With the horrific shooting in El Paso,Texas as his backdrop, Univision anchor Jorge Ramos renews an all-too-familiar call for action on gun control.
Watch as Ramos closed the most recent edition of Univision’s Sunday political affairs show Al Punto with what has become a trademark call for gun control legislation:
JORGE RAMOS, SENIOR ANCHOR, UNIVISION: So this is what you do if, unfortunately, you find yourself in the midst of a shooting. But this is the political issue:
When you add the presence of firearms, and there are more guns than people in the United States, and this is added to racism, what can we expect? Can we have hope? The reality is that so long as politicians (do nothing to) change gun control laws in the United States we will very soon, unfortunately but very soon have another massacre.
We thought that things would change after Sandy Hook..they didn’t. After Columbine, they didn’t change either, they didn’t change after Parkland, and many of us fear that nothing, absolutely nothing will change after El Paso.
The timing of Ramos’ editorial is interesting in that it comes right after a segment on what to do in the event of a shooting, which closed with heightened emphasis on fighting for one’s own life. Of course, Ramos then jumps in and calls for disarming those who would defend themselves and their loved ones. This trope is repeated in Ramos’ opinion column for The New York Times, bleakly titled El Paso Was a Massacre Foretold:
The most racist Americans who are set on killing minorities are aided by the fact that they can easily obtain assault weapons in this country. I’ve lost count of all the massacres I’ve covered as a journalist. After each shooting — Columbine, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, Parkland — I thought we might have reached the limit of Americans’ tolerance for such horror. But it wasn’t so. I fear that the killings in El Paso won’t change anything, and that I soon will be back on another flight headed to cover the next massacre. And then another. And another after that.
I have lost hope that the United States will ever pass laws that limit access to firearms. Like many parents around the country, I’ve had difficult conversations with my children in case they find themselves in a situation where someone is shooting at them. “Try to escape, hide or fight,” I tell them. “But don’t stay still. Gunmen have a lot of bullets, but not patience.”
Ramos’ one-track mind when it comes to gun control is a matter of record. Not long after a deranged Bernie Sanders supporter shot up a baseball field full of Republican congressmen, Ramos simplistically smeared lawful gun owners by bleating out that he didn’t understand why duck hunters needed “weapons of war.”
But it appears that Hispanics aren’t listening to the nation’s alleged Voice of Hispanics, and are taking charge of their own self-defense. As Reuters reports:
The vast majority of people at the (concealed carry permit) classes were Hispanic; El Paso is a predominantly Latino city. Police say the accused gunman deliberately attacked Hispanics in the Walmart.Michael McIntyre, general manager of Gun Central, one of the largest gun shops in El Paso and the host of the class, on Friday said his store tallied double the usual number of sales in the week following the attack, something that did not happen after previous mass shootings in Texas.
As with other issues, it appears that Ramos’ intended demographic has tuned him out.
