Triggering Alarm

Posted by Jason Ibrahim

Today's Altoona Mirror reports on a jilted boyfriend, Joseph B. Olecki, who went on a rampage with his employer's AK-47, firing shots into residences in Altoona and Scranton. Inexplicably, the Mirror also had a companion piece on the popularity of AK-47's and AK-15's, right next to the Olecki story, front page, top fold. Here's what confuses me about this:

1. The first impression of the front page is the large-type headline "Desperate, Lovesick Man" with a large photo of a man holding a semi-automatic gun directly underneath it. Only by reading the caption do you find out that the gun-toting individual is not Olecki, but John Patton, the manager of East Coast Gun Sales, a local gun retailer. Olecki's mug shot, meanwhile, is a small photo, about a square inch, off to the left. To me, this implies that guns, and not Olecki, are the most significant angle in this situation.
2. The Olecki article also brings out the fact that Olecki's employer, Wayne Farabaugh, kept his guns at work to prevent them from harming his children--only to have his weapons stolen by Olecki for his own murderous purposes. The message--again, only a faint implication--is that gun ownership is irresponsible because someone will ultimately get hurt.

I have to hand it to the Mirror: this form of subtle commentary is much more subdued than some of the hit pieces against gun ownership that one sees in the big-city newspapers, but I don't think the Mirror is off the hook. If they want to editorialize about the dangers of the Second Amendment, they have a section for that--and it's not the front page.

That's my opinion; what's yours?

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