Hollywood’s divisive message

In an emotional opening to his show Monday night, Jimmy Kimmel cried as he spoke about the Las Vegas shooting. He said the shooter was a seemingly normal accountant with no arrest history or mental problems and was able to legally obtain weapons.

“Second Amendment, I guess,” Kimmel said.

He described semiautomatics as “weapons designed to kill large numbers of people,” as if anyone who owns one is a potential mass murderer, and then located his real targets, Republicans.

He brought up a bill President Trump signed in February ostensibly making it easier for people with mental illness to buy guns. The bill, supported by the American Civil Liberties Union and a host of disability groups, corrected an Obama-era wrong that tied being able to handle Social Security finances to gun ownership.

Kimmel then called out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan for sending prayers and added, “They should be praying for God to forgive them for letting the gun lobby run this country.”

It’s the same after every mass shooting. The divisive message from Hollywood is loud and clear: If you’re a conservative, if you’re a gun owner, if you don’t agree with our exact policy prescriptions, whether or not they would change anything, we can’t grieve together, you are not part of this. It isn’t the shooter’s fault; the blood of the victims is on the hands of Republicans for not passing some mythical bill that would contain just the right law to stop this shooting and all others.

Never mind that a Pew Research poll in June found that 42 percent of Americans either own a gun or live in a household with a gun. Are they all Republicans?

Brooklyn-based columnist Karol Markowicz, writing Wednesday in USA Today.