Over the past few years I've written several stories highlighting the solid journalism from Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter John Diedrich, who's done an admirable job of covering issues like gun-related suicides without demonizing gun owners or parroting anti-gun talking points. I wish that his professionalism was a hallmark of the paper as a whole, but unfortunately a "news" story by Journal-Sentinel reporter Natalie Eilbert reads more like a press release from Moms Demand Action and Everytown for Gun Safety.
The report, headlined "Gun safety advocates rally at Wisconsin Capitol, saying laws can coexist with 2nd Amendment", ostensibly covers a number of bills backed by the gun control groups, but never even bothers to detail what the proposed legislation would do or provide links to the actual text of the proposals. Instead, we get pablum like this:
Gun safety advocates arrived at the State Capitol on Tuesday morning in droves, eager not only to hear from community leaders, peers and lawmakers, but to urge elected officials to support a new raft of gun violence prevention bills aimed at gun trafficking.
... Speakers on Oct. 21 also included Rep. Joan Fitzgerald, D-Fort Atkinson; Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of the national Moms Demand Action organization; Nick Matuszewski, associate executive director of WAVE (Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort) Educational Fund; and Lindsey Buscher, volunteer leader with Wisconsin Moms Demand Action.
The bills would target illegal gun trafficking taking place in Wisconsin, and are intended to give law enforcement the tools to go after corrupt gun dealers, trace illegal gun purchases and shut down illegal gun trafficking rings. They would also close loopholes that allow dealers to funnel weapons into the illegal market, and crack down on bulk purchases of firearms, a known indicator of illegal gun trafficking.
Their fight, emphasized Ferrell-Zabala, is not with the Second Amendment. It's with the "reckless" practices of selling guns before background checks are complete, and with bulk firearm purchases.
Now, we can deduce that the bill cracking down on "bulk purchases" of firearms would impose limits on the number of guns that could be purchased in a given time period, but what "tools" are they proposing to go after "corrupt" gun dealers, trace illegal gun purchases, and shut down illegal gun trafficking rings? What are they suggesting would close supposed loopholes that allow FFLs to divert firearms into the illegal market?
These are fundamentally important questions for Journal-Sentinel readers if they're going to get a full picture of what these gun control groups are demanding, yet that basic information is nowhere to be found in Eilbert's report. Reporter Baylor Spears with the Wisconsin Examiner did a slightly better job of covering the gun control activists' legislative wish list, but was still awfully short on specifics.
The proposals will take several actions including requiring secure storage of inventory, employee background checks and recording gun sales, closing loopholes and ensuring that all gun sales require comprehensive background checks, ensuring that law enforcement can trace weapons and “shut down trafficking rings” and stopping bulk trafficking by prohibiting multiple gun purchases within a single month.
So now we know that the anti-gunners are demanding "universal" background checks in addition to a gun-rationing law, as well as additional requirements for FFLs to continue to operate in Wisconsin. We still don't know what those storage mandates would look like, or the details of recording every gun sale. How long would FFLs be required to keep that footage, for instance? Would video and audio have to be recorded, or just video? I'd argue that either way those requirements are a violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of gun buyers, but even from a pragmatic perspective those details matter, because if gun store owners are required to keep this video footage stored in perpetuity it's going to be extraordinarily expensive to comply with given the amount of data involved.
I also take issue with both the Journal-Sentinel and Examiner's reporting that suggests universal background check laws actually "ensure" that police can trace firearms. We know that criminals aren't going to to abide by those laws, particularly when they steal guns. We also know that enforcement of universal background check laws is virtually impossible on a proactive basis. At best, it provides another charge for prosecutors after a crime has been committed.
Is this a case of media bias, media ignorance, or both? It's hard to tell, but regardless of why these stories turned out to be puff pieces for the gun control lobby, these media outlets did an absolutely abysmal job of reporting the facts around the gun control lobby's legislative agenda.
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