10News.com Story Paints Bad Picture of Gun Owners
Tempers run hot on many issues, and this is an unfortunate part of any debate. Worse still is that often times the media throws fuel on the fire, as 10News in San Diego did in reporting on California’s open carry law. The news station, in a piece titled “Gun Advocates Take Aim At State’s Leader’s Proposal,” also takes aim but at all gun owners, making many sound like extremists. The news station notes:
“San Diego Assemblymember Lori Saldana is getting threats and being confronted by armed protesters over her latest legislation, which would ban guns in public.”
The news station also noted that “a gun advocate claimed to have driven five hundred miles,” and had a “loaded weapon in a backpack.” The site describes him as a “blogger,” but no link was provided, which begs the question as whether this is in fact a credible source. No name was given, nor was a link, so how can we trust anything about this particular source? It makes for a colorful read, and puts Saldana in a great light as she responded:
”It reflects poorly on all the responsible gun owners when someone takes it to the extreme like this.”
What really reflects poorly is how this story was reported. It reflects poorly on credible journalism.
Capitol Weekly Asks Wrong Questions in Article on Concealed Weapons Permits
From the first sentence it was clear that Capitol Weekly had an agenda when it comes to the concealed weapons permit debate raging in California. The writer offers this introduction:
“Could a bill banning the open carrying of firearms actually result in more guns on California streets?”
The state already has an extremely difficult process for obtaining concealed permits, so is the author implying that citizens would simply break the law? This certainly seems to seem what he suggests.
Arizona Republic Calls For “Middle Ground on Guns”
This week in an editorial responding to the tale of two gun laws, The Arizona Republic argues that a middle ground needs to be found. The paper suggests that Chicago’s absolute ban on handguns had been too strict, but also questions the Arizona law with an interesting choice of words:
“Arizona, meanwhile, has enacted some of the most liberalizing gun laws of any state in recent years. They include permitting gun-owners to carry weapons in places like restaurants and bars and, still more sensationally, allowing most people over 21 to carry a weapon, open or concealed, without requiring a permit. That latter law is scheduled to go into effect July 29.”
While this might be extreme to some, it brings up an interesting point – one that the editors only touch upon. Chicago has become a wild west with mob rule practically in place. Yet Arizona, which was truly part of the real Old Wild West, doesn’t have nearly the same amount of gun violence. However, Arizona faces a threat as criminal elements from Mexico are causing problem in the border region. This isn’t noted in the editorial, and it is important to note as residents in those parts should have the right to be armed as the thugs from south of the border seldom care if innocent people get caught in the cross fire.
California Open Carry Petition
We thought we’d offer some helps to our friends at OpenCarry.com by providing a link to their petition. Read more
LA Times: Open Carry Not For California
We expect bias in editorials, and that’s par for the course. However, typically when editorials are written that are anti-gun the point is never clear. Case in point, in a Los Angeles Times editorial titled “Open carry: It’s not for California,” the editors offer this point:
“Carrying an unloaded gun isn’t as harmless as open carry advocates like to claim. It only takes a second to slap a clip into an unloaded semiautomatic, and an armed society is not a friendly society; angry disputes can turn deadly when the antagonists are packing heat, and untrained shooters can miss their targets and hit bystanders.”
Couldn’t it be argued that some people won’t pick a fight with another carrying a gun openly? What if you pick a fight with a person who is packing a concealed weapon (legally or illegally)? Couldn’t that end tragically as well?
Opposing Views Calls NRA Policy “Hypocrisy”
In an article noting that guns – concealed or otherwise – are banned in the convention center at the NRA gather, Opposing Views called the policy “hypocrisy.”
Of course, this is a lose-lose situation for the NRA. If the group allowed guns to be carried, there would be those would call the police crazy instead of hypocrisy. But in truth, the policy makes sense – and should be evidence that the NRA doesn’t believe in open carry everywhere! That would of course be crazy.
New York Democrat Calls Open Carry “Throwback to Wild West”
While U.S. News and World Reports offered the floor to both sides of the debate with editorials, it seems odd that Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) would be the anti-”open carry” voice. As a democrat serving New York’s 4th district on Long Island she lives in a part of the state has some very strict gun laws, as this is in a county adjacent to New York City. So when she says in her piece, “I have never been against people owning guns for protection, hunting, or sport,” we have to believe she doesn’t need to be against people owning guns as the state, city and county laws already make it very difficult.
This is the sort of smoke and mirrors that these liberal politicians play. She can say she isn’t against guns, but the district she represents has very strict gun laws already! To this point, she is not one who qualified to speak out about the “open carry” gun laws in other parts of the country. But she also attempts to make her point by bring up some key facts:
“In the summer of 2009, a man stood just outside a venue in New Hampshire with President Obama inside talking about healthcare reform. He had a gun openly strapped to his thigh. Another time while the president was giving a speech at the convention center in Phoenix, a dozen people were openly carrying guns, including one who walked around with an AR-15 assault rifle strapped to his back. In this session of Congress, laws were passed to allow guns on Amtrak trains and in our national parks. Where does it end? When will people realize that we are moving backwards in reducing gun violence? And now it is happening throughout the states.”
Let’s tackle these one at a time. The man who stood outside a venue in New Hampshire, was as she says “outside.” He didn’t attempt to bring the gun inside, and who is to say whether anyone “illegally” had a concealed weapon? We just don’t know. The same goes for the situation in Phoenix. The guns were never near the POTUS, and no one was hurt. To the Amtrak trains, passengers can’t take guns to their seats, and guns must travel as “cargo.” What’s the problem? Already people could just as easily bring guns illegally as well. Same goes with the national parks, just because the law is changing doesn’t mean that people weren’t previously breaking the law.
But to the final point in her above statement: “gun violence.” Violent crime in the country is down, as ownership of firearms is up. But Rep. McCarthy lives in, and represents a district that has such strict gun laws that she probably knows (or represents) few actual gun owners. This makes her unqualified to discuss Open Carry.
Arkansas Times Offers Insulting Blog Post on Open Carry Debate
Is it fair to label those in support of open carry rights to be “nuts?” The author of the Arkansas Times Arkansas Blog thinks so in a post titled “Annals of gun nuttery,” which provides this colorful take:
“Concealed weapon laws are no longer enough for the gun zealots. Open carry is the new rage (and I do mean rage) and the threats of angry gun packers have spooked, among others, Starbucks, into not adopting the law-allowed private property rules against guns on premises.”
Poor choice of words maybe, but this is yet another attempt to paint all gun owners as “angry” and filled with “mean rage.”
NY Times News Story Offers Opinion – Anti-Gun Opinion at That
In a piece looking at both sides of the “open carry” debate that is raging around the country, The New York Times threw in just a tad about of anti-gun rhetoric:
“Newer, more driven by grass-roots and the Internet than the N.R.A., open-carry groups are also less centralized, less predictable and often more confrontational in their push for gun rights.”
The author goes on to suggest to the reader the dangers of such a move:
“Gun control advocates have raised particular concerns about open-carry laws because under these laws in many states, gun owners are not required to have a permit or any sort of training or testing.”
What is the point of stressing the issue of permits for example? On the one hand the new groups are described as “less predictable” and “confrontational,” wording that could imply these to be “dangerous” to some New York readers. Likewise, it is practically implied that it would create a wild west situation without any permits where novices carry guns. This news piece reads like an editorial at times, but should we expect anything less from the “old gray lady?”
Guns for Groceries
Things have actually gotten so bad that some residents in the San Diego area would trade guns for groceries. The concern we have in these cases remains that history could be lost. As collectors, we see that these are items that can’t easily be replaced. But in nearly all these cases it is – at least according to the media and the police anyway – about getting “guns off the streets.” So it is nice to see that SignOn San Diego reported this interesting turn of events:
“Not everyone was so enthusiastic. About a half-dozen men who said they are advocates of ‘open carry’, the practice of openly and legally wear an unloaded gun, stood at the corner of Market Street. They held signs and handed out fliers that told participants in the exchange they may be getting a bad deal, but none of the men were armed.”
It would be great if other law abiding citizens also let those handing in guns know that these items are worth more than a few bucks or a bag of groceries!
