Sunday, February 24, 2013

Media Bias Vs, Guns & Self-Defense

At this time their is much debate as to the People's keeping and bearing of arms. It appears that most of the fire-and-light is on the part of the supporters of the fullest exercise of "Second Amendment Rights" and most of the smoke (To us a "politer" expression) is from the opponents to that exercise.

The "media" (Even FOX News) appears to be immersed in an anti-gun OR anti-self-defense OR both bias. This is best generally described in Chapter-2 of the book cited below.
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The best individual illustration of the claimed general bias, as noted above, is in the Appalachian Law School case where: A criminal began "shooting up" occupied class-rooms, killing three; Two students retrieved their guns from their cars; And, took the mass-murderer into custody, before he slaughtered more,  by the "mere" pointing of their hand-guns. (This and the material below is paraphrased from Mr. Lott' book.)
       A week after this incident a Lexus-Nexus search found 208 stories about this event. Only four mentioned that the savior-students were armed. Some stories stated that the murderer was "tackled" OR "dropped his gun" after being "confronted" (Without mentioning the use-of-arms) or the statement (Lie?) that three students "pounced" on the criminal, Etc..
       However, sixty-eight stories described the gun the murderer was carrying. (Implying that only criminals, especially murderers, carry guns?)
       Several newspapers used the "space constraint" excuse to cover-up their failure to report facts, The AP may have exercised outright fraud in editing out the defenders' guns from stories.
       Mr. Lott provided many other examples of citizens using guns, by firing or "mere" pointing to defend themselves. 
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It may be that "dead bodies" or massive wounding is more "newsworthy" the lesser wounding or "mere" pointing of guns. However, in this time of hot-and-general debate about guns and the Second Amendment, it would appear fair, if "politically incorrect"to report on all armed self-defense cases in every newspapers' general circulation areas. [Of course, many citizen and self-defense use of firearms are not reported to the Police out of a fact-based fear that their means of self-defense will be seized and, as likely as not, never returned to the citizen OR they will be criminally charged with some tyrannical anti-gun law (Think Chicago!). This is specially important: To poorer citizens who may not be able to afford another gun; Or, as increasing their physical danger in the case that criminals or their friends/family might return and "waste them".
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BOOK REFERENCE: Lott, John R.; The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong; Regnery Publishing, Inc.; Washington, DC; 2003.

COMMENTS ON AUTHOR: There is no doubt but that Mr. Lott has his own bias. However, that "bias" appears to be based on facts, is not "Arbitrary and  capricious, based on will rather than judgement"; And, is held in in the light of our Constitution, traditions of freedom, and the basic soundness of our American traditions.

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