No Translation Needed
When The Media Mentions “Gun Safety” — It’s Bad News
Gun safety—the real thing—looks like this. Someone providing instruction
to a new gun owner, not passing laws to disarm such people.
Remember when we were kids and any mention of gun safety applied to such things as 1) Finger off the trigger 2) Muzzle control (don’t aim at anybody) and 3) know your target and what is behind it?
This has all changed in recent times, with the loss of anyone remotely familiar with firearms from newsrooms across the country. Case in point: When the Minneapolis Star-Tribune recently reported how the DFL (Democrat-Farm-Labor) has taken control of the Minnesota Legislature starting this week, it was quickly cheered by “gun safety advocates” from a group called Protect Minnesota, and Moms Demand Action.
Bad enough these people claim to be “gun safety advocates,” worse still the establishment press goes along with the charade. It’s not just happening in the Twin Cities, either.
As reported by KSDK News a few weeks ago regarding a tragic mishap involving a St. Louis, Mo. toddler, “Gun safety advocates urge the community to take action heading into the holiday season.” These advocates were members of a group calling itself “Women’s Voices Raised for Social Justice.” They probably make more noise than members of A Girl and A Gun Women’s Shooting League, which really does practice genuine gun safety.
Then there is the “gun safety coalition” forming in Pennsylvania, where the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported about a “round table” meeting involving folks brought together by someone from CeaseFirePA. Nowhere in the story was there any mention of firearms instructors, gun shop operators or range safety officers. Purely an oversight, right?
In Illinois, WQAD News reported on a hearing before state lawmakers considering House Bill 5855, which could become law this week as the General Assembly convenes for what the media calls a “lame duck session.” The legislation is dubbed the “Protect Illinois Communities Act,” supported by — you guessed it — gun safety advocates.
This is a 9mm semiautomatic pistol. A lot of people in state legislatures around
the country want to make it tougher for you to buy one, and a guy in the
White House would like to ban them.
Minnesota Twinks
It’s become almost boringly simple to predict priority legislation by which party is in charge.
As noted above, now that the DFL is in complete control of the Minnesota Legislature, right at the top of their list, according to the Star-Tribune, is the enactment of “stricter gun laws” which will no longer be stopped by “a Republican majority” that no longer exists.
They all want what gun owners want: safer communities and safer streets. But “gun safety advocates” believe the route to this end involves penalizing, perhaps even disarming, law-abiding citizens. In the other corner are the gun owners, who figured out long ago the way to make neighborhoods safer is to lock up bad guys and leave good guys alone.
Minnesotans will face a “red flag” proposal and one for “universal background checks.” As quoted by the Star-Tribune, State Rep. Jim Nash, a Republican from Waconia, had it pegged: “The overwhelming majority of guns used in the commission of a crime are obtained illegally already … The universal background checks that they’re advocating for are only for people who are already law-abiding citizens.”
Minnesota’s Legislature convened Jan. 3.
In Illinois, “gun safety” advocates believe banning .50-caliber rifles and ammunition will accomplish something, as if South Side gang bangers walk around with Barrett rifles on their shoulders.
Over the next few weeks as legislatures get cranked up and the press corps around your state capitol churns out reports on gun control legislation, remember they will invariably call these “gun safety,” “common sense,” or “gun reform” measures and expect you to believe it.
The most reliable gun safety is between your ears, and last time I checked, my guns didn’t need “reforming.”
Sign of The Times
Proof positive there are no “gun people” anywhere on the New York Times editorial board, newsroom or copy desk came with an editorial Dec. 10 headlined “America’s Toxic Gun Culture.”
While the editorial went off about “AR-15 style semiautomatic rifles,” the photo used to illustrate this diatribe was of scores of shotgun shells; everything from 12 down to .410 bore. In response, Twitter caught fire as gun owners weighed in, suggesting in no uncertain terms there are some pretty foolish folks on the Times staff. Nobody caught the flub before it went public.
Major metropolitan newspapers do not seem to attract scribes with any knowledge of firearms. I’ve noticed this for decades. Every crime-related gun is either a “high powered assault weapon” or “ghost gun.” Nobody ever seems to inquire whether some outlaw nabbed, or nailed, in an armed robbery was licensed to carry, or whether his gun checked stolen.
Heading into 2023, just for the sake of amusement, read a newspaper or check stories online to see if this is the pattern with your own local news agency. A polite note to an assignment editor, or someone who wrote a story, might help straighten them out. Everybody should get a chance to learn and improve.
Does anybody in any legislature actually get the message on this sign?
How about any newsroom?
Then There’s Biden
Declaring, “The hallmark of the Joe Biden presidency is ignorance, the hallmark of the gun-policy debate is ignorance, and so when President Biden weighs in on firearms … the result is ignorance squared,” writer Kevin D. Williamson lit up the pages of the New York Post recently.
President Biden has become the focus of advertising from the Second Amendment Foundation. From his own lips, one realizes he’s not just keen on banning semi-auto rifles, he’d like to stop sales of 9mm pistols; you know, the most popular rifle today in the U.S., and the most widely selected sidearm caliber on the landscape.
Well into his piece, Williamson zeroed in on data I’ve used in the past. “As a matter of crime control,” he wrote, “semiautomatic rifles are very close to being a non-issue. In 2019, there were 13,927 murders in the United States, and rifles as a whole — not only semiautomatic, but all rifles combined — were used in only 364 of them. For comparison, 600 Americans died from being beaten to death with bare hands or stomped. There were more Americans murdered with baseball bats and other blunt objects than semiautomatic rifles.”
This is inconvenient data the establishment press carefully ignores. But you should write it down and keep it in your wallet before heading to the capitol to testify, write a noted to your lawmaker or just argue with a relative. Such data comes from the FBI Uniform Crime Report, which was a good tool until 2020, when the agency went to a new, and user-unfriendly, reporting platform.
Williamson talks about “the pattern of imbecilic futility from anti-gun activists.” A few lines later, he notes, “Of the offenders in custody who were in possession of a firearm at the time of their crime, about 2 % got that gun from a retail source, according to the DOJ.”
When’s the last time anyone wrote this in a general circulation newspaper? Williamson got it right.
