<![CDATA[anti-gun media bias]]>

Op-ed argues media won't cover gun politics fairly

July 21, 2022 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

For people who support the Second Amendment, it’s not difficult to see the anti-gun bias that our mainstream media possesses. They report the number of mass shootings as the one compiled by a heavily biased organization that intentionally inflates the number as high as they can and they do so uncritically, as an example.

In an op-ed, Leland Vittert argues just how bad it really is.

he complete unwillingness to even consider that good guys with guns can help.
Within 24 hours of Elisjsha Dicken taking down a gunman killing people at an Indianapolis mall, we’ve seen a concerted effort by the media to completely discredit the “good guy with a gun” theory.
Case in point, the front page of USA Today, which reads ”Has Uvalde response debunked the good guy with a gun narrative?”
That’s not an opinion piece, it’s a news article.
How about this piece, ”Do Indianapolis heroics say we need more good guys with guns in normally gun free zones?”
Nobody wrote that headline, it doesn’t exist.

He’s not wrong, either.

The truth is that the mainstream media doesn’t play fair in the gun debate. They have a side and they’re more than willing to push that agenda without even pretending to be neutral.

After all, let’s take a look at the news cycle today.

Usually following a mass shooting, Cam and I can’t get beyond the headlines focused on that shooting. That was the case after Buffalo, Uvalde, and Highland Park just like it was after Las Vegas, Parkland, and countless others.

Yet Greenwood Park is different.

You see, we had a few headlines for a day or two after that, then nothing. Three innocent people were killed, making this a mass shooting by any definition most people would accept. Why aren’t the headlines still about the shooting in that shopping mall?

The answer, obviously, is because a good guy with a gun put an end to that shooting. He was able to carry because of Indiana’s constitutional carry laws and he proved just what a concealed carrier could do by being in the right place at the right time.

And in the process, he shatters the narrative, the one laid out by USA Today in their supposed report.

I’ve talked about the key difference, as I see it, between Uvalde and Greenwood Park. That’s something you’re not going to see talked about in the pages of the New York Times or Washington Post. Instead, they’re too busy trying to bury the memory of what happened at Greenwood Park Mall.

Vittert argues that the media isn’t covering the issue fairly, and that’s putting it about as mildly as you can.

The truth is that the media has just about given up on any pretenses of neutrality. They might claim they’re neutral, but they don’t do anything beyond empty words in that regard. They don’t put up and they won’t shut up.

Fairness in reporting is long gone. Today, it’s a media that isn’t trying to report what happens but to shape how people respond.

Fairness has nothing to do with their goals anymore and hasn’t for a long time.

Op-ed calls for gun control law that authors admit criminals won't obey

July 21, 2022 by Cam Edwards Leave a Comment

Rarely have I seen the utter vacuousness of the gun control ideology stated as succinctly as the editorial board of the Kansas City Star did in an editorial trying to tie the murder of North Kansas City police officer Daniel Vasquez to “gun culture.”

The suspect in Officer Vasquez’s murder is accused of shooting the officer after being pulled over for an expired license plate, firing several rounds at point-blank range as the officer lay wounded on the street. When the suspect turned himself in to authorities several hours later, he had what police describe as an “assault-style” rifle in the passenger seat of his car, and allegedly told authorities he had the rifle in his lap as Vasquez approached the car.

The Kansas City Star’s editorial board, desperate to find some gun control angle to Vasquez’s murder, first took aim at Missouri’s Second Amendment Preservation Act before turning their attention to guns in vehicles.

Missouri’s law banning federal-local cooperation on gun crimes is a misguided farce, and should be tested in court. Let’s see Attorney General Eric Schmitt sue to block a federal investigation of a police killing.
We also urge lawmakers to broadly review Missouri’s gun laws, which generally allow adult drivers to carry concealable weapons in their vehicles. A Missouri law prohibiting pistols in cars would not have prevented this shooting.
Any suspect willing to shoot a police officer will not obey a law banning weapons in his or her car. It’s already against the law for anyone to fire a weapon from a motor vehicle, or at one, unless it’s in self defense.

So, the Star’s editorial board says right up front that any gun control law preventing legal gun owners from having access to a gun while traveling isn’t going to be obeyed by someone with violent criminal intent. That’s great, except for the fact that the editorial board completely contradicts itself just a few paragraphs later.

We urge the Missouri legislature to review its gun laws next year to make weapons harder to get and use. We suggest a specific emphasis on laws prohibiting guns in the front seat of cars.
They can label the statute “Daniel’s Law.”

If I understand the Star’s argument, criminals won’t obey a law barring firearms from vehicles, but they will abide by a law that restricts guns to the back seat?

Not only would the Star’s suggestion be roundly ignored by violent criminals, it would almost certainly be rejected by otherwise law-abiding citizens who want to protect themselves once they get out of their vehicles or even when they’re inside their cars. Under the Star’s proposed standard, the armed citizen in this 2020 carjacking in Missouri would have faced criminal charges for possessing their legally owned gun even though they acted in self-defense.

Billingsley and Whitfield, armed with pistols, approached a man washing his car in a stall at the car wash, according to the police account. They robbed the man, with Billingsley stealing the man’s cell phone. Smith was in the car when Billingsley and Whitfield got out of the car to rob the victim.
When Billingsley went into the victim’s car, Whitfield and the victim started to fight, and the victim shot and killed Whitfield.
Billingsley got out of the car and exchanged gunfire with the victim.
Police say that Billingsley fled the car wash and was picked up by Smith, who drove him to the hospital for his bullet wound.

Actually, I guess it would be a best case scenario that the armed citizen in question would have been charged with illegally possessing a firearm. If the Star’s editorial board really got their way the armed driver would have been unarmed and helpless to defend himself against the two armed carjackers, who by the Star’s own account, would have ignored the law the paper wants to see put in place.

The murder of Officer Daniel Vasquez is a terrible tragedy, and I hope the man responsible feels the full force of the law in response. But making it impossible or legally dangerous for law-abiding citizens to protect themselves from violent attackers isn’t the answer. Practically speaking, a law like this would only put legal gun owners at risk, not to mention being clearly unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has affirmed in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that the Second Amendment protects a general right to carry a firearm in self-defense in public, and that would most certainly include the right to protect yourself in your own vehicle. None of that matters to the editors at the Kansas City Star, who seem intent on putting ineffective and unconstitutional laws in place that would only put more people at risk of being the victim of a violent and unprovoked attack.

WaPo: Why won't these red states adopt “red flag” laws?

July 18, 2022 by Cam Edwards Leave a Comment

The gun control bill signed into law by Joe Biden a few weeks ago doesn’t compel states to impose Extreme Risk Protection Orders or other variants on “red flag” laws that allow for guns to be seized from someone deemed by a judge to be a threat to themselves or others, but that’s not stopping the Washington Post from trying to nudge Republican-led states into doing so.

The Post’s Kimberly Kindy says that “red flag” laws have become a focal point of debate and discussion over the past few weeks, but frets that most states controlled by the GOP don’t have these laws on the books and appear largely uninterested in passing them, even with the promise of federal grant money to implement them.

A Washington Post review of legislative battles in those states suggests that the bills were defeated through campaigns organized by local and national gun rights groups, including the NRA. Faced with heavy lobbying, Republican lawmakers have echoed the groups’ concerns in hearings and public venues.
States that have enacted the laws have also faced significant challenges in applying them.More than 1,000 cities and counties in red-flag states have declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries,” where local police have vowed to not use the laws. At the same time, GOP leaders in five states have recently proposed “anti-red-flag laws” to preemptively ban or repeal the measures.

Kindy at least points out that even in states that have had “red flag” laws on the books for years, the track record for the laws is mixed at best. But she mostly dismisses those concerns and instead focuses her attention on the lack of “red flag” laws in red states; something she seems to find inexplicable given the public support for the measures found in many surveys.

But that shift has not included a change in stance from the National Rifle Association or other gun groups. And given the groups’ long-running success of opposing such measures, some experts doubt the new federal law can budge reluctant state legislatures.
“In the places where red-flag laws haven’t passed, the reason was not tightfisted fiscal restraint on the part of the legislature,” said David Kopel, an attorney and gun rights advocate who has testified before Congress against red-flag laws. “It was pro-gun groups and the sheriffs in some cases saying, ‘No, we think this is terrible and violates due process.’ ”
The efficacy of the new federal law isn’t likely to be clear for months, as this year’s sessionsfor most state legislatures have already come to a close. Some advocates are eager to start fighting for a new round of bills, while others are prepared to renew efforts if their proposals falter in the waning days or months of the legislative sessions.

Kindy does her best to promote “red flag” laws, noting that two separate studies from Duke University found reductions in homicides in Connecticut and Indiana after the laws took effect. That doesn’t jibe with what the state of Indiana itself has reported, however.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the eleventh leading cause of death in Indiana and second leading cause of death for Hoosiers between the ages of 10 and 34 years.
In 2020, the Indiana Youth Institute reported that the percentage of Hoosier middle and high school students who considered attempting suicide ranged from a low of 11.8% (or 1 in 9 sixth grade students) to a high of 19.3% (or 1 in 5 tenth grade students). In addition, results from SAMHSA’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health estimates that 262,000 Hoosiers ages 18 years and older had serious thoughts of suicide during 2017-2018.
Indiana’s suicide rate has been higher than the national suicide rate since 2000 (source) and its rate in 2017 was the highest suicide rate observed in Indiana in over five decades (source). More than 1,000 Hoosiers have been lost to suicide every year since 2016 (source) and Indiana is in the top ten of U.S. states showing the largest percentage increase in deaths by suicide among 10-24 year-olds between 2007 and 2018.

Connecticut’s statistics also don’t reflect a decline in homicides since the state’s “red flag” law took effect in 1999. That year, Connecticut had 290 suicides, and while there’ve been a few years since with lower totals, since 2008 the state has had at least 300 suicides per year, with over 400 reported in 2017, 2018, and 2019 before dropping to 359 in 2020. It may be that firearm-related suicides have decreased since the implementation of “red flag” laws, but I thought the goal is to prevent suicide, not merely change the means by which individuals are taking their own lives.

And this, fundamentally, is my biggest problem with “red flag” laws. Even if all of the due process concerns are addressed, Extreme Risk Protection Orders and the like are ultimately gun control measures that have little to do with actually addressing the dangerousness of the subject of the petition. By focusing on “red flag” laws politicians are able to avoid the even more complicated issues of fixing broken mental health systems, which is where the focus really needs to be. Passing a “red flag” law may be doing something, but it’s not doing the right thing… at least if the goal is to identify, treat, or incarcerate dangerous individuals instead of just going after their guns and leaving the individuals to their own devices.