They did, because the shooting occurred a week before it was going to air. It doesn't matter, these sort of people would always oppose this sort of show.
This is why I hate this kind of vacuous social "critic" who acts like they're bringing some devastating blow against media they don't like by pointing out that it's violent. They don't grant any agency whatsoever to any audience members other than themselves, who they assume to be bloodthirsty ghouls who are invariably going to go out and murder people immediately just from having seen media they don't like.
They don't grasp that even 12 year olds who aren't actual psychopaths are entirely aware the video game where they're blowing away demons with a shotgun isn't reality. They don't grasp that adults who like watching a hyper-violent shoot 'em up action movie about a vigilante are also aware they're indulging an atavistic desire for violence but that the catharsis of it is enough for them. They aren't going to go out and murder random people.
It's generally not shit like The Punisher that some psycho fixates on and commits a crime. For fuck's sake, Mark David Chapman was somehow inspired by Catcher in the Rye to shoot John Lennon. And Hinckley shot Reagan because of Taxi Driver, in theory anyway. The fact is some people are just crazy fucks and they would kill people because of Danny Phantom, like that idiot we have a thread on.
Anyway, the original comic version of the Punisher was nearly an outright fascist vigilante. Who the fuck doesn't know this?
And you invariably give the hero/protagonist of a bloody vengeance story a horribly tragic backstory so you can sympathize with them, especially if they're getting revenge on the entire world. Otherwise they're just the autist in Hatred.
They believe in the concept of tabula rasa: That we're all blank slates when we come out. They have no understanding of nature vs. nurture or psychology. These people will kill whether or not there is any media around. The key is that they want to be immortalized and shooters always are fetishized by the media. They want something to react to them, real people. A fantasy can't react to you. And lets be honest, if someone were raised in isolation of all media and had a desire to kill and they went to a gun store for the first time, it wouldn't take a fucking genius to figure out that the best way to kill people is using guns with lots of ammo. Social critics, their education are all incompetent, useless and not reflective of reality.
They also forget 'The Punisher' has a strict moral code. Nobody innocent dies. Ever. If he has to die or go to prison for that to happen, he does it. I always say that The Punisher's superpower is that he never lets innocent people die. Which is kind of the whole point of the character and his morality.
They fail to see that because they have no idea what subtlety is, and if they get called out on it, they go "DUH, we recognize subtlety, we're just aftaid some MRA\MAGA neo-nazi won't and will think the show tells him to go on a shooting spREEEEEEE!".
This as well. They have no understanding of subtlety or context. They are dumb fucking cultist sheep just parroting words. That's what happens when your entire education consists of vomiting shit back to a sped Social Sciences professor to get an A. I really fucking despise most of these cultural critic faggots who bring nothing of value to the table. Nothing about the way something is made, the story is structured, the characters. Just some stupid irrelevant shit.
After seeing this thread, I had to go look up pics, and ... yeah. Hot damn. Hot. Damn. He doesn't look either ridiculously over-sculpted or like some skinny beta male type; he looks like he Gets Shit Done. I'm reminded of a quote:
I'm guessing that a lot of the distaste is coming from bad timing. After so many shootings, people are getting chainsaw-bayonet-sensitive about guns in general, and the Punisher is not a character who fits easily into that type of worldview.
The US has a gun culture and is land-locked. We would never be able to eliminate guns from society. England and Australia could because they are largely isolated. Its much more difficult to smuggle guns on an island. Its not something we should get used to. Wired basically said the series shouldn't ever be made.
It doesn't matter if there weren't mass shooting before it aired, progtards would always bring them up. If it doesn't villify a character who uses guns, it needs to be stopped. Plus there's also the hatred of veterans, the military and the white working class. All three things progtards hate, plus guns? Yeah, doesn't matter if the last mass shooting was 2 years ago or 10 years ago.
