There is an absolutely over the top piece in today’s edition of the New York Daily News concerning Monday’s school shooting at an Oregon high school which left one student dead and a teacher injured. The shooter, who has been identified as 15-year-old Jared Padgett, eventually killed himself.

The piece begins by assailing the NRA:

The killer carried the murder weapon in a guitar case and used it to score a tragic and all too familiar tune in yet another American school — but there’s been nary a peep from the National Rifle Association.

It’s like Wayne LaPierre, the NRA mouthpiece, has a sudden case of lockjaw. 

OK, so what if LaPierre had issued a statement about this shooting? Is there anything LaPierre could have said that would have assuaged the New York Daily News? Of course not. That’s not the objective of the New York Daily News here. Their objective is to scapegoat the NRA for this tragedy and assail the Padgett family’s conservative politics.

Indeed, the piece later focuses on the Padgett family noting, “While it was not known if the Padgett family belonged to the NRA, they were all hunters, classmate Mackenzie Arellano told the Daily News.”

Ah yes, if you’re family might belong to the NRA you are therefore a candidate to shoot up a school. It reminds me of when Brian Ross of ABC News incorrectly tried to link James Holmes to the Tea Party following the July 2012 movie theater in Colorado.

Of course, none of this deters the New York Daily News,which notes that Padgett’s Facebook page likes included “Conservative American Military Veterans Against Barack Obama.” Well, two can play at that game. One of Santa Barbara shooter Eliot Rodger’s favorite YouTube channels was “Young Turks” hosted Cenk Uygar, formerly of MSNBC.

I, along with millions of reasonable people in this country, know full well that most people who love hunting and are NRA members would never murder innocent people any more than most people who watch the “Young Turks” channel or watch MSNBC on a regular basis. Sadly, the New York Daily News is not among these reasonable people.