Perhaps this post should be titled "Shoot Out at the P-I Corral". It is long.
I read the article and mailed Mr. Shapley:
"Your editorial was posted on one of the pro-gun message boards, with an accompanying tone of disbelief as to the even-handedness of it. A sad commentary in itself. While it gave the impression of "a plague on both your
houses" approach, I found a more subtle anti-gun bias. To my jaundiced eye, you're equating emotional outbursts and outright lies of the antis with the "just-the-facts ma'am" dialogue of the pros.
"Is there no shame when it comes to milking political mileage out of tragedy when someone is killed with a gun? The bodies are still warm when the interest groups crank up the spin machines."
Surely you jest. It was far more than spin machines. Reread the demonization of the NRA and gun owners after Columbine. At one point I was tempted to wear a yellow Star of David with the words "Gun Owner" on it. Their spin
machines shriek emotionally, calling us baby-killers or worse, with front-page support of the media. Our side calmly tries to point out the facts, and gets buried on the back pages.
"National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre weighed in with the incredibly crass assertion that Clinton was "willing to accept a certain level of killing to further his political agenda" -- including getting Gore elected."
I submit that not only was LaPierre was correct, he was possibly too mild in his condemnation of Clinton. This devious little man waits, vulture-like, for any gun tragedy to occur. Then he literally dances in the blood of these innocents, pushing his own agenda. The parading of Columbine students before Congressional members pleading for more gun legislation is just one of many
disgusting examples.
"Trigger locks won't save a single kid unless responsible, educated adults
properly install them, but it would trample on no one's Second Amendment rights to pack one with every firearm sold in this country."
Yes it would, as currently written. You can't legislate common sense. You can however, enact a law which eventually allows the police to make random household checks of your firearms to ensure compliance. Australian gun owners face that now with mandated safes, and since it appears that the gun laws of socialist countries are used as a template for America, you can bet
that would be the next "sensible" gun law proposed.
"Gun shows: All sales by licensed gun dealers, even at gun shows, are subject to Brady Law background checks (except sales to buyers who already qualify for and possess a concealed-weapons permit)."
THANK YOU. You are the first newsman to point that out. Everyone else implies that one can just walk in and buy a gun from anyone without any check whatsoever.
"The only sales that don't have to comply with the Brady Law at gun shows (or in living rooms or out of car trunks) are those between private parties. And that may well provide a gun-show vector for bad guys buying guns."
A valid point, and most of us would not quibble with checking the background of a purchaser, as a CYA if nothing else. However, the real "loophole" in anti-gun eyes, is that there is a gun transaction without it being registered by the government. Rather than maintaining a list only of felons or mental incompetents, the FBI, in clear violation of the law, asks for
your Social Security or Driver's License number, what type of firearm you are purchasing, and then keeps a record of it "for audit purposes". If that isn't backdoor registration, I don't know what is. Remove that record-keeping and most of the resistance to closing the "loophole" would
vanish.
"At the risk of rendering unemployed a gaggle of spinmeisters, razor-cut
mouthpieces and professional polemicists, could we in the broad American mainstream just ignore the alarmists and provocateurs at each pole of the gun debate and seek some common-sense solutions among ourselves?"
I submit that the "alarmists and provocateurs" on the anti-gun side FAR
outnumber the pro-gun spokesmen. We aren't the ones coining phrases like "Cop Killer Bullets", "Sniper Rifles", "Assault Weapons", "It's for the children", ad nauseum.
Take a deeper look at the ramifications of these proposed "sane and sensible" laws, then write an editorial exposing the dangers inherent to everybody's freedoms under the guise of "gun control"."
I got this broadside in reply:
Well said, if a bit hyperbolic. But please allow me to quibble on three points.
One, it was a column, not an editorial. Two, you did not sufficiently explain why requiring the packaging of a trigger lock with firearms would trample on anyone's Second Amendment rights. "Yes it would" seems less than edifying. Three, you say you picked this column off a message board; you live in another state; both indicate that you are not a regular reader of the P-I.
So where do you find the temerity to tell me to take a deeper look and write something exposing the dangers to individual rights embodied in gun-control laws? You presume that I have not already done so.
As a matter of fact, I was elemental in bringing this editorial board to opposed gun-control legislation for the first time in recent history. The P-I's shocking
opposition to Initiative 676 (universal handgun licensing, under the guise of child safety) was a key factor in its defeat.
I appreciate your supportive words, but I do not appreciate your presumptuous waltzing into town to tell me what I should be writing.
As to your "subtle anti-gun bias", bunk. I own firearms and have a concealed weapons permit. You, like so many of those the column was meant to criticize, must read into any such commentary your own ideologically tainted slant.
I don't bother much with subtlety; it lends itself to misreadings. If I were to have an "anti-gun bias" you wouldn't have to read between the lines to find it.
I do have a bias against anyone who uses the deaths of innocents to forward a political or ideological agenda. Just today on the
phone I ragged on the Washington Ceasefire (gun-control) folks over a fund-raising campaign tied to the Columbine anniversary.
A pox on all your houses!
But hey, thanks for taking the time to write.
Shapley @ the P-I
I replied:
Well, you MUST be a conservative -- you wrote back
. I have yet to hear from any of the liberal crowd in past letters. This is long, so I apologize in advance.
"Well said, if a bit hyperbolic."
Well, they don't seem to be making Prozac as strong as they once did. I AM willing to share, though.
"But please allow me to quibble on three points. One, it was a column, not an editorial."
OK, the message board called it an edtorial. When the page came up, I read O-P-I-N-I-O-N as "Ed-i-tor-i-al". At the beginning, under your name, it said "SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD". At the end of your article it said: "Thomas Shapley is an editorial writer and member of the P-I Editorial Board." I added 2 + 2 and got 5. It would have been even more amazing then, if it had been an editorial. Columnists tend to be a bit more feisty and I should have caught that. Mea Culpa.
"Two, you did not sufficiently explain why requiring the packaging of a trigger lock with firearms would trample on anyone's Second Amendment rights. "Yes it would" seems less than edifying."
I assumed that you were not aware of other parts of that law. I was referring to the fact that enacting such an innocuous-sounding law allows the camel's nose in the tent. For clarity's sake, I'm referring to "The Child Safety Lock Act of 1999" H.R. 1512 at
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c106:1:./temp/~c106et73F1::
A few sentences to illuminate my point:
TITLE I--CRIMINAL PROVISIONS - SEC. 101. HANDGUN SAFETY.
`(B) the handgun is accompanied by the following warning, which shall appear in conspicuous and legible type in capital letters, and which shall be printed on a label affixed to the handgun and on a separate sheet of paper included in the packaging enclosing the handgun:
`THE USE OF A LOCKING DEVICE OR SAFETY LOCK IS ONLY ONE ASPECT OF RESPONSIBLE FIREARM STORAGE. HANDGUNS SHOULD BE STORED UNLOADED AND LOCKED IN A LOCATION THAT IS BOTH SEPARATE FROM THEIR AMMUNITION AND INACCESSIBLE TO CHILDREN." (Same regulations as in Australia -- Here we lay the groundwork for the next law -- mandatory safes with attendant police inspection for compliance. See the seeds in sub-section c1) and c2) below.)
"`FAILURE TO PROPERLY LOCK AND STORE YOUR HANDGUN MAY RESULT IN CIVIL OR CRIMINAL LIABILITY UNDER STATE LAW. FEDERAL LAW PROHIBITS THE POSSESSION OF A HANDGUN BY A MINOR IN MOST CIRCUMSTANCES.'." (I.E If the gun is stolen, then it is assumed that you didn't store it properly. Ergo, it's YOUR fault the crime occurred. Vintage liberalism.)
"SEC. 201. REGULATION OF TRIGGER LOCK DEVICES.
(a) GENERAL AUTHORITY- The Secretary of the Treasury (in this title referred to as the `Secretary') shall prescribe such regulations governing the design, manufacture, and performance of trigger lock devices, as are necessary to reduce or prevent the unintentional discharge of handguns." (So now we will have a bureaucracy dipping it's collective toe into the waters of gun design. And, God help the poor soul who uses a non-standard lock -- like running a long-shanked padlock through a revolver's cylinder.)
"(c) INSPECTIONS- In order to ascertain compliance with this title and the regulations and orders issued under this title, the Secretary may, at reasonable times--
(1) enter any place in which trigger lock devices are manufactured, stored, or held, for distribution in commerce, and inspect those areas where the devices are manufactured, stored, or held; and
(2) enter and inspect any conveyance being used to transport for commercial purposes a trigger lock device." (Your home is next.
"While we're here, do you mind if we search for drugs?" -- a take off on enforcing the seat belt law.)
So what appears to be a "sane and sensible" law on the surface turns out to be a real nest of bureaucratic snakes underneath.
"Three, you say you picked this column off a message board; you live in another state; both indicate that you are not a regular reader of the P-I."
More of a once-a-week perusual of one of many papers I read, and I missed the column. The reader who posted it lives in Seattle and used the phrase "especially in Seattle" with "even-handed", leading me to believe this was an unusual event. Since most of the metropolitan media have prostituted themselves to the government in general and the anti-gun crowd in particular, the
"especially in Seattle" was accepted at face value. Perhaps the P-I is not in the same league. Having out-of-state readers with differing opinions/interpretations is one of the crosses on-line newspapers today have to bear, and should be factored into the equation.
"So where do you find the temerity to tell me to take a deeper look and write something exposing the dangers to individual rights embodied in gun-control laws? You presume that I have not already done so." "
Temerity: nerve, audacity. Ouch! We have a Failure To Communicate. I did not mean that in the bitchy way it evidently came across. It was intended as a suggestion for another "editorial" exposing the innocuous-sounding "sensible" laws that in reality open up a Pandora's Box of further State intervention, as outlined above. I have yet to see anybody parse some of these laws out. Clinton and the anti-gun crowd have shown they can be markedly creative in twisting laws beyond their intent to further their own agenda.
"As a matter of fact, I was elemental in bringing this editorial board to opposed gun-control legislation for the first time in recent history. The P-I's shocking opposition to Initiative 676 (universal handgun licensing, under the guise of child safety) was a key factor in its defeat."
A tip 'o the hat. I don't think GOA or the NRA have ever sounded the tocsin on that one. It seems typical that 676 would use children as their cover. If you have URLs on this I'd like to see them. Failure in one state doesn't preclude these sweethearts from trying somewhere else, and it would be prudent to see what method they used there.
"I appreciate your supportive words, but I do not appreciate your presumptuous waltzing into town to tell me what I should be writing."
See above FTC exculpation. I do reserve the right to waltz into any town that puts it's newspaper on the Web though.
"As to your "subtle anti-gun bias", bunk. I own firearms and have a concealed weapons permit. You, like so many of those the column was meant to criticize, must read into any such commentary your own ideologically tainted slant."
One of the current tactics of the antis is to have someone write "I'm a gunowner, but I believe in ..." and then reel off the HCI's or some other anti agenda. (The Washington Post is a great practitioner of this. Sometimes the wording is verbatim.) As I mentioned in the first email, it appeared that you were comparing two sides, one of which would commit some outrageous act (the antis), and the other, some minor transgression (the pros), and treat them as if they had sinned equally. If my slant is ideologically tainted, I submit that it is because I have seen 30 years worth of
"compromise" only get us further along the road to total disarmament. We are up against a clique of people who are out to destroy the gun culture by any means possible and are using methods that would make Michiavelli blush.
"I don't bother much with subtlety; it lends itself to misreadings. If I were to have an "anti-gun bias" you wouldn't have to read between the lines to find it."
I would say then that those like you are in the minority. Being retired, I have the time to cyber-waltz into many a town and find the slickly-worded anti-gun editorial the norm and anti-gun "news articles" that really belong on the editorial page.
"I do have a bias against anyone who uses the deaths of innocents to forward a political or ideological agenda. Just today on the phone I ragged on the Washington Ceasefire (gun-control) folks over a fund-raising campaign tied to the Columbine anniversary."
Another tip 'o the hat. It sickens me to see the antis use Columbine as an emotional ju-ju doll to whip up the public's emotions against firearms. I half suspect that Ceasefire will somehow get taxpayer funding for their campaign.
"A pox on all your houses!"
Sorry, I don't go along with that. The anti's house has a sign that has "Arbeit Macht Frei" arched over their doorway. Ours says "Don't tread on me!".
"But hey, thanks for taking the time to write."
Hey, I truly appreciate you taking the time to reply.
Albert of Nevada
Too bad, we're basically on the same side, but this guy sounds like he still wants to compromise.
We're both reloading now.
Film at 11.
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The New World Order has a Third Reich odor.
[This message has been edited by Oatka (edited March 29, 2000). Having problems with the Thomas URL]
[This message has been edited by Oatka (edited March 29, 2000).]
