I See Dumb People

There was a time when the mainstream media - like our hometown paper, the Star/Tribune - could plop any old crap on a page, and assume people would just buy it.

They were the newspaper, after all!

And some people in management in the mainstream media - notably the Strib -seem to be either awash in nostalgia for those days, or just assume that people haven't gotten any smarter or better-informed.

Those are the only two possible explanations for this morning's editorial from Cox News' Tom Teepen.

I left out the adjective for the editorial. What fits? the piece is factually-incorrect, snide, paternalistic, condescending, and deeply, deeply stupid.

Apparently in Tom Teepen's world, presidents aren't supposed to keep promises to the people who vote for them:

It's nice to have friends in high places. When George W. Bush was first running for the presidency, a pooh-bah of the National Rifle Association, wrongly thinking he would be heard only by fellow denizens of Gunland, was taped boasting that with Bush in the White House, the NRA wouldn't have to bother lobbying. It would be like having one of the lobby's own officers as president.

"Gunland"?

So the Constitutuion, and the Second Amendment, doesn't apply to the whole nation?

Oh, no matter. Tom Teepen apparently feels it's unreasonable for a group that was actively attacked by the Clinton Administration, and was organization non grata in the Gore campaign, shouldn't throw it's support beyind Bush - or that Bush shouldn't actively court the votes of three million NRA members, and keep his promises to them when elected.

I mean, if the anti-gun movement is so attractive to so many of Tom Teepen's fellow non-"Gunland" residents, they could certainly have turned out enough votes to push Algore over the top. Right? Because that's how laws are made in the US?

It has turned out that way. Having said he favored an extension of the ban on military-style semiautomatic weapons, the president didn't lift so much as a pinky to accomplish that and the ban expired.

Unstated context; the NRA spanked the President hard for his frankly wrong-headed miscue on the "Assault Weapon" ban. Thank God. The "Assault Weapon" ban was among the more dull-witted diversions of the Clinton years; good riddance.

Next, Teepen slides off into active misinformation:

Now Bush has championed and, with flourish, signed legislation that exempts the firearms industry from the reach of civil justice in all but a few very narrowly drawn and unlikely circumstances.

An industry that exists solely to manufacture products that have no other purpose except to kill and wound is thus granted a privileged shelter from lawsuits enjoyed by no other business.

This is garbage.

The bill doesn't exempt gun manufacturers for any liability that any rational person would recognize; if the barrel of your pistol explodes, if the manufacturer breaks BATF laws in building, marketing or selling a weapon, if shoddy workmanship renders a gun unsafe - you know, actual liability - a gun manufacturer is no less liable than any other company. So when Teepen asks...:

Is this a precedent for the political purchase of legal safe harbors, and never mind what misfeasance or negligence might be implicated?

...the answer to a modestly well-informed person (i.e., a person who expressly mistrusts the mainstream media) is obvious; no. The law sheilds gun manufacturers from liability caused by criminal or negligent activity that occurs even though the product works exactly as designed, advertised and claimed.

Guns are not toys. Paging Hollywood; they're not lifestyle accessories. Hello, marketers of gangsta hip-hop; telling generations of wanna-be thugz that gats are fly and glamorizing the gangsta life will lead to problems.

Would Tom Teepen support allowing people to sue Hollywood, or MTV, or video game companies, or the television networks, for deaths and injuries caused by copycats mimicking things they saw on TV or in the movies? The proper use of a firearm is disclaimed as strongly as the proper perspective in dealing with entertainment.

Granted, the larger number of suits against firearms makers and dealers have been more harassing than meritorious, and it would be one thing if the courts were falling for them.

But Teepen surely must know that any industry is one stupid, error-prone, or ideologically-blinkered judge away from a precedent that will cripple it permanently. Remember when advocates of property rights and individual responsibility could relax, knowing that no judge or jury would let a lawsuit against cigarette companies go forward, because people use cigarettes voluntarily, and the tobacco works exactly as advertised and disclaimed?

All it took was one trial, here in Saint Paul, to fix that.

But in fact most have flopped. No body of menacing case law is creeping up on the industry. The "need" for protection exists only as symbolic, so the gun lobby can show its muscle to memberships that are constantly fed scare stories that gun-banners are on the verge of kicking in their doors and confiscating their weapons.

Been to DC, or Chicago, lately?

In short, the legal system is already solving whatever potential problem nuisance suits once seemed to pose. Gratuitous filings are becoming notoriously futile.

See the lamentations of every anti-tobacco jihadi, circa 20 years ago.

Teepen unwittingly clobbers his own argument:

The few successful suits have been confined to especially egregious cases, like that of the D.C. snipers. The families of six ambush victims and two survivors won a $2.5 million settlement from the manufacturer of the Bushmaster rifle and from Bull's Eye Shooter Supply in Tacoma, Wash., the dealer that had been unaware the rifle had been stolen and couldn't account for some 200 other missing weapons.

And nothing about the new law would change that!

The firearms lobby likes to grouse that there are laws aplenty to keep the gun trade on the up and up. That's not really so, but to whatever degree it is true, the claim loses any purchase in an administration with no zest for enforcement.

Which is yet another deeply, abidingly stupid statement (although, as we'll see, far from the last in this piece, as close to the end as we are!). The murder rate has been dropping for years; more importantly, the murder rate among law abiding citizens with no criminal, drug or alcohol abuse records is vanishingly small. And I've heard nobody yet complain that the Administration is going too easy on criminals. Have you?

The closing sentence achieves something that's a rarity even for mainstream media columnists; the Erroneous Trifecta!

With semiautomatics back in circulation ["Semiautomatics" were never out of circulation! - Ed.], with the states increasingly permitting concealed weapons [which have been associated with, at worst, no crime - Ed.] and passing shoot-first, ask-later laws [Ditto! - Ed.], and now with this industry privilege, the gun lobby is finally nearing its goal: an OK Corral that runs coast to coast.

Huh?

Really?

The gun industry wants a national shoot-out?

Seems like that'd be both bad for business and, if proven, probably legally actionable.

I don't think the new liability shield law would protect the industry from willfully promoting a national bloodbath. Lawyers?

Tom Teepen: you'd best hope some future administration passes a "Lying Pundit" shield, or you're going to be in huge trouble someday.

Posted by Mitch at October 25, 2005 12:52 PM | TrackBack