Giving Brady Gun Banners The Stage

February 13, 2008 | Filed Under 2nd Amendment, Constitution, Crime, Democrats/Leftists, Media Bias, News, Publius Contributor, Security/Safety, Society/Culture, Warner Todd Huston |

-By Warner Todd Huston

Recently, the anti-Second Amendment group, The Brady campaign to Prevent gun Violence, came out with another of their “scorecards” where they rank states according to how bad or good gun laws there are — according to their anti-gun reckoning, of course. Upon its release, the MSM warmed up its anti-gun machine and began touting this “scorecard” as if it were gospel. Headlines blared how “good” a state was because it restricted guns or how “bad” it was if it ranked as a state with fewer restrictions on guns according to Brady. Of course, all this assumes straight out that this Brady organization “scorecard” is the correct view of guns, as if they are correct in their assessment. And their assessment is that guns are bad. Period.

I will feature two of those stories to show the point, here. One is from the Columbus Dispatch, Columbus, Ohio. The second is a story from the News-Times, Danbury, Connecticut. The first laments that its state ranks “low,” in scores and the other happily touts that its state is “third-best.”

The Ohio paper gives a headline with a dire warning that “Ohio scores low in gun-control study.” We find the Columbus Dispatch leads with the news that Ohio scored only “13 points out of a possible 100″ on the Brady scale. The paper laments that, “Ohio is not doing enough to protect its citizens against gun violence, according to an annual scorecard released Thursday by backers of the Brady gun-control law.”

They also quote a gun-control advocate about the supposedly disappointing score.

Toby Hoover of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence said Ohio has not passed key laws on mandatory background checks on all gun purchases and bulk purchases of handguns.

To their credit they give time to the pro-gun folks, but the headline and lead paragraph certainly informs the reader where they lean. With a headline that claims the Ohio score is “low” and the front half of the story filled with the anti-gun position, we get the drift.

And, that is the better story of the two.

The next one from the News-Times doesn’t even give a single line to the other side of the issue.

With a sunny headline that proudly proclaims that, “State’s gun laws ranked third-best in nation,” the News-Times fills us in on all the good tidings of anti-Second Amendment info.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence ranks Connecticut in third place among states with the toughest gun laws in the nation.

But, the paper feels slighted despite Connecticut’s wonderful “rating” by noting that the Brady folks didn’t take into account their newest, gun grabbing state law.

And while the Constitution State achieved 54 points out of a possible 100, a statewide organization says the Brady scorecard fails to give Connecticut credit for having a law no other state has to confiscate guns.

“Connecticut has a unique law on its books, a law that several other states are now considering,” said Lisa Labella, co-executive director of Connecticut Against Gun Violence in Trumbull.

“The law allows police to apply for warrants to seize guns from the possession of people who pose a threat to themselves or others.”

This long piece ends with this stern warning by Kaitlin Lesnick, a spokesman for Mayor Bill Finch of Bridgeport, CT.

“According to the Brady scorecard, Connecticut is doing well, but there is room for improvement. Strengthening neighborhood policing will help to control illegal guns.”

Of course, in neither story are the words “Second Amendment” or “Constitution” to be found. As in every anti-gun story, the fact that we are talking about a Constitutional right is nowhere to be seen. It just isn’t a concern that the issue happens to be an American first principle, one upon which the entire country was built.

These two stories were not alone, of course. There were many just like it across the country as news rooms scrambled to give all the exposure to the Brady group as they could to help advance their agenda.

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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston