Don's Tuesday column

                 THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson Red Bluff Daily News  4/02/2013

Truth about gun control measures, rights

It may seem smug and self-assured for me to suggest that I am writing “the truth” on an issue about which those on the “gun control” side have little or nothing in agreement with the “pro-gun/2^nd Amendment rights” side. That’s true right there; arguments abound on everything from the meaning and intent of the 2^nd amendment (truism: it is the amendment that ultimately secures all the others), to the efficacy of existing laws designed to keep citizens safe from gun violence.

Everything about our Founding Documents bespoke the truth that government—the people aspiring to, placed in and using the reins of power, secured with official police and military might—is the only existential threat to the freedom and rights of “We the people….” One group, or “faction” as our Framers were known to state, can only wield a limited tyranny over another group; when the state acts to protect the life, liberty and property of the subjugated group (minorities and former slaves, for example), it acts righteously. When government acts to restrict the inherent rights and freedoms enumerated in the Constitution, as well as those held by people under Nature’s God, itemized or not, that same Constitution provides the means “to alter or abolish it.”

In assembling the 50 plus articles I’ve collected on the gun control/rights issue, I find a compelling and gripping narrative that touches many larger issues confronting our nation—media bias, dishonest use of statistics, ineffective but popular legal measures, selective polling, abuse of authority and disregard for the rights of the law-abiding—suggesting themes and a series. So, I will devote columns to the task of informing, shedding light and making passionate arguments for the benefit of readers; it may threaten some on the liberal side. Those who believe that if something makes sense to them, is well-intentioned, and can be postulated to save lives then we, who obey laws and respect other’s rights, should be willing to accept inconveniences and restrictions. I believe we should not, but you make up your own mind.

I’ll start with the obvious: barely a day goes by without the media keeping the issue in our papers, news sources and aggregators like Yahoo News. March 22, Daily News (AP) headlined “Gun control advocates press Dems on expanding background checks.” On March 24, Yahoo News (AP) carried “Both sides of gun debate make public appeals; New York’s Bloomberg, NRA chief spar on gun control, say it’s up to public now to press Senate.”

The first article is little more than a process story touting the Democrat line on the issue as it pulls on our heartstrings over the murdered children of Newtown: “…calling it [background checks] the best way for lawmakers to salvage a meaningful response to December’s elementary school massacre.” Response, yes; a measure that would have prevented the massacre, no!

Oh, the drama and suspense over what Harry Reid, Majority Leader, will do, decide and calculate. After all, the piece informs us, “Background checks are designed to keep guns from criminals, people with serious mental problems and others … (and) President Barack Obama and other supporters say the system helps keep dangerous people from getting guns and should be expanded to virtually all firearms transactions.”

I call this biased and unbalanced: In an article conveying thinly veiled cheerleading for Obama and Democrat talking points, it is left to the end of the last paragraph to read “The National Rifle Association and other opponents say the checks are easily avoided by criminals who get their weapons illegally, and say expanding them would be a step toward a government registry of firearms owners—which is forbidden by federal law.” AP simultaneously immerses the reader in the Democrat narrative, buries a tiny bit of the NRA side, then tells readers that one of the NRA concerns is irrelevant.

The lengthier AP story in Yahoo News really did a better job of covering “Both sides …” although it sandwiched the NRA’s LaPierre between Bloomberg’s gun control arguments and Colorado Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper’s signing laws for expanded background checks and banning magazines over 15 rounds. They apparently couldn’t close the piece without weighting it 33 lines for gun control, 22 lines for the NRA.

LaPierre argued, accurately in my view, that “universal background checks are ‘a dishonest premise.’ For example, mental health records are exempt from databases and criminals won’t submit to the checks. Background checks, he said, are a ‘speed bump’ in the system that ‘slows down the law-abiding and does nothing for anybody else. The shooters in Tucson, in Aurora, in Newtown, they’re not going to be checked, they’re unrecognizable.’” Then the AP writer revealed her ignorance by using the term “military-style assault rifles,” an inaccurate, misleading and pejorative description of what, in the hands of lawful citizens, are righteous home defense and sport shooting tools.

Suggesting measures that would have actually prevented some of the gun killings, “LaPierre said the NRA supports a bill to get the records of those adjudicated mentally incompetent and dangerous into the existing background check system for gun dealers, better enforcement of federal gun laws, beefed up penalties for illegal third-party purchases (and) gun trafficking … (and) armed security guards in schools as well.” More on useless checks and laws next week.