{"id":78862,"date":"2022-03-18T15:52:38","date_gmt":"2022-03-18T20:52:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=78862"},"modified":"2022-03-18T15:52:38","modified_gmt":"2022-03-18T20:52:38","slug":"78862","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=78862","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

ANALYSIS: The Real Problem with \u2018Gun Violence\u2019 is Media Bias<\/a><\/p>\n

Reporting on the revival of a \u201ccontroversial unit within the New York Police Department\u201d to tackle increased violent crime by going after firearms,\u00a0CNN headlined<\/a>\u00a0its story using an all-too-familiar term that has become firmly entrenched in the media\u2019s lexicon: \u201cgun violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

CNN\u2019s headline was as subtle as a heart attack: \u201cNYPD deploys Neighborhood Safety Teams to battle gun violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

A quick perusal of one day\u2019s headlines from around the country found nearly a dozen stories all talking about \u201cgun violence,\u201d leaving one to conclude the problem with crime is guns, rather than criminals.<\/p>\n

But at this point, what can one expect when the\u00a0New York Times<\/a>\u00a0is finally acknowledging a probe of Hunter Biden, and that it had obtained emails \u201cfrom a cache of files that appears to have come from a\u00a0laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop.<\/a>\u00a0The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation?\u201d<\/p>\n

The New York Times is now the subject of a scathing critique by Michael Goodwin at the rival\u00a0New York Post<\/a>, which is all about media bias during the 2020 presidential election campaign. The content of those emails could have swung the election for Donald Trump, Goodwin suggests, but they were withheld from the American public by a \u201cBig Government, Big Tech and Big Media cabal\u201d determined to keep Trump from being re-elected.<\/p>\n

Ammoland looked at Hunter Biden\u2019s hard drive<\/a>\u00a0last November, focusing on excerpts from Joe Biden\u2019s daily newsletter titled \u201cOffice of Vice President Joe Biden News Briefing,\u201d published when the Delaware Democrat was no longer serving as vice president, and before he entered the 2020 campaign.<\/p>\n

Then, as he is now, Joe Biden was no friend to the Second Amendment. He gets cover from the same media which has adopted the gun prohibition lobby\u2019s vocabulary.<\/p>\n

As noted recently at\u00a0Liberty Park Press<\/a>, \u201c\u2019Gun violence\u2019 is a term created by the gun prohibition lobby (often incorrectly identified by the establishment media as \u2018gun safety\u2019 or \u2018gun reform\u2019 groups). The term, say Second Amendment activists, demonizes guns while essentially relegating other types of violence involving other weapons as somehow less significant.\u201d<\/p>\n

To combat this \u201cgun violence,\u201d anti-gunners want to ban so-called \u201cassault rifles.\u201d These are semi-auto sport-utility rifles, but they look \u201cmenacing\u201d and they evidently frighten gun haters who have taken to calling them \u201cweapons of war.\u201d<\/p>\n

But a look at the FBI Uniform Crime Report for any given year reveals more people are fatally beaten, bludgeoned or stabbed than people shot with rifles\u00a0of any kind<\/em>, or shotguns. While certainly true that firearms are used the most in homicides, one never reads about \u201cknife violence\u201d or \u201cbaseball bat violence,\u201d while the victims are just as dead. News agencies don\u2019t seem to get this. Long guns are used in a fraction of all homicides.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

In Everett, Wash., recently, a man and woman were stabbed. The man died and the woman was \u201cfighting for her life.\u201d When\u00a0KOMO News<\/a>\u00a0in Seattle reported the story, the station said the \u201cstabbing suspect\u201d had attacked the pair. The knife wasn\u2019t a suspect; the alleged perpetrator was.<\/p>\n

WHTM<\/a>, a local ABC affiliate in Pennsylvania, reported that a Harrisburg woman \u201cis holding town halls around the city, trying to tackle gun violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

In bloody Baltimore, where there were 337 homicides in 2021, the\u00a0Baltimore Sun<\/a>\u00a0noted residents of the Carrollton Ridge community are \u201cdesperate to stop gun violence after watching beloved neighbor die,\u201d according to a recent headline.<\/p>\n

In Columbus, Ohio,\u00a0WSYX reported<\/a>\u00a0Mayor Andrew Ginther \u201csaid violence Friday proves gun violence in the city is a public health crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The term is in such wide use, it has become the catch-all explanation for a rising body count, while nobody mentions the thugs actually pulling the triggers. By repeating the term \u201cgun violence\u201d in headlines and in the body of news stories\u00a0ad nauseum<\/em>, it could be easily argued Americans have become conditioned to blaming guns for crime, leading people to support additional restrictions on Second Amendment rights while considering punishment of the perpetrators to be a secondary concern.<\/p>\n

There may be something of a cure for media misperception of the crime problem, and it comes from the King County, Wash., Prosecutor\u2019s office, where the public information officer is an ex-newsman whose details about criminal suspects up for arraignment is, to say the least, educational.<\/p>\n

One suspect scheduled for a court appearance March 14 was stopped by police back in February walking around with a gun in his hand. As it turned out, the suspect \u201cis unable to legally possess a firearm due to multiple previous felony convictions including a 2008 conviction for Attempted Kidnapping in the Second Degree with a Sexual Motivation, a most serious offense,\u201d the report stated.<\/p>\n

A second suspect appearing in court on the same day is what veteran cops occasionally refer to as \u201ca model citizen.\u201d According to the prosecutor\u2019s office, \u201cThe defendant has violently reoffended while on probation\/community custody in Idaho for domestic violence assault charges. The defendant currently has an extraditable confirmed warrant in Boise, Idaho and has already waived extradition. If the defendant is released, he will be extradited to Idaho. The defendant does not appear to have any prior felony convictions in Washington State, though he does have misdemeanor convictions for Resisting Arrest (2018), Burglary Tools (2018) and Assault Fourth Degree \u2013 DV (2014). The defendant also has pending misdemeanor charges of Obstructing and Criminal Trespass and failed to appear after posting bail in that matter. The defendant has proven that he is both a flight risk and likely to violently reoffend. The defendant has also proven he is not likely to abide by conditions of release and less restrictive alternatives, as he has violently reoffended while on probation and while out on bail in his pending misdemeanor matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

In neighboring Pierce County, the man who fatally wounded a sheriff\u2019s deputy March 15\u2014repeat convicted felon Jeremy Darryl Dayton\u2014was wanted on an outstanding warrant. By law, he could not have a gun. But he evidently did have one and used it. Dayton was killed in the shootout after he fatally wounded Deputy Dominique \u201cDom\u201d Calata and injured Sgt. Rich Scaniffe.<\/p>\n

So, when\u00a0The Sentinel<\/a>\u00a0in Aurora, Colo., headlines an editorial with \u201cBoulder, Like Aurora, Illustrates that Gun Violence is About the Guns, Not the Places,\u201d it overlooks the obvious\u2014violence is about the\u00a0people<\/em>\u00a0responsible, not the weapons they use\u2014declaring, \u201cInsisting on meaningful gun control is about prevention.\u201d<\/p>\n

At least the newspaper acknowledged the Aurora theater in which an infamous mass shooting occurred \u201cdidn\u2019t commit these crimes. James Holmes did.\u201d A few lines later, the editorial also mentioned Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, the suspect in the Boulder King Soopers grocery store mass shooting in March of last year, stating he \u201chas currently been deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having evidently bought into the \u201cgun violence\u201d narrative, the media, say critics, stubbornly refuses to see the proverbial \u201cforest for the trees.\u201d<\/p>\n

This may help explain why it was voters\u2014not the media\u2014that focused on the real problem by pushing a citizen initiative in Washington state in 1994 dubbed \u201cHard Time for Armed Crime.\u201d As noted in a 1997 review of the act by the\u00a0Washington Policy Center,<\/a>\u00a0\u201cHard Time\u201d focused on criminals, not guns. The act went after:<\/p>\n