AP via WaPo Throws Out Biased Headline about Concealed Carry
Instead of suggesting it is a “Guns Rights” group, the AP via The Washington Post offered this headline, which seems to put a negative spin on it:
“Pro-gun group plans demonstrations protesting efforts to ban concealed weapons on Va campuses.”
Imagine if the Occupy Wall Street protests had so much negativity in the headline. The choice of words, notably “pro-gun” instead of “gun rights” suggests that these people might be extremists. Why was it necessary to describe the Virginia Citizens Defense League in such a way, except as to discredit them?
WaPo on the Defensive Over Fast and Furious
One rule in the media is that reporters and editors shouldn’t be part of the story, but last Friday The Washington Post offered an editorial that showed that the paper is very much now part of the news. Patrick B. Pexton offered an editorial titled, “Slow on the Draw on Fast and Furious?” He offered this thought on how the paper covered Fast and Furious, the ATF debacle that allowed guns to flow into Mexico:
“Conservatives have alleged that The Post has ignored this story because the paper’s editorial board, or more generally Post reporters, are liberal and pro-gun-control. The more outrageous conservative critics have even accused Post reporters of somehow being complicit in Terry’s death because an award-winning series The Post published in December, “The Hidden Life of Guns,” did not reveal Operation Fast and Furious and its missteps.”
Just the fact that the Post says, “conservatives” instead of critics suggests to us at FirearmsTruth that WaPo acknowledges that the editors are in fact “liberal.” Read more
We Agree With Michael Bloomberg For Once: Obama Should Stand Up For Gun Control
The Washington Post noted that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg “is demanding the Obama administration increase enforcement of the nation’s gun laws.” First, we have a couple of issues.
Actually, on the Rachel Maddow Show Bloomberg said, “the president should stand up (to guns). It’s one of the issues he can build a legacy on.” So that’s not quite demanding now is it?
Second, we again have to ask where the Mayor gets his nerve to make such a statement. He is merely the mayor of a city, again albeit the largest one in the nation. But that fact doesn’t entitle him to push agenda for the rest of the country.
Finally, in a twist we agree with Bloomberg. Obama should stand up for gun control, and he should push with all his might. It will be his legacy; a legacy of a one-term president. Clearly Bloomberg, who rarely ventures beyond the Hudson River doesn’t realize that Americans want guns, and if Obama tries to take them away, he’ll seal his fate and lose any reelection bid.
WaPo Offers Surprisingly Fair Story on Crossroads of the West Gun Show
We were sure that The Washington Post would be one of the papers taking aim at the Crossroads of the West Gun Show, which was held in Tucson this past weekend. We were surprised by the fair handling the show received.
Unlike some of the other coverage we’ve been following, this one notes that the organizers actually spoke with country officials and dealers before deciding to go on. The story also noted that a moment of silence was offered for the victims of last week’s shooting.
WaPo notes Shooting Gun Purchased “Legally”
Clearly guns are akin to being “damned if they do, damned if don’t,” or more accurately “damned if they are, damned if they are not.” The Washington Post was quick to report that the handgun used in Saturday’s tragic Arizona shooting was “legally purchased.” The paper notes:
“The gun used in the Arizona rampage on Saturday was a semiautomatic pistol purchased legally at a sports store about a month ago in a state that has among the most lenient gun laws in the country.”
Surely the paper would have taken aim just as strongly were the gun “illegally purchased.”
But the point is that we must assume that the editors at WaPo were delighted to know the gun was legally purchased, and the subsequent article is filled with facts from anti-gun groups, and only a note that calls to the NRA were unreturned. The article also failed to note any cases where a gun saved lives, but that would probably be suggesting too much.
Crime Report Cites WaPo Figures Without Checking
Why bother reporting a story if you’re not going to do any additional reporting? That’s the question for the Crime Report, which essentially just boiled down information that ran in The Washington Post. The problem is that this capsulated piece does no original research. It simply reports what others have said:
“President Felipe Calderon says Mexican forces have captured more than 93,000 weapons in four years. Mexican authorities insist that 90 percent have been smuggled from the U.S.”
Of course this 90 percent figure has been widely debunked, but Crime Report failed to note that fact.
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.
WaPo Offers Another Anti-Gun Editorial
We almost thought the year would run out before the editors at The Washington Post offered another anti-gun rant that blamed America for Mexico’s woes. No such luck. This week the editors at WaPo essentially pulled some paragraphs from past editorials and posted it once again.
The op-ed piece includes this passage:
“Over the past three years, some 30,000 people have been gunned down in Mexico in attacks fueled by drug cartels. Military and law enforcement officers there have seized some 60,000 weapons that were used in these crimes and traced to the United States. Mexican President Felipe Calderon has pleaded with U.S. officials to step up enforcement of gun laws and reinstate the assault-weapons ban. Doing so would be good policy but would trigger a fierce fight. For the moment, the administration has something much more modest in mind.” Read more
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.
