On Sunday’s GPS, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria described his search for a “silver lining” in an analysis of Saturday’s Islamic terrorist attack in London, heralding the U.K.’s broad criminalization of firearm ownership (emphases added):
What is interesting about [the methods of the Islamic terrorists in London] to me is, it’s in many ways very low-tech. A van going into crowds, people brandishing knives and using them as weapons. Of course, guns are very hard to get in Britain. All of that, I’m maybe just trying to look for a silver lining — here, all of that means that they’re finding it hard to do big bombs at symbolic locations and that kinda of thing, and what they are reduced to is driving vans and using knives — which is of course terrible and tragic — but you can only kill so many people [without guns], particularly if the police respond as they did in this case.
On May 22, an Islamic terrorist detonated a suicide bomb at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, killing 22 people and injuring 119 others. This did not involve firearms.
None of Zakaria’s “expert” guest panelists considered the preventative or deterrent aspects against Islamic terrorism of an armed citizenry lawfully possessing firearms.
Zakaria opposes the Second Amendment’s codification of the right to keep and bear arms. Last October, he postured as a data-driven policy analyst by claiming that “data clearly proves” that household firearm possession “makes people less safe.” He will not, however, openly call for repealing the Second Amendment.
Despite hosting a weekly flagship show ostensibly dedicated to in-depth analyses of global affairs and international relations, Zakaria did not inquire about the overlaps between Islamic terrorism and Islam as a religion and ideology. He similarly neglected to examine the overlaps between Islamic terrorism and Muslims, or the calibration of contemporary immigration and refugee admission policies pertaining to Muslims.
At one point, Zakaria asked of Islamic terrorists in the U.K.: “Who are these people and why are they doing this?” He later described Islamic terrorism as “nihilistic” and “purposeless,” as if its perpetrators do not adhere to a coherent religious and political ideology.
Zakaria presents himself as a politically objective and non-partisan news media figure. CNN similarly casts itself as politically objective and non-partisan in its presentation of news and information, marketing itself as “The Most Trusted Name In News.”
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.