Colorado Kids Blast ‘Politicalization’ of Shooting, Abandon Vigil for Victims

The infotainment industry’s cold blooded sensationalism may have finally jumped the shark in Colorado, where school shooting survivors were essentially chased out of their own vigil by mainstream media miscreants and rabid reporters.

School shootings are a particularly tragic bit of darkness in American society, goaded into existence through a failure of society to recognize mental illness in young adults, and exacerbated by the repercussion-free world of online bullying.

These incidents are made exponentially worse by the faulty logic of “gun free zones” acting essentially as advertisements for places in which resistance will be minimal.

Then, even in the aftermath of these harrowing tragedies, the survivors are then harassed into madness by an unrelenting and shameless mainstream media whose bottom line is often more important than getting to the bottom of the story.

Young men and women affected by just such a set of circumstances are fighting back this week, however, and poignantly drawing attention to the opportunistic media miscreants in their midst.

Gun rights advocates posted support on social media Thursday for students who walked out of a gun-control rally in anger and tears over concerns the event inappropriately politicized their grief.

The event Wednesday was primarily billed as a vigil to honor Kendrick Castillo, who was fatally shot in a rampage by two students at the STEM school here. Speakers at the school’s packed gymnasium, however, were mostly politicians and advocates pressing Congress for more restrictive gun laws.

After about 30 minutes, hundreds of students from the STEM School stormed out yelling “this is not for us,” “political stunt” and “we are people, not a statement.”

The confrontations turned testy outside.

Outside, the traumatized shooting survivors thrust lighted cellphones into the air and chanted “mental health, mental health,” as their hands and voices shook in the cold rain. Angry students pushed and screamed at journalists, demanding to see photos they had taken.

These children, many of them teenagers, have demonstrated the shortcomings of the mainstream, corporate media in ways that activists twice their age have yet to discover, and deserve to be applauded for their efforts.