Comparing and Contrasting Two Second Amendment Articles

A pretty fair article on a North Carolina firearms instructor can be found at Instructor Teaches Citizens How to Protect Themselves with a Gun courtesy of Keep and Bear Arms. A quick quote:

He educates citizens ranging from retirees to night nurses to bankers, along with people who have had their homes broken into or have faced danger.

“People are afraid on many levels and we can take them and teach them the correct way to fire a gun and also give them the education and laws to know what rights they hold,” Rhodes said.

This is a straight up puff piece, with no attempt to inject any anti-gun bias. As such, I left the article feeling as though I might like to take a course from this guy some day.  But there is little discussion of policy, Second Amendment rights, or the philosophy behind the use and carrying of arms other that noting that his father always carried a gun because "you might never know when you need it to protect yourself against the bad guys."  In fact, I have to wonder if the article wasn't just a reprint of a presser.

Now compare and contrast with The Enforcement of Gun Laws. Where do I begin? How about this:

The mayors' group has helped defeat legislation that would allow gun owners with concealed-weapons permit in one state to carry a concealed firearm in another, a sore point with National Rifle Association supporters. The mayors' group wants to make federal trace data about guns used in crimes available to law enforcement and to make summary reports about trace data available to the public -- another sore point for foes.

Trace data has been available to law enforcement all along for specific crimes. In other words, if a police department is investigating a crime, they have the gun and serial number, and ask the BATFE to trace it, they get this data for this specific gun. What the Mayors actually want is the entire database of trace data to help them prosecute lawsuits against specific gun manufacturers. It is called the Tiahart Amendments and you can find their take on these amendments at Mayors Against Illegal Guns Federal Legislation site.  But no mention of the controversy, or why the "gun lobby" (actually, millions of individual citizens, but characterized in the article as the NRA), might have objections to what the Mayors want to do.  Indeed, if all they wanted was to enforce the laws on the books, why is there even a page on Federal legislation?  Clearly, they don't want to just enforce existing laws, but create more laws making life harder for legal gun owners, while failing to do anything to stop actual criminals.

This paragraph is symptomatic of the entire article.  Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) is characterized as just some poor small town rubes who reasonably just want to enforce the laws we already have.  They are pitted against Big Guns, who are forcing upon an unwilling public a bunch of lethal killing machines for profit.  But in fact, MAIG is a vicious bunch of gun grabbers who don't trust you and me to responsibly handle the keeping a gun.  They also don't seem to think that you and I can handle the truth.  Take a look on the write up for the Tiahart Amendments under the MAIG Federal Legislation website by clicking "read more" in red.  Note the stated reasons they say they want this data.  It's to go after gun dealers who break the law.  Now, unless I missed a memo, I don't remember mayors being deputized to act as Federal agents.  So how are they planning to do this?  I submit that the reasons stated are not truthful, and that the real reason is the desire to put gun manufacturers out of business with burdensome lawsuits in friendly courts.  But the "journalist" writing the article never even raises the question.  Is she even aware of the web site?  Or, does she deliberately burnish the MAIG reputation because in her mind they are fighting on the side of the angels?

Mayor Bloomberg, with the backing of MAIG, has been running around the country acting like some kind of paladin, or a lone ranger, swooping in on gun dealers and gun shows hoping to find illegal activity taking place.  His latest exploits can be found here. In Virginia he broke the law, having private investigators make straw gun purchases, all under his own authority (hint: he has no such authority). Unfortunately, he has not done anything about the real cause of crime in New York City, NYC criminals.  According to Hizzoner, since he has been incompetent at controlling criminals within his own jurisdiction, people as far away as Virginia and Arizona must have their rights curtailed.  And this "journalist" supports more out of control behavior from Bloomberg by refusing to ask the hard questions.  I now know why they call it the "media." Because calling it "journalism" would be a gross misuse of the language.