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Cover of NY Daily News Criticizes Prayers Offered for Shooting Victims

Daily News gun control

The newspaper says stricter gun control laws are more important than prayers.

No punches were pulled by The New York Daily News in the newspaper's response to the San Bernardino mass shooting. The headline described the California incident as “God isn’t fixing this” -a direct reference to a number of lawmakers who have uttered prayers for victims but did nothing to end such gun violence.

Cover of NY Daily News Criticizes Prayers Offered for Shooting Victims[/tweetthis]

The cover further goes on to say that as the latest installment of innocent Americans suffer a bloody death, the cowards actually capable of ending such a gun scourge continues to take shelter behind meaningless platitudes.

Paul Ryan, the House Speaker, and many Republican hopefuls like Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush have responded to this attack with a number of tweets. These responses state that the candidate is either praying or urging other people to pray for the San Bernardino victims. The tweeted image of the provocative front page is presently enjoying maximum retweeting in 2015 for this news organization.

In contrast, Democratic presidential contenders, including Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, took a different voice and asked for concrete action to stop such gun violence. President Barack Obama too highlighted the requirement for stricter gun control laws post the mass shooting. In an interview to a media house, the president said that a few steps can be taken which will minimize the frequency of such actions. A few Twitter users have asked for increased congressional action.

For the New York Daily News, it is not afraid to focus attention related to gun violence in a provocative manner. The newspaper, in August, published graphic images of shooting of journalists in Virginia. It was condemned by a number of readers.

The reactions to the front page have ranged from “brilliant” to “deplorable.” Rand Paul was one of those who reacted. He described the newspaper as deplorable and mentioned that prayers and genuine thoughts are not fodder. His name was included in the front page. The headline came under criticism from Brent Bozell of Media Research Center, a conservative advocacy group. He termed it as disgraceful and offensive.

The Editor-in-Chief of the Daily News, Jim Rich, also responded to this criticism by saying that his newspaper is not in any manner condemning religion or prayer. Anyone suggesting the same has misconstrued the point he made.

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