The Media – Page 35 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Inquirer Confused About Straw Purchasing

I don’t think the Inquirer gets how a straw purchase works, based on this article about a trafficker who was convicted in federal court for illegally selling a gun to a cop killer. They title it “‘Straw’ man convicted”:

Kudos to agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives who tracked the weapon. But the route of the gun into the hands of a killer proved all too common: Lashley, barred from owning a gun because of an earlier drug conviction, bought it from a man who purchased the gun legally in South Carolina. Lashley brought it to Philadelphia and, eventually, it came into Giddings’ possession.

This is one of those cases where I think reporters are legitimately confused. I forgive them for that. What I don’t forgive them for is editorializing based on their ignorance, and blaming the National Rifle Association for the state of affairs. But that aside, let us attempt to educate any reporters who may happen across this post.

First off, the title is wrong. The ‘Straw’ man was not convicted. Lashley was a gun trafficker and a felon-in-possession. He was not the straw man. Lashley, being prohibited under federal and state law from owning a firearm, and not being a resident of South Carolina, cannot buy a gun there, so he has to put up a straw man who can trick the dealer into making the sale, and pass the background check. The straw man in this case is Jason Mack, who is currently serving a 36-month sentence for his role in the straw purchase.

Straw purchasing is quite properly a felony, is a federal crime, and a state crime most places. There is nothing “legal,” to quote the Inquirer, about a straw purchase. Both parties, the person who puts the straw man up, and the straw man himself, are committing felonies. It is easy to prove this crime when authorities are properly motivated, as we see here, in the case of going after the person who’s illegal gun trafficking ended up contributing to another convicted felon killing a police officer. It is indeed good work on the part of federal authorities, but laws already exist for prosecuting this crime if we only take the crime seriously. Whining that the NRA is getting in the way of this, when the NRA has been consistent that we should actually enforce the laws on straw purchasing, is disingenuous. Here it might be based partly out of ignorance, but I think reporters and editorial boards should make some effort to understand the law before throwing accusations at others, and calling for more unneeded restrictions.

Heat and Kitchens

Apparently some Indiana reporters can’t take it.

Brave for a San Francisco Paper

The San Francisco Chronicle apparently draws the line at public sex tents for the Folsom Street Fair. Would the fairgoers even use them? Isn’t the whole point to draw attention and to shock people?

The Ignorance is Sometimes Just Too Astounding

Through the course of any given day I get a lot of editorials coming across my inbox that advocate for gun control. I ignore the vast majority of them, unless I see a new pattern, a new angle, or it’s exceptionally well done. If it’s just your standard tripe, which is most of them, I tend to ignore it. But occasionally, you’ll find an op-ed that is not so standard tripe. This turd glistens and gleans like few others:

Columbine High School in Colorado. Thirty-two killed at Virginia Tech. Last month, it was the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, where investigators questioned whether a better system for background checks could have averted the killings.

It came up again last week, when four police officers were gunned down at a diner in Washington State.

The Columbine kids broke a number of federal gun laws to get their guns. They used a straw purchaser, who could clear the background check, to buy their guns and transfer to them. That is what is known as a felony. How would making it more illegal help? The killer at Virginia Tech cleared the background check too, but that problem is already been fixed. Hasan was not on the terror watch list, and had no criminal background. How would any changes in the law have prevented that? The killer in Washington State was a convicted felon. It’s already a 10 year felony for him to possess a firearm. How can we make it more illegal?

At the same time, we wonder why anyone needs a handgun, which exists simply to kill people. And, for the most part, handguns are in the possession of people bearing bad thoughts and bad attitudes.Â Almost three-quarters of gun homicides in our country are committed with handguns.

Wow, you know, all those matches we run at my club with handguns must be a figment of my imagination, then, if they are only “meant to kill.” Also, if killing in all circumstances is wrong, and a stain on society, then why do we allow police to carry handguns? The police aren’t murdering thugs, are they?

One common excuse is regular folks need handguns to protect themselves from the bad guys. Did being armed protect those four police officers in Tacoma?

So by that logic, we should strip firearms from all police officers, right? Since they are completely and obviously useless for self-defense. This one situation obviously proves it!

Governments have tried. The attempts include: restricting firearms purchasing by youths; setting waiting periods for firearm purchases; establishing gun “buy-back” programs; restricting gun shows; issuing stiff sentencing of gun law violators and educating everyone about firearm safety.

None of these efforts has worked.

As tough economic times add to the stresses on everyone, it might be a good time to revisit the handgun issue. There are laws in place — in Michigan and across the country. It is time to make those laws tougher — before someone gets killed in the Quay Street parking lot.

We’ve tried all these things, and none of them have worked, so clearly we just need to redouble our efforts. Some of those things have clearly not worked, but some of them have. We know that cracking down on criminals lowers crime. We know adding police officers to the streets lowers crime. We also know that gun safety education works, since we’ve seen gun accidents decline while the number of guns has gone up.

The op-ed says they want to find a way to preserve the Second Amendment, but seems to be open to the idea of a handgun ban to accomplish that. How does the Times Herald reconcile that? How do they reconcile that with DC v. Heller? You can’t just say “make the law stricter.” How is this going to work? There’s a lot questions the editorial board is clearly not thinking seriously about, at the least, and at worst isn’t thinking about at all.

Bloomberg Continues to Lie About Tiahrt

From the Washington Post today:

During the Clinton administration, the FBI had access to records of gun background checks for up to 180 days. But in 2003, Congress began requiring that the records be destroyed within 24 hours. This requirement, one of the many restrictions on gun data sponsored by Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), meant that Hasan’s investigators were blocked from searching records to determine whether he or other terrorist suspects had purchased guns. When Hasan walked out of Guns Galore in Killeen, Tex., the FBI had only 24 hours to recognize and flag the record — and then it was gone, forever.

The idea that Tiahrt Amendment restricts this is utter nonsense. You can find the language of the actual Tiahrt Amendment on the Congressman’s web site here. MAIG might be slick compared to other gun control groups, but they would appear to carry over the tactic of using outright deception to promote their agenda. The language that calls for NICS records to be destroyed is in the United States Code, and has been ever since the system was established in 1994. From the 1994 Brady Act, which is the signature piece of legislation passed by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (then Handgun Control Inc.), and which created the National Instant Check System:

(2) If receipt of a firearm would not violate section 922 (g) or (n) or State law, the system shallâ€”(A) assign a unique identification number to the transfer; (B) provide the licensee with the number; andÂ (C) destroy all records of the system with respect to the call (other than the identifying number and the date the number was assigned) and all records of the system relating to the person or the transfer.

Sorry, Bloomberg, it’s in the signature piece of gun control legislation, you know, the one that was rammed down our throats in 1993 and partly resulted in the Democrats losing Congress in 1994? Suddenly now it’s inadequate and is responsible for arming terrorists? Perhaps they need to complain to the Brady Campaign for pushing their signature legislation.

The problem for Bloomberg is that the truth is inconvenient. If a lie helps discredit the Tiahrt Amendment, which thwarted the City of New York from continuing its lawsuits against firearms manufacturers to hold them responsible for criminals using guns, so much the better. I’m only sorry a paper like the Washington Post is only so willing to play along. It’s not hard to fact check these claims, but it appears helping with the agenda is more important.

UPDATE: I would also point out there was nothing in the Tiahrt Amendment language that prevented law enforcement from tracing the firearms used in the Ft. Hood shooting. That’s how we know he acquired them through legal channels, since he was not convicted of anything prior.

UPDATE: Here’s the original appropriations bill that the Tiahrt language appears in. It does contain this language:

SEC. 617. (a) None of the funds appropriated pursuant to this Act or any other provision of law may be used forâ€”

(1) the implementation of any tax or fee in connection with the implementation of subsection 922(t) of title 18, United States Code; and

(2) any system to implement subsection 922(t) of title 18, United States Code, that does not require and result in the destruction of any identifying information submitted by or on behalf of any person who has been determined not to be prohibited from possessing or receiving a firearm no more than 24 hours after the system advises a Federal firearms licensee that possession or receipt of a firearm by the prospective transferee would not violate subsection (g) or (n) of section 922 of title 18, United States Code, or State law. (b) Subsection (a)(2) shall take effect not later than 180 daysÂ after enactment of this Act.

I should note that the current appropriations bill also contains this language (See Sec. 512). This language was necessary because the Clinton Administration had implemented a rule that allowed the records to be kept, despite what the Brady Act called for. Apparently this was upheld by the courts when challenged. So it would seem I was wrong, and Bloomberg isn’t lying about Tiahrt. Bloomberg merely wants the federal government to return to the previous practice of ignoring the Brady Act, and thus federal law.

Philly Inquirer Latches on to VPC Google Research

The Philadelphia Inquirer also notes that concealed carry is utterly dangerous, because VPC’s highly scientific Google research shows that concealed carry license holders across he whole country over a two years murder at a rate considerably less than your average Philadelphian. Maybe that’s because the city just lets murder suspects walk out of jail. Maybe one day Philadelphia newspapers like the Daily News and Inquirer will actually start holding city leaders responsible for the real causes of the city’s crime problem, which have precisely nothing to do with the state’s gun laws.

How Gunnies Communicate

Professor Brian Anse Patrick has a new book coming out soon on how gun owners communicate even though many mainstream outlets are outright hostile to our political agendas: Rise of the Anti-Media: In-forming America’s Concealed Weapon Carry Movement. I don’t have a ton to say about it since a) it’s not out yet, and b) I don’t have a copy to review. But I did find the publisher’s pitch quite interesting:

The American concealed weapon carry movement, consisting largely of political amateurs, has changed the direction of gun control policy in the United States in the last two decades, overcoming well-entrenched professional elites in the process. In Rise of the Anti-Media: In-forming America’s Concealed Weapon Carry Movement, Brian Anse Patrick reports the results of his almost ten years of research on the concealed carry movement. He skillfully traces the emergence of a politically charged new American gun culture from the older traditional “hobby” gun culture. Patrick argues that the movement has succeeded because overlapping horizontal interpretive communities of new American gun culture developed their own anti-media of communication, bypassing mainstream media systems, creating a new and politically potent informational sociology that works to their benefit. Rise of the Anti-Media illuminates both how the American concealed weapon carry movement successfully reclaimed the territory of the Second Amendment as an unambiguously individual right, and how the anti-media of new American gun culture have reenergized the social action schematic underlying the First Amendment.

It’s a bit pricey, but it sounds like something up my alley. If someone else gets it first, please do share comments about it. I’ve found Prof. Patrick’s comments on related subjects to be interesting, as longtime readers might recall from my liveblogging coverage of his speech at the NRA legal symposium at George Mason a few years ago.

Tracking the Blood in the Streets

This editorial could have been written by our friend Mark in the comments of a previous thread. Perhaps we are seeing a new tactic against concealed carry, to claim it’s just dangerous, and then say there’s no way to prove its safe because the evil gun lobby won’t let us see who has licenses. Good to see VPC’s allies in the media willing to help this meme along.

Where Does the Media Find These People?

I just watched Paul Helmke and Jacob Hornberger debate on Nightline’s Twittercast, and I thought Paul mopped the floor with him. Hornberger came off as a foaming at the mouth libertarian extremist, while Paul Helmke was, well, Paul Helmke. Hornberger is President of the Future of Freedom Foundation, which has little to do with gun rights, and I wish would have nothing to do with gun rights after hearing him debate Helmke. My disdain for doctrinaire Libertarians is well known, but it’s hard for even me to believe Hornberger’s statement on Fort Hood:

Amidst all the debate over whether the Ft. Hood killer is a terrorist, murderer, enemy combatant, traitor, sleeper agent, or insane person, there is one glaring fact staring America in the face: what happened at Ft. Hood is more blowback from U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, specifically the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Even at this early stage of the investigation, the evidence is virtually conclusive that the accused killer, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was motivated to kill U.S. soldiers at Ft. Hood by deep anger and rage arising from the things that the U.S. government has been doing to people in the Middle East for many years.

Yeah, you can go to hell Mr. Hornberger. You don’t represent the views of mainstream gun owners, hell, you don’t even represent the views of mainstream libertarians. With guys like this on our side, we don’t need enemies. Hornberger is an extremist, and yet he was chosen by Nightline to represent gun owners. Unbelievable.

How to Fix Sagging Ratings?

CNN has dropped to the bottom of the crap pile of Cable News. They must think they can help up their ratings by scaring people with the militia bogeyman:

There might have been a time when they would have worked, but I think everyone realizes by now that the emperor has no clothes.