Nobody is talking about Bunny Friend Park, and that's a problem

I’m sure you’re all familiar with the tale by now and it’s depressing. A mass shooting in one of the country’s great cities. Cable news legal experts would refer to it as “highly unusual” because it involved more than one shooter. It was a crowded area with many innocent people in the potential line of fire. Ambulances lined up to tend to the casualties. So we all know what I’m talking about, right?

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No… it’s not the San Bernardino shooting. It was the shooting in Bunny Friend Park in New Orleans and it happened on November 22nd. The description from the scene at the time was nothing short of horrific. (New Orleans Advocate)

Unknown attackers who fired wildly into a huge crowd at Bunny Friend Park on Sunday night left 17 people wounded, including a 10-year-old boy and one victim who may never walk again — an outburst of violence that authorities said Monday likely was gang-related.

The hail of bullets started about 6:15 p.m. in the park, a square-block patch of green in the heart of the Upper 9th Ward, as hundreds of mostly young revelers gathered to watch an unauthorized DJ set and music video taping…

One victim said that at first, she thought the fusillade was another false alarm. A few people at the party had taken off running earlier that evening, and it turned out to be nothing. So she stood there near the basketball court until she realized the chaos was real this time.

The 21-year-old, who asked not to be identified because the shooters are still at large, began running toward Gallier Street on the park’s downriver edge as two groups of gunmen fired what witnesses said sounded like as many as 50 bullets across the crowded park.

Seventeen people were gunned down. Somehow, by the grace of God, nobody died. But many of the injuries were life altering and severe. There were children involved. And when I say there were “multiple shooters” here I’m not talking about two. There were a lot of them. Is there any conceivable way that this doesn’t fit the criteria of a “mass shooting” as is described and defined in every cable news segment flooding the airwaves this weekend? Yet if you had no idea what story I was talking about, you’re in good company. The vast majority of the country never heard about it.

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On November 23rd, I pointed out this shooting and the lack of attention being paid to a case of Black Lives Not Particularly Mattering. And that’s because, yes… pretty much everyone involved was black. Authorities attribute it to two warring gangs who opened fire in the park as a music video was being recorded and between 300 and 500 people were caught in the cross fire.

It’s not as if there weren’t clues, and progress of sorts has been made on the case. Police initially came up with one suspect who turned himself in after his name was broadcast on the local news. That’s a bit tenuous, though, since his mother claims she can prove he was in Texas at the time of the barrage. But just this week four more suspects were taken into custody.

Police identified the four as Quendrick “C4” Bailey, 20; Lawrence “L” Veals, 19; Michael “Mack” Allen, 29; and Rashad “KMG EZZY” Walker, 22. All are expected to face 17 counts of attempted first-degree murder in the park shooting, which took place around 6:15 p.m. Nov. 22 at the Upper 9th Ward park, located in the 1900 block of Gallier Street.

How did nobody see this coming? Why couldn’t we prevent it and how did it take so long to identify suspects? Here’s the rather sardonic answer which came from the Mayor.

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“At the end of the day it’s really hard to police against a bunch of guys who decide to pull out guns and settle disputes with 300 people between them,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu said at a news conference.

There. I asked some questions. They sound hauntingly similar to questions which blanketed the airwaves after the Planned Parenthood shooting and the ones sucking all the oxygen out of the media room this weekend over San Bernardino. But where are all the questions in the media about Bunny Friend Park? It meets all the definitions of a mass shooting and a very large one at that. But I didn’t see Carol Costello, Jake Tapper or Victor Blackwell jumping on a plane and heading for New Orleans. Wasn’t this a case of “domestic terrorism” in all its glory? Where were all the calls for new gun control laws? Perhaps even more to the point, where are all the questions about the “fundamental nature” of those engaged in such mass mayhem and what’s causing it? Isn’t it curious how not one of the major news networks is pursuing this story with even a tiny fraction of the energy they are dumping into Colorado and San Bernadino? Our friend Bob Owens at Bearing Arms pointed out how this mass shooting was effectively memory-holed for some strange reason.

But we know what the reason is. This story isn’t interesting to either liberals or the mainstream media, despite the fact that it fits all the criteria of the Big Stories on the surface. You see, it doesn’t serve the narrative. Black Lives Matter when they are (on exceedingly rare occasions) taken by white police officers either in tragic accidents or clearly bad shootings. But if you happen to be a group of black gang members you can shoot up seventeen of them in a crowded park and nobody wants to talk about it. A white guy (militias!) shooting a bunch of people is a reason to talk about gun control, racism and the degeneration of our culture. Demands for action are needed! But the events in Bunny Friend Park are indicative of nothing, apparently. Just another day in America. (Where did I hear that recently?) Yet this mass shooting was just the tip of the iceberg. These shootings are happening nearly every day and gang violence accounts for most of the mass shootings in the country. It’s done almost exclusively with illegal weapons which were not purchased through normal, legal means. It’s domestic terrorism on a massive scale, but you won’t hear about it on CNN or MSNBC.

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Friends of mine as well as other, respected, conservative bloggers and new media personalities are being pulled on the air on an hourly basis to talk about San Bernardino. They include Matt Lewis and Ben Ferguson, among others. I’d really like to see them doing some of these national media hits and bringing up Bunny Friend Park every… single… time. Until the media acknowledges the snow job they are pulling on the public, this is never going to stop.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 22, 2024
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