And They Wonder Why The Mainstream Media Is Considered Anti-Gun

The media likes to pretend it’s an unbiased source of information that Americans can trust to present information neutrally. But it will lash out at claims of bias from those who support gun rights. Biased news organizations take it as a grievous insult when Second Amendment supporters claim their much-ballyhooed neutrality is a sham.

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Then they turn around and have their editorial boards publish things like this:

“WE DON’T elect people to pray for us. We elect people to lead us.” The day after four of his officers were shot while on duty, that is what Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo had to say to politicians who offer up “thoughts and prayers” in the wake of tragic shootings. His scolding of elected officials who do absolutely nothing about the public-health epidemic of gun violence was well earned. It ought to shame Congress into finally enacting some sensible gun safety policies.

Mr. Acevedo made his comments last week as his officers recovered from injuries they received while executing a search warrant on a suspected drug house. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, both prominent Republican opponents of gun control, issued the usual statements offering the usual thoughts and prayers. “I appreciate your prayers . . . but the question is, what are policymakers willing to do, besides prayers, to address a public-health epidemic?” said Mr. Acevedo.

Now, let’s bear in mind that the shooting of four officers in Houston was committed by two individuals who were heavily involved in the drug trade. Does anyone think that such a person wouldn’t be able to get weapons despite any gun laws being proposed?

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While a number of firearms were recovered from the home, the only one I’ve seen identified was a .357 Magnum revolver. I hate to break it to the Washington Post, but there aren’t a lot of proposed laws out there that would have stopped that gun from being sold.

Without knowing what the other firearms were, I can’t comment on any of them. What I can do is remind both the Post and the Houston Police Chief that if laws against drugs didn’t stop these two, why on Earth would you expect laws against guns to have any effect?

Unfortunately, the Post and its decision to publish this editorial is a bigger concern than the specific arguments.

In this job, I read a lot of newspaper editorials. There’s one common thread through the vast majority of them, and that’s their anti-gun view. There’s rarely an editorial–meaning something written by the paper’s editorial board rather than an individual op-ed writer–that is either pro-gun or even gun neutral when it comes to this topic. Throughout the nation, editorial after editorial pushes the anti-gun narrative with nary a peep of the opposite side of the argument.

There’s no effort to appear fair. There’s a routine dismissal of the facts, as in this case. It’s nothing but anti-gun propaganda masquerading as journalism.

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Then, when you call them on it, journalists tend to get defensive. They know it’s an attack on their credibility.

Look, I’ve done the newspaper reporting thing. It’s damn hard to hide your biases. It can be done most of the time, but it’s not hard to find the biases in a piece of reporting once you realize that it’s unlikely most will make an effort. Then they pull stuff like this, blatantly taking an anti-gun position because it’s convenient, and then move on and pretend they’re unbiased.

I’m not sure what’s worse, that people believe it? Or that they probably believe it themselves?

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