[WARNING: In this entry we link images from The Trace and the Washington Post that readers may find disturbing.]
As public opinion and consequently firearm policy have steadily tended toward affirming the Second Amendment, gun prohibitionists have reacted by becoming frantic. They now push the limits of decency, even in a popular culture that no longer sets many limits.
Culture war generalissimo Michael Bloomberg’s propaganda tool The Trace (also funded by long-time gun rights enemy the Joyce Foundation) resorts now to brandishing autopsy photos of child homicide victims in a desperate attempt to shame America into giving up its guns.
The Trace’s staff writer Jennifer Mascia, who brings her own sick baggage to the bloody display, hits her readers with every gut punch she can think of—racially motivated murder, spouse abuse, and a color photo of a young girl’s corpse splayed open at the chest with the medical examiner’s scalpel. The email version’s introductory paragraph slips this in: “Some observers argue that such shocking imagery is just what the gun safety effort needs.” So we’re to believe that a violation of The Rules of gun safety caused this girl’s death? Because that’s what “gun safety” means. We’re pretty sure The Trace really means “gun control”.
Can the culture war against gun owners get any sicker than this?
American gun owners are seeing a concerted propaganda effort attacking their very humanity. Until now such attacks have been limited to a few outbursts by gun prohibition activists and celebrities with bigger mouths than brains. But $50 million can buy a lot of writers, PR hacks, and air time. So now the torrent of insults, attempts at shaming, and lies has become nonstop, and unfathomably nastier.
Mascia’s blood porn was published the same day (coincidence?) as a similar piece of yellow journalism in the Washington Post. In WaPo’s October 14 Wonkblog entry, Christopher Ingraham starts with a headline you would expect to see at the checkout stand next to “Hillary Clinton Adopts Alien Baby”. “People Are Getting Shot by Toddlers on a Weekly Basis This Year” is how the newspaper of record in our nation’s capital is grabbing readers’ eyes these days. I wish I were joking. By blood porn we’re not talking about necrophilia or any other type of porn on adult sites like HD Porn Video, Free Xxx Videos Tube, HQ Sex Movies Download for example.
In a classic example of citing rare catastrophic events and falsely representing them as common, Ingraham went online and dug up media reports (not official statistics) of 43 preschoolers shooting people since the beginning of the year. He neglected to remind readers how exceedingly rare 43 of anything are in a nation of 320 million people. In a particularly warped touch (some Washington Post editor approved this) he symbolized each media report with a little figure of a diapered infant.
From this platform he launches a multi-pronged attack on gun owners that includes the standard Bloomberg wish list—more laws to criminalize gun owners who don’t lock up their guns at home, outlawing all but “smart” guns, and mandatory trigger locks. Ingraham slings a standard slur at the nation’s premier gun safety teacher: “gun lock requirements and smart guns have been vehemently opposed by the National Rifle Association and its allies.”
But he doesn’t bother to inform his readers of the logical objections to these measures, let alone the civil rights implications of mandating them. Gun locks are viewed by many real gun safety experts as dangerous because they violate Rule 3—Keep your finger (and other objects) off the trigger until you are ready to shoot”. And so-called “smart” guns are an unnecessary and dangerously unreliable feature that can render a self-defense gun worthless when it’s needed to save a life.
The Washington Post’s editorial policy has always been biased against gun owners. Nothing new to report there. But their standard of decency has always been above checkout line tabloid quality. The Trace’s crude attempts at public persuasion by waving a bloody shirt are brutally repulsive. The Trace evidently never saw the need to state any editorial standards of decency at all.
None of this is lost on gun owners. They tire of being compared to gang thugs, wife beaters, and murderous racists. As next year’s elections approach, those politicians who ally themselves with the ever nastier gun prohibition movement may have some explaining to do.
—Timothy Wheeler, MD is director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a project of the Second Amendment Foundation.
All DRGO articles by Timothy Wheeler, MD.