Editorial Masked as News at The Christian Science Monitor

If a news outlet has an editorial ideological bent I have no qualms with that entity. But when editorializing creeps into supposed hard news stories I get flustered. In the United States the major news outlets claim they are objective in their news coverage. This is patently untrue when it comes to stories about firearms. The anti-gun positions are so adhesive even an irresistible force gets stuck from time to time.

The story, Easy for suspected terrorist to buy guns in the US, is an example not of poor journalism but an outright attempt at propaganda to scare Americans into backing draconian gun control laws.

The article editorializes about a report by the Government Accountability Office released today. According to the report, between 2004 and 2009 people on the government’s terrorism list were able to purchase firearms 865 times in 963 attempts over the five-year period. The Monitor cryptically states that nearly 900 people on the watch list applied for and received a certificate to buy a firearm in the US. By keeping hidden the number of attempts and the true number of those who were able to purchase, the paper shows its bias in a supposed hard news story.

A reader of the article doesn’t learn until the 6th paragraph that currently there aren’t any laws that prevent someone on the terrorist watch list from purchasing a firearm. Let me say that again: There currently aren’t any laws that prevent someone on the terrorist watch list from purchasing a firearm. So the real story should be, why not?

One reason may be the secrecy of the terrorist watch list. It isn’t public knowledge. Now you may be thinking, “I don’t care. My name isn’t on the list.” But it may be. The Monitor doesn’t mention that 400,000 people are on that list, and they all don’t have names that sound like they are from the Middle East. White Supremacist, neo-Nazis, eco-Terrorists and Black Supremacist, in other words home grown terrorists, are on the list. 24,000, or about 6% of those on the list, were based on outdated or irrelevant information in FBI files.

The Monitor’s article withheld this important information to create fear in the public. It is true that it is harder for someone on the list to get on a plane then to buy a firearm. But that is because the government dosen’t have any inhibition against people on the list from exercising their 2nd Amendment Right. And the question is, why should they? Are we a country that limits constitutional rights based on an FBI list, knowing that the people on that list haven’t broken any law? Do we want to live in a country where the government has the power to punish people before they commit a crime? It seems that the Monitor wants to live in such a country.