructional materials and mentorship with instructors in New Zealand, and they'll conflate it with the NRA-ILA in an attempt to "show" that they're somehow responsible for this. I'm surprised it hasn't already happened.
At the end of it, the worst part is, we haven't even been given opportunity to grieve for this horror before folks have to turn it political.