New York Times Editorial Suggests “gun lobby’s wrath”
The New York Times issued a farewell to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords last week, and we have to ask – why? We sort of know the answer, as it allows the Times’ editors a chance to climb on the soap box yet again, let’s keep in mind that Ms. Giffords didn’t represent the people of New York City or even New York State.
The editors of course tried to once again blame the guns and did some with the usual misreporting:
Ringing vows were made immediately after the Tucson rampage to ban the high-volume ammunition clips used by the gunman, to prod states to submit names of the mentally disturbed to the federal watch list for gun sales, and to plug the notorious gun-show loophole that allows anyone to buy high-powered military weapons without a background check. None of those have happened. Democrats, who once had the good sense to pass a ban on assault rifles, no longer fight for its renewal, wary of the gun lobby’s wrath. President Obama gave a stirring speech after the Tucson shootings, but the White House has said and done too little about gun control since then.
Our first point, yes this is an editorial and opinions are opinions. But facts don’t lie – and this editorial has one of the facts wrong. It isn’t an outright lie, but it is done to make a point. Namely the statement: “high-powered military weapons,” which isn’t fair. First, the shooter in Tucson had no such firearm. So what does it have to do with this piece?
But there is also the point of “high-powered military weapons” that suggests that the guns most can actually buy at gun-shows are “military weapons,” which they are not. The guns are civilian versions and there is a huge difference whether the editors at the Times like it or not!
Next, we note “wary of the gun lobby’s wrath.” What does this mean? It almost suggests as if the gun lobby would use said “military weapons” in a reprisal. But that’s not the case. What the gun lobby would do is stir up voters, who would send President Obama and other anti-gun types packing. But isn’t that how lobbyists are supposed to work? Isn’t that their job whether we like it or not? And at the end of the day it isn’t the majority of voters casting their ballot on the issue? Why is this point always lost in these arguments.
The paper adds:
Ms. Giffords, a supporter of gun rights, was sent off with good wishes from lawmakers who could have done something to stem the carnage. “I will recover and will return,” Ms. Gifford vowed in a her resignation letter, which was read by a colleague. Her departure offered a tragic display of how easily a brilliant career in public service was cut short because of the nation’s inadequate gun laws.
Couldn’t it be that the nation’s mental health system is what really failed here? This argument blames the guns, and whether the Times likes it or there are a lot of guns out there, so the laws seem to be fairly adequate when all is said and done. Tragedies happen, but we don’t try to ban everything.
Will cruise ships be banned because of the recent disaster in Italy? Were airplanes banned because of 9/11? Are cars or even alcohol banned because of drunk drivers? It is such an interesting argument to make, but banning the item involved is only done when it includes guns.
Citizen-Times Editorial Offers Misleading Facts to Readers
Editorials are opinion pieces and therefore we don’t address the opinion, but will fire back at the misinformation. This past weekend, columnist John Boyle for the Asheville Citizen-Times offered misleading information in his editorial titled, “Assault rifles come roaring back in Asheville.” He starts off by shooting from the hip:
News flash: assault rifles are back. Big time.
How do I know this? Walmart is selling them.
He does take a moment to explain the assault weapon’s ban, and even notes that these are “military style,” but then he offers these two passages:
On the one hand, I can’t see why anybody really needs one of these blasters. They’re not practical for hunting, and in the wrong hands they’re powerful weapons capable of killing an awful lot of people at one time.
On the other hand, I can understand the allure of target shooting with them and holding that much power in your hands. And if you need to wipe out a colony of groundhogs, they’re a dream come true.
The first part is misleading, while neither statement really notes that these guns are practical for target shooting. Time and time again, anti-gun types as well as those who don’t understand the issue seem to think this merely comes down to “hunters.” There is much more than hunting. But any gun is dangerous in the wrong hands, as is a car or a whole lot of other things.
The anti-gun crowd manages to forget that the biggest mass killing in this country were in Oklahoma City and New York City, and those terrorists never pulled the trigger during those events. But do we ban commercial fertilizer or flying on commercial airlines? No, we do not.
The editorial then goes on to quote both the Brady Campaign and the NRA as to add balance, but it is the Brady Campaign’s statements that leave the bigger mark. Consider what the Brady Campaign offered:
“I think what’s happening is the gun industry is pushing these militarized rifles, and they’re marketing them to folks like you who are already gun owners, trying to get them in into these military style guns — they’re trying to normalize them,” said Dennis Henigan, acting president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence in Washington, D.C.
“They’ve tried to sell this myth that somehow these are legitimate hunting weapons, and they love to find instances where hunters use them.”
Again, even the biggest anti-gun zealots use the “hunting” word to discredit the guns. There are people that like to shoot at the range, and the Brady Campaign ignores this. However, Boyle makes sure to provide more anti-gun opinion from Henigan for good measure:
“It’s just a matter of time before we have another one of these mass shootings involving an assault rifle,” Henigan said.
This is presented as an absolute fact and we don’t know this. It is just a matter of time until a major earthquake hits some part of the country, but we still build houses. It is just a matter of time until there is another airplane crash, and people still fly. So why would we ban an item from law-abiding citizens because there could eventually be another mass shooting?
In the end this is still an opinion piece, but the argument fails to make its point – but that never seems to stop anti-gun types unfortunately.
New York Times Shows Lack of Understanding of America Again
In a New York Times editorial titled “School of Glock,” columnist Gail Collins writes the following passage, and it shows how out of touch New York City’s journalists can be with the rest of the country:
“It’s been nearly nine weeks since that tragic shooting in Tucson, and you may be wondering whether there’s been any gun legislation proposed in the aftermath.”
Let’s consider a couple of points. First, in New York City gun legislation is pretty much already on the books. The high-capacity magazines she rallies against are already banned in the city, and as we’ve long reported unless you are rich and famous forget about getting a Glock or any other handgun easily. It is an expensive and time consuming process to “legally” obtain a firearm.
Second Collins isn’t really concerned with reasonable gun legislation either, as she writes:
“The gun lobby will never be happy, unless the health care law specifically requires every American to have a pistol on his or her person at all times.”
Thus her editorial isn’t about reasonable gun laws, it is a rant about why House Republicans are trying to overturn Obamacare and she’s using guns an excuse.
So what this really says is that like many New Yorkers she doesn’t really get the “real” America west of the Hudson River. But yet, she also doesn’t address how to solve the problem of illegal guns in the city. Perhaps she really believes, much like the city’s misguided mayor, that taking away guns from law-abiding citizens in other states will somehow solve New York’s problems.
Close the Car Show Loophole
Our friends at Ammoland offered an insightful piece on the absurdity of cries to close “loopholes.” In this case, a reader offered the suggestion to “Close the Car Show Loophole!” It is almost funny, until you realize that this is no laughing matter:
“Some of these cars end up in criminal hands as get-away cars or are used by murderers, drug dealers or gang-bangers. Some cars are smuggled into Mexico and used by drug lords there. Convicted felons, mentally deranged persons, domestic abusers, and aliens unlawfully in the US can all buy a car at a show. Even those on the terrorist watch list can go to a car show and buy a car.”
Of course if anyone tried to close the “car show loophole,” we’d probably hear all sorts of outcry on the subject.
Don Surber of the Charleston Daily Mail Responds to WaPo
We’re glad to see that we are not the only ones who thinks that WaPo is a bit off base with its take on gun control. Don Surber of The Charleston Daily Mail offers a response to a recent WaPo editorial. He sums it up best in his post with this line:
“The fault for guns in Mexico lies with the Mexicans, not the Americans.”
How very true.
Firing Back: NRA Wants Child To Kill Each Other
Does the headline above make any sense? It does if you believe the liberal media hype that is being spewed in editorials such as the one for Scripps Howard News Service in an editorial written by Dan K. Thomasson. In response to the National Rifle Association’s attempts to overturn a Texas law that restricts the carrying of a concealed weapon to those 21-years or older, he writes:
“If the NRA has its way, that area of violence in our urban sprawl will get much larger with innocent children the victims of gang and individual crime.”
Thomasson also notes incidents of gang related crimes in Washington, D.C. Last time we checked Washington, D.C. was thousands of miles from Texas. So why does an incident where teenage gang members – who had guns illegally – attacked other teens should have any bearing on the law in Texas? Read more
Las Vegas Review-Journal Responds to NY Times Editorial
A new firearms debate is brewing, and it is in regard to how old one should be to own a gun. The New York Times had suggested that the Second Amendment should not “allow armed teenagers in their communities.” The Las Vegas Review-Journal responded, noting, “hasn’t this country long allowed those as young as 17 to enlist in the armed forces and fight – with real guns?”
Good point, and kudos to the Review-Journal for addressing this point.
Richmond Times-Dispatch Questions “Gun Show Loophole”
Apparently not everyone in the mainstream media is buying into the reporting from The Washington Post and other anti-gun agenda based news outlets. The Richmond Times-Dispatch offered an editorial titled “Gun Shows: Some Loophole,” noting:
“Since an individual who is not a licensed gun dealer can sell a firearm to another individual without a background check — the “loophole” in question — it might be the case that some of the 107 legally obtained guns were bought through person-to-person sales at gun shows. Or not. There is no more hard evidence for that hypothesis than there is for the hypothesis that half of the 107 legally obtained guns were bought by blond men with tattoos.”
The paper further notes something that many anti-gun zealots refuse to acknowledge, namely that states with less restrictive gun laws are the source of “crime guns.” This is a fact that is stated time and time again, yet with little proof. The Times-Dispatch offers this though:
“Yet gun-control advocates continue to insist that ‘states that have not closed the gun-show loophole are far more likely to be the source of crime guns.’ But were those crime guns bought at gun shows — or from crooked dealers, or perhaps stolen? Gun-control advocates don’t say.”
It is refreshing to see that some newspaper editors aren’t just going with the standard line on guns and gun show loopholes.
Firing Back: NY Times Cites WaPo
Isn’t The New York Times anti-gun enough already? Apparently not, as the Old Gray Lady’s editors referenced a recent Washington Post anti-gun editorial. But the NY Times is also showing a bit of sour grapes as well, offering this editorial the weekend before election day, knowing that the new congress will likely be even friendlier to the Second Amendment supporters.
In it, the editors offer this thought:
“As a new Congress looms, we suggest lawmakers travel to Washington by way of West Virginia and an obscure federal building called the National Tracing Center. There they can see workers laboring through unmanageably high backlogs of handwritten paper records submitted by the nation’s gun dealers. This is Congress’s handiwork — at the behest of the gun lobby and to the detriment of public safety.”
What this editorial doesn’t say is that there are more guns in private hands and yet less crime. But this editorial is notable for what it doesn’t say. It never draws attention to the fact that the gun lobby is powerful because it speaks for the people on election day, in other words this is what people west of the Hudson River really want.
As we’ve noted previously, too often editors at the Times and WaPo seem to think that from the extreme east coast they tell what they believe is right for the country, but never see the country. They don’t see the hunters, they don’t see the collectors and they don’t see the gun shows. They don’t see these things because their respective cities, New York City and Washington, D.C., have had such harsh gun laws that private citizens were all but stripped of their Second Amendment rights, and thus the gun lobby has ensured as goes New York and D.C. so won’t go the rest of the country.
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette Cites (Part of) WaPo Editorial
This week The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reprinted just part of a Washington Post editorial. It included the same anti-gun bias as the original piece, but yet was concise enough to further offer misleading facts.
Here is perhaps the most misleading bit of (mis)information:
“As the Supreme Court ruled two years ago, the Constitution of the United States protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. But limits or conditions attach to even fundamental rights. For far too long, lawmakers have catered to the whims of the gun lobby with little or no thought for public safety.”
This sentence implies there are NO limits to the right to keep and bare arms? What about the National Firearms Act of 1934, or the Gun Control Act of 1968? How about the Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban, or the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act? Each of this set limits and conditions with absolute regard for thought for public safety.
