The manner in which the mainstream media portrays some political issues represents the triumph of emotion over reason. Soundbites, bumper sticker slogans, and dramatic video of marches and demonstrations have replaced reasoned analysis, hard facts, and objective study.
The coverage that dominated televised news programs in the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida school shooting represents the worst of biased, unprofessional, and inaccurate news analysis.
The first, and perhaps most salient, question ignored in the headlong rush to de facto eliminate Second Amendment rights concerns practicality. Will a perpetrator, who is intent on mass murder, rape, robbery or any other felony truly be deterred by a statute outlawing possession of weapons? Obviously, the disrespect that individual manifests towards both fellow humans and the law would also extend to any legislation prohibiting gun ownership.
Nor would it limit the ability to obtain a weapon. Just as the war on drugs has utterly failed to limit the availability of narcotics, so too would any attempt to eliminate the manufacture or sale of guns.
Washington, D.C.’s WJLA news notes that “…many cities with the toughest gun control laws lead the nation in violence…One of the top ten states with the most restrictive gun laws in the country is Illinois, where last year there were 650 murders in Chicago alone, according to a USA Today’s compilation of crime data…In Maryland, another state with some of the strictest gun laws in the country, Baltimore had 343 murders last year and has highest per capita murder rate in the nation. The city was also just named the most dangerous city in America by USA Today.”
Baltimore, by the way, is a city that alleged it couldn’t afford to provide adequate heating for its schools, yet somehow found $100, 000 to rent buses to send students to Washington, D.C. to join in protests advocating gun control, according to Sons of Liberty media.
Gun Laws.com reports: “An example of how stricter gun control laws did not aid in lowering crime rates is Washington D.C. In 1976, D.C. adopted what was to be considered one of the few extremely restrictive gun control policies in the country. The murder rate since the time of new gun control policy rose 134%. Yet another example is New York City, which also implemented similarly stringent gun laws as D.C. had similar results. In the early 1970s, about 19 % of homicides involved pistols, and shortly after the new laws were in place, this number rose to about 50%. Furthermore, the restriction of firearms allowed for only 28,000 lawfully possessed or acquired firearms, yet law enforcement estimations had the number at 1.3 million illegal handguns in the city. Conversely, states with fewer restrictions such as New Hampshire and Vermont, have proven to the safest of all the states, with Vermont ranking in at 49th in crime and 47th in murders.”
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Justin Haskins, writing in Newsday , found that “many of the states with the lowest crime rates, including homicide rates, also have some of the fewest limits on gun ownership. In fact, the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a group that supports enhancing gun-control laws, gave in its recent gun-control report card “F” grades (for having lax gun laws) to five of the six states that have the lowest homicide rates. If having fewer gun restrictions causes more violent crime, why would many states with the lowest homicide rates also have relatively few gun-control laws? The data also show there is no connection to higher gun ownership rates and greater amounts of crime. There are only six states in which 50 percent of the households own firearms: Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, West Virginia and Wyoming. If gun-control supporters are correct about the dangers of firearms, these states should have significantly higher crime rates, but the opposite is true here as well. Data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show four of those six states ranked in the top half of all states for having the lowest homicide rates. Two of the states, Idaho and Wyoming, ranked in the top six.
“Further, many cities with very low legal gun ownership rates and stringent gun-control laws, such as Chicago, have extremely high gun-related murder rates. Gun-control laws also don’t prevent mass shootings. An analysis conducted by statistician Leah Libresco shows Australia and Britain have not experienced fewer mass shootings or gun-related crimes since enacting their very strict gun-control laws.”
Some of the various events in Parkland’s aftermath have been used by politicians to garner support or publicity, and to register like-minded new voters. Politicians have used the tragedy as a way to garner publicity in venues that were previously off-limits to them. In one example, despite regulations prohibiting campaigning in public schools, Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-Connecticut) addressed students at the Cheshire High School, reports Daria Novak, who co-hosts the public access TV news program the American Political Zone.
Schools that have had programs concerning the issue have not discussed the racist history of gun control. Before the American Revolution, even freed ex-slaves were prohibited from possessing weapons. Once again, a century later, following the Civil War and the liberation of all slaves, some southern states enacted laws to prevent blacks, even those who had fought as soldiers in the War Between the States, from having guns, despite the desperate need for self-protection from groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
The horror of school shootings does call for the adoption of measures to prevent them from happening again. But ineffective measures, feel-good rhetoric, and political grandstanding are obviously not the answer, and deter attempts to enact truly viable solutions.