I never thought I’d see the day when the Philadelphia Inquirer ran an op-ed from NRA penned by Chris Cox. To say they are outright hostile to NRA’s position is to be mild. I’d like to think that PAFOA’s success in getting one placed might have convinced folks at NRA it was worth a shot. Clearly this has paid off now.
Category: The Media
We Are the Bottom Being Raced To
I continue to be befuddled by the number of Pennsylvania news outlets condemning HR822 as a race to the bottom. All it takes to get a concealed carry license in Pennsylvania is paying less than 30 bucks, filling out a form, and waiting a week or so for the background check to clear. If this state doesn’t have reciprocity with another state, it’s because the other state donsn’t want to. Our AG is obligated to probe other states for agreements.
The Post-Gazette summons the specter of “Florida Loophole,” even though that issue is entirely a matter of state law now, and would continue to be entirely a matter of state law if HR822 were to pass.
New York Times Article on the Freedom Group
The New York Times has an interesting article on the Freedom Group, including a link to this blog pointing to an article we did a few years ago when George Kollitides ran for the NRA Board. I think they are suggesting there is more controversy here than there actually is. We’re not really all that worried about what the Freedom Group is busy doing with the firearms industry, so much as we just had concerns as to what exactly George Kollitides was going to bring to the NRA Board.
I’ve never really been able to figure out what Freedom Group’s strategy is, short of being able to take advantage of economies of scale by consolidating what has generally been an inefficient cottage industry into something more lean and profitable. But what innovation has Freedom Group really bought to the industry? I think some of the biggest factors holding the industry back, namely marketing to younger shooters, is just as bad as it’s even been.
New York Times Misses the Mark
It is easy to attribute tragedies to inadequate gun control, but doing so overlooks the pronounced link between nontreatment of mental illness and violent acts.
Read the whole thing. I had never heard of the Treatment Advocacy Center before, but they look legit, and don’t appear to be part of the conservative DC establishment. Quite the opposite. So I’m going to suggest the gun control groups aren’t going to be able to legitimately complain these folks are just a bunch of right-wing insurrectionists.
Obvious News of the Day: Press Manipulated in F&F
Emails between senior Justice Department officials and investigators in the office of Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley show that congressional staffers leading the investigation into Operation Fast and Furious requested information about Operation Wide Receiver — a Bush administration program – and other similar cases, more than a full month before the DOJ leaked information to selected media outlets on October 31.
Manipulating the press is pretty easy when the outlets are already in the tank. Outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post have only been happy to help deflect the blow of this scandal.
Winning: Headlines I Never Thought I’d See
A lot of my readers have been in this issue for a long time. What got me concerned about Second Amendment rights was the federal government thinking it was constitutionally unproblematic to ban “assault weapons,” all the way back in 1994. Those of us who paid attention back then remember how the media treated the issue, and remembered how shooters, collectors, and people concerned about the Second Amendment couldn’t get a fair shake. So chalk this up to headlines I’d never thought I’d see:
CBS Carries NRA’s Water On Flawed Gallup Poll
For those of us who remember the media environment in the 90s: did you ever think you’d see left-wing media complaining that CBS News was carrying NRA’s water? Granted, Media Matters are paid shills of George Soros and Joyce, but it’s still satisfying to see. The media environment has gotten considerably better just in the past few years; good enough it’s actually getting harder to find really ridiculous reporting on the issue. That might be bad news if you’re a gun blogger, but it’s good news for the Second Amendment. Granted, the major papers still editorialize against us regularly, but the actual reporting is better, and our point of view is getting a fairer shake. Our opponents are aware of this, and it’s probably part of the reason support for gun control has been declining. Media Matters can try to spin this all they want, but that Gallup poll is bad news for gun control advocates, and everyone knows it.
Small Business Owners as Extortionists?
The Occupy Wall Street supporters in the media are starting to become as unhinged as some of the stranger folks up in New York. Our local suburban paper features a columnist calling small business owners who are concerned that it’s simply too expensive to hire new workers due to increasing federal requirements and tax increases proposed by the President extortionists who are unpatriotic.
Not only are they unpatriotic criminals, but these little local business owners are all hatching a plot to kill the economy in order to elect a Republican.
The crazy is strong in this one. Her column actually includes long quotes from a business owner who outlined the risks in hiring new employees – the direct financial risk of how much they will cost, the risk of how much value they will add to the organization, and the increasing hassles and expenses of dealing with various government bureaucracies who control the many aspects of his business. Yet, she cannot accept this simple answer. It’s all a plot to derail Obama. She has no evidence, but that won’t stop the accusations from flying in her paper.
Since she tried to tie such political extortion to our Congressman, he decided to respond with a damning response to her claims:
As part of [one] employer’s characterization of the obstacles facing his business, and in the story about [a local] manufacturer, neither made any mention of Republicans, Democrats, Obama or one of the GOP presidential hopefuls. It is not a case of pure politics, but of overbearing and ineffective government.
So it doesn’t matter to our local paper whether they business owners are actually supporting Republicans or they actually plan to vote for Obama. The fact that they won’t invest every dollar of their savings into taking massive risks in hiring is still a crime.
Fortunately, writer Katie Fratti & the other staff at the Courier Times don’t need to worry about whether money from extortionists is lining their wallets anymore. As investors in small businesses, we will not support their work as subscribers. If they come around selling subscriptions again, I’ll make sure they know exactly why we will not support them. We don’t believe they must agree with us, but actually publishing a conspiracy-laced rant against local businesses is not up to the basic journalistic standards we would expect from a professional outfit.
Recycling News?
I was surprised to come across this article about Wal-Mart caving to the gun control groups on “default proceeds”, because I thought most dealers had stopped doing that a while ago. Then I noticed this:
The new Wal-Mart policy on gun sale background checks has won praise from Michael D. Barnes, president of the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence. He said the decision to err on the side of caution puts safety before profit — a policy that should be emulated by other gun dealers.
Barnes hasn’t been President since 2006. So is the media so hard up for news stories that they are recycling news now? For the curious, a “default proceed” is where the background check doesn’t come back. The law says in that case, after a three day waiting period, if the check still has not come back, you can proceed with the sale. Most dealers won’t process sales under these terms these days, so reading, I was surprised Wal-Mart hadn’t changed that policy long ago. Well, turns out they probably did.
A Cynic on the Media
I assume the worst when I see a headline like this: Too much gun-related crime in Tennessee
So imagine my surprise when I see the editorial ends with this:
We want all of our law-abiding people to feel safe. But it is highly inadvisable to pursue that goal by abridging the gun rights of responsible citizens.
That makes it vitally important to impose firm, meaningful sentences on those who use guns while committing crimes.
MTV Censorship of Guns
I just saw something flash by me on Twitter about MTV censoring the word bullet in a song. I couldn’t believe it. Seriously, the word bullet? I mean Jersey Shore does more cultural damage to the world than any use of the word bullet.
Anyway, Google is my friend and they directed me to a nice little profile of captured MTV censorship of key words in various songs. Turns out that the word gun is regularly censored from songs.
In fact, even the NY Daily News, hardly a friend to the gun culture, ran a column on the absurdity of this censorship in one recent video:
In this case, they might have been a little fast on the trigger.
Not complaining, mind you, but Rihanna sings about sex and how chains and whips excite her and that’s just fine with the censor gods. Yet Foster the People’s gun references get shot down.
In the middle of the day, the main MTV channel airs commercials for Trojan condoms – during a telecast of “16 and Pregnant,” of course – and that’s okay.
They note the edited version ran at night during content aimed for college students. Because even though MTV will celebrate teen pregnancy during the day when kids are more likely to be in front of the tv, they feel they must protect the delicate ears of adults who are old enough to vote, buy tobacco, drink a beer, and even purchase their own guns from such evil words.